We were now well into the afternoon. It was nice to be back with the kids. But there was still one child I had not spoken to, a child I really needed to see. It couldn’t wait any longer. I asked Kelly, Beth, and Liz to watch the kids for a while, and I went back to my apartment. Inside, I grabbed my laptop, where I had stored hundreds of photos from my trip to Humla, and walked back to the cluster of Umbrella homes to find Jagrit.
Jagrit was sitting on a whitewashed wall, watching the other kids playing in the field next door at Dhaulagiri.
“Sir, I saw you are back from Humla—I saw you this morning. You were walking with that girl who is very very beautiful. This is your girlfriend, sir? You are very lucky!” he shouted in his normal conversational voice.
“No Jagrit—she’s just a friend.”
“How many apples did you bring me, sir? I do not see a bag—did you leave them at home? I’ll come over and carry them myself—come, we go.” He leaped down and playfully started dragging me toward my apartment.
“I brought you zero apples, Jagrit. I was going to bring you one, but I ate it myself.”
He paused. “You ate one apple? You are lying?”
“No, I’m not lying—I had one a few days ago.”
“Was it very very tasty, sir?”
“It was delicious.”
His hands shot up in triumph. “I told you, yes? I told you!” He called over to his friends on the wall to translate the apple story. “You tell them, sir! You say them about the apple!”
“Jagrit, listen—I brought you back something better than an apple,” I told him.
He turned back toward me. “What did you bring me?” He was genuinely curious.
“Come inside. I’ll show you.”
There was no easy way to tell a boy who had grown up believing his entire family was dead that I had, just ten days earlier, met his father. There was no easy way to tell him that I had a photo of his father holding his own death certificate, that I had a letter from him for Jagrit. There was no easy way to tell him he had a mother and a brother and sister, that they were all still alive and had never forgotten about him. That they had spent the last nine years wondering where he was, if he was even still alive. So I just opened up a long series of photos. I showed him photos of the postman who first told me of their existence, photos of the long trek to Jaira. And then I showed him a photo of his father, the shepherd. The man in the picture was holding a photo of Jagrit that I had given him. From beginning to end, I told him the entire story of how his family had come back to life.
Jagrit had never cried in front of me before. At fourteen years old, I imagine he considered himself too old for it. But now he could not stop. He stared at his father’s face. Jagrit, choking with emotion, asked if his father had told me why he had given him up, why his mother had not fought to keep him. That began a long discussion of the children lost in Kathmandu, of how traffickers tricked parents into giving up their children. I told him the story as I knew it, and added everything that I had learned in Humla.
I pulled out my notebook, where I had taken detailed notes of my interaction not just with his father but with all the parents. The notebook was filled with the stories of shock, guilt, pain, and desperation. It was filled with mothers recounting the fear of living under rebel authority, of young teenagers with automatic weapons, of the moment they had learned their neighbor’s child had been abducted and forced into the rebel army. The decision taken nine years ago to send Jagrit away was made under circumstances that he would never fully comprehend. I hesitated a moment, then handed the notebook to Jagrit.
“Everything is in there. Anything you want to know.”
He took the notebook and opened it slowly, flipping through the pages but not reading them. Even for a boy as bright as Jagrit, it would take concentration to read in English. He didn’t seem to have the strength. He held it up.
“My father in here, sir?” he asked. “You can show me the page?”
I took it back from him and turned the worn, smudged pages until I found the heading that read Jaira, Jagrit’s village. I read him a paragraph that I jotted down quickly during the interview, while Rinjin was asking the father the first questions about his son.
Jagrit’s father is a shepherd. I ask him about his son he doesn’t seem to know who I’m talking about. Seems confused. But there’s something in his reaction. Not sure what it is, almost like he’s waking up and not sure how to react. Rinjin mentions Jagrit’s name to him again. He seems to be nervous, expecting really bad news—think he’s scared. Rinjin sees it—he takes the photo of Jagrit and gives it to him and tells him his son is safe. We are waiting on the questions, they can come later—right now this is a father who is watching his son come back to life.
I stopped reading. “It goes on,” I said. “We asked him how you were taken, who did it. He said it was a man from the village, an important man who said he could educate you.” I paused, watching the boy. “You remember him? That man, from when you were young?”
“I remember.” Jagrit’s voice was stiff. I didn’t push him. Again, we sat in silence for a few moments.
“I showed your father your photo, you know. He liked it. He thought you were a handsome boy,” I said.
“He say I am handsome boy?”
“He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. I could see it,” I said. “Of course, I didn’t want to tell him how wrong he was. . . .”
This got a small smile from Jagrit. “You really show him my photo, sir?”
“I really did, yeah.”
“And you have photos, too? From him?”
“Not just of him—your village, too. From Jaira, and all over Humla,” I said. “You want to see them?”
For an hour, Jagrit and I talked and went through the photos, starting with his father, then going through the whole trip so he could see more of his village and Humla. He never let go of the letter from his father.
“You can make me a copy of the photo from my father, sir? For me to keep?” His voice was tight. He was choked up.
“Of course. I’ll bring it over tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” He looked down at the letter, not reading it, but just staring at it, as if it was some artifact that he didn’t quite believe he owned. Then he said, “Maybe I sit alone for a while, sir.”
For as long as I had known him, Jagrit had never wanted to be alone. But I would have wanted the exact same thing in that situation. I stood up.
“You’re not the only one, Brother,” I told him before I left. “There are many children like you in Nepal. The only difference between you and them is that they still think they are alone in the world.”
I touched his head and walked out, gently closing the door behind me, leaving behind the sobs that grew fainter as I walked downstairs and out of the house.
In our letters over the previous three months, Liz and I had come to know so much about each other, but in person, we initially found it hard to share our thoughts in the same way we had been able to over e-mail. But it took only that one morning with the children for us to open up. Now I could see her facial expressions, see the sympathy in her eyes and hear what made her laugh. Spending time with Liz felt like being at home—a childhood home that was so familiar you could walk blindfolded from room to room without even touching a wall. I had dreamed about sharing this experience with somebody. Not just in words and photos, but having them smell and feel and hear and taste it all. Liz was the perfect companion; she soaked it all in and she never flinched. She only wanted to experience more of Nepal, more of what I had been talking about in long letters to her over the past three months.
Just before sunset on Christmas Eve, Liz and I walked to the top of Swayambhu, or Swayambhunath, as it is more formally known. The sprawl of Kathmandu stretched like water to the hills, while monkeys ran around us in the foreground. The Kathmandu Valley had been, in f
act, a lake until a mere ten thousand years ago. This hill on which the temple was built was once an island in that lake. The legend went that on the base of the hill where the temple was ultimately built, the Bodhisattva Manjushri, an enlightened being who predated the historic Buddha, had a vision of a lotus flower in the lake, at the site of Swayambhunath. Recognizing this place as worthy of pilgrimage, he cut a gash in the hills to drain the lake, making the Kathmandu Valley into habitable land and allowing access to the holy place on the hill.
Archaeologists, while perhaps reserving judgment on just how the site was created, agree that it has existed in some form for more than fifteen hundred years. On the top of the hill, in addition to the sixty-five-foot-diameter, hundred-foot-tall white stupa, are myriad statues, small temples, a monastery, monks, and monkeys, all wrapped up in a tangle of colorful Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags, which, with each gust of wind, spread prayers and compassion. The site is holy to both Buddhists and Hindus, and the architecture and statues reflect the shared importance.
In short, we stood at a focal point for Nepalese faith, religion, legend, and culture. It seemed a fitting way for Liz to end her trip to Nepal; she would be leaving the next morning, on Christmas Day.
“You have traditions? On Christmas morning?” I asked her, wondering if I could find some way of making her feel more at home here.
“The usual,” she said. “Stockings, presents, long breakfasts . . . we go to church, if we haven’t gone the night before, on Christmas Eve.”
Of course—she was a Christian, so this holiday probably held a lot more significance to her than I was used to. “Shoot—sorry, I didn’t even think about that, I’m a moron. Listen, I haven’t heard of a church here but I’m sure there is one, I’ll look it up when we get back to the apart—”
She cut me off. “It’s not a hard and fast rule, Conor,” she said. “The reason I was coming to India in the first place was to do acts of service on Christmas Day. It’s a time of year to celebrate the life of Christ and follow His example. Spending time with the children would be perfect.”
“Well, that fits in with our plan anyway. You know we’ll be having daal bhat for breakfast, in that case, right?”
“It sounds perfect. Really.”
I nodded. “Right. Christmas-morning daal bhat it is,” I said.
Christmas goes virtually unmarked in Nepal. December 25, therefore, felt like any other day at the children’s home. The children were not aware of the Christian holiday, so they did not understand the significance to Liz, Kelly, Beth, and me; the celebration of the birth of Christ, and our individual family rituals that went along with the day, including stockings and presents tattooed with happy snowmen. Instead of a church service followed by Christmas pastries, we were wrist-deep in slushy rice and boiling daal and dangerously curried vegetables, stuffing fists of it into our mouths. The children found all of this gut-rippingly hilarious, of course. It was, oddly enough, a perfect Christmas morning.
I said good-bye to Liz that afternoon. She waited in the security line at the airport, well in time for her flight back to Delhi and the group of friends with whom she was traveling.
“So . . . how much longer do you have in India?” I asked her.
“Two more weeks,” she said, picking up her bag and moving slowly with the queue.
I nodded thoughtfully. She was four people away from going through the metal detector. My heart suddenly picked up its pace. I cleared my throat.
“You know, the kids would love to see you again,” I said. “In case you’re bored in India or anything. The girls loved you—it was so great to have you helping care for them and making them feel loved and welcomed. I know they would love to see you again.” This was coming out less casually than I had intended.
“Well, I’d love to see them again too, Conor—they’re wonderful.”
“Yeah, they are, and they’d love to see you, I know it. . . .” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Listen, would you mind giving me a call when you get back to India? Maybe tomorrow, after Christmas? Just so I know you got there okay?”
“Of course,” she said. “I gotta catch this plane—but Merry Christmas! It was so nice to finally meet you!” She opened her arms to give me a hug, and I hugged her, accidentally knocking over her suitcase in the process and knowing I should pick it up like a gentleman but not wanting to let go of that hug. I kind of kicked at it with my feet, but it didn’t spring back up as I hoped. Finally I broke the hug to bend down to get it. That was the end of our time together. It had passed neither particularly quickly nor slowly, just inevitably. And that made it painful. Two days together was an absurdly short amount of time. I knew it before she came, but I felt it now, in my chest. I hated to see her go.
She walked through the metal detector and waved back at me before disappearing down the corridor. I went outside, into the white water of hawkers and drivers and hotel representatives, and caught a taxi back to Dhaulagiri, where Kelly and Beth were. They would be in Nepal for another week, which I loved. But my mind was still with Liz. I had to see her again. I didn’t know how or when. But I had to. I wondered what would happen if I just caught a flight to India in the next few days. What would she say? Would she want to see me?
I felt lost, rudderless. My last month had been focused on getting to see Liz. I had done everything to get back from Humla in time to meet her, wondering what it would be like when we finally met. Well, now I knew. It was perfect. We had spent all of sixty-five hours together. And I was crazy about her.
I had seen the kids at Little Princes excited before. I had never, though, seen a reaction like the one I got when I arrived in Godawari two days after Liz left. The children had obviously learned that I had gone to Humla, that I had found their families, and that I had photos to show them. A dozen of them were standing on the road, waiting for me to arrive. It was noon; they had been there since 9:00 A.M. There was an audible panic on the minibus when the other passengers saw the children charging our vehicle, as if we were about to get rolled down a hill by a gang of insane little people. The bus screeched to a halt and I was practically torn from the minibus, which then sped away, door still open. I could only imagine the relief of the other passengers that the children seemed only to be interested in the foreigner.
“I can’t show them to you now, you crazy kids!” I shouted over the din. The children seemed unable to comprehend how it could be that I had been off the bus for all of six seconds and they had not yet seen photos.
“I’ll show them to you in the living room! In the living room! They’re on my laptop! I can show you when you’re all sitting down—” I stopped. There was nobody there. A trail of dust led to the Little Princes home.
I took my time walking down the path. Farid was right—it was good that they learned patience. I walked into the house, listening to the excited murmuring from the living room. I came in to find the children lined up in flawless rows, stock still, like little terra-cotta warriors.
“What are you doing?” I asked Santosh.
“You say you show photos when we are standing in living room, Brother!”
“I said sitting in the living room, you ninnies! Why would I tell you to stand?”
“We don’t know, Brother!”
“For Pete’s sake, sit!” I said. The children collapsed in a heap, laughing hysterically.
I set up my laptop on a little straw stool, turned it on, and clicked on the slideshow I had prepared. It was just under two hundred photos. From the moment the first shot of Humla appeared, taken of the landing strip at Simikot, the children pointed and chatted excitedly. As the montage took me into southern Humla and their villages, they were bouncing up and down, recognizing places from their early childhood, wondering if the people in the photos were people they knew, debating the names of villages.
I paused just before we arrived at the first photo of a parent. I knew that it w
as of Anish’s mother. I made sure I kept an eye on him as I opened the photo of the woman, reddened eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, her wrinkled, field-toughened hands clutching a photo of Anish. She needed no introduction.
The boys went crazy. They jumped on Anish, shaking his shoulders and patting his head as if he’d just scored the goal to put Nepal into the World Cup finals. Anish, though, was completely still. Slowly, he leaned into the photo on the screen to get a better look, and a smile grew on his face. He noticed me looking at him, and he looked back at the photo. I saw it in his face. He was staring at something that, at last, was his very own, something that he would never have to share with anyone else in the house.
I related the story to Anish and the rest of the children of how I’d met his family, what they had said, and how his father had given me a gift of honey and walnuts, which I had savored after many meals of plain rice and lentils. The kids chirped in with additional commentary in Nepali, none of which I understood. But Anish’s smile had changed from joy to something more like embarrassment. I bent down next to him.
“What is it, Anish? This is very good news for you,” I said, hand on his arm.
“She crying, Brother,” he said in a soft voice. He cupped his hand to my ear. “Other boys will make fun.”
“She missed you,” I whispered back. “And look around—does it look like anybody is making fun of you for your mother crying?”
He looked behind him at the boys, who were chattering away, unaware that we were even speaking. He shook his head. “No, Brother.”
“I’ve got a secret for you, Anish,” I whispered again.
He couldn’t help but be intrigued by that. “What, Conor Brother?”
I paused, looking around dramatically to make sure nobody, except maybe nineteen other children, were within earshot. I whispered, “Everybody’s mother cried.”