She Was Almost a Twin

"They could be like twins,” the shelter director told me, pointing to my swollen belly. My due date was in one week. I glanced down at myself, then back up at the scrawny newborn in her arms.The baby's dark, crusty umbilical cord was visible through the thin, stained onesie he was wearing.The director had called me to her ragtag shelter for orphans and victims of domestic violence—a secret haven nestled in the shadows of Dubai’s most ostentatious skyscrapers. She was asking me to adopt the newborn, whom she had tentatively named "Muhammad."He was only two days old, and he was a “Bedu” baby. These are the unlucky infants across the Persian Gulf conceived and delivered out of wedlock. Due to strict penalties in the Persian Gulf for adultery and sex outside of marriage, these babies are regularly abandoned. They turn up in the courtyards of mosques, at the circle drives of police stations, and on the porch steps of charities. Sometimes their parents are avoiding public shame; others, particularly the mothers, are afraid of physical harm or death through so-called "honor killings."“Bedu” is a colloquial word in Gulf Arabic meaning “without,” a linguistic offshoot of the word “Bedouin,” the hardy people who walked the sands from oasis to oasis without much more than their camels and tents. Bedu babies almost always grow up without citizenship, birth certificates, and medical records. Essentially, they don’t exist on paper.After a brief visit to a government hospital for a checkup, they usually end up living at local shelters, or quietly whisked off to good-hearted and well-to-do families. That's where I came in."Where did you find him?" I asked."He was in a box by the dumpster," she said.The young mother had left him there, then called the shelter to alert them of his whereabouts.I don't remember what I was wearing--it had to have been a headscarf and a long, loose-fitting outfit, I know that much--but I do remember the director transferring him into my arms.  And I immediately loved him.  How could I not?  He was like a little lamb, the definition of beauty and innocence. His black, shiny hair was straight and fine, and he seemed more fragile than other newborns I had held. He needed me.The shelter director had managed to coax a few details out of the mother. She was a young, unmarried Palestinian woman who had had unprotected sex with a prince from the UAE's ruling al-Nahyan family, according to the shelter director.The mother had apparently kept the entire pregnancy hidden from her own family, wearing long, flowing abayas; she had labored and delivered the baby alone and in secret.Bedu babies of the Persian GulfMany Bedu babies are of mixed ethnicity, the result of a romantic affair considered illegal by the state. Others are a result of rape, sometimes involving a local employer and his housemaid, the latter of whom usually comes from the impoverished regions of southeast Asia or the Indian subcontinent. This mixed heritage makes adoption harder in a region where there is still a heavy emphasis placed on what's perceived as "racial purity" and where many can trace their bloodlines back over a thousand years.In the United Arab Emirates, an unwed, non-citizen mother is typically jailed for a year after having a baby, and she usually then faces deportation. And that's considered a slap on the hand compared to the likes of Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Afghanistan, where mothers of these babies face flogging or solitary confinement...that's if they don’t become victims of "honor killings" first.And then there’s the prejudice the babies themselves experience—both for being born of parents deemed "immoral," and for being orphans who can't claim a known family lineage, which is a point of honor in the Gulf.In a single week, a charity worker told me, one police station in the conservative emirate of Sharjah, UAE found five newborns on its doorstep, all with their umbilical cords still attached.A prince in pauper's clothesI fed Muhammad a bottle of some donated formula and rocked him with the little room left on my lap. He barely made a sound.I had made up my mind that I wanted to be this baby's mother. I remember thinking that it wasn't a question of whether I would do it, but rather a question of how.  I remember it being very black and white.I burped him, returned him to the director, and went home to tell the Egyptian man I was married to that I wanted to adopt Muhammed.“Without papers? No way,” he said, pointing out that we traveled frequently and a passport would be a must. I knew he had his own cultural reasons, too, based on conversations I had heard between him and his family.So I called the U.S. Consulate in Dubai. "There's no protocol in place for shotgun adoptions," a staff member told me. "Sorry."Feeling defeated, I returned to the shelter a couple of days later with new baby clothes, and asked to see Muhammed one last time. I kissed him goodbye and, as I left the shelter, cried for him and his uncertain future.A practical, and humane, solutionI recently celebrated my daughter's thirteenth birthday. Like always around this time of year, I think of Muhammad. I often wonder where he is, and whether this child of royal blood is still living as a pauper. I wonder if he knows as much about his biological family as I do. I wonder if he felt loved and secure when I held him. I hope he did.And I can't help but think how easy it would be for Persian Gulf nations to provide a sanctuary for these tiny victims of neglect. Although it might be condemned by the more religious conservatives as promoting premarital sex, one option would be to install a “baby hatch” in every government hospital. In many countries, these drop off sites welcome babies who will otherwise be left to die somewhere, and it’s a no-questions-asked, no penalty process.Regional and international adoption is also an option, but religious family courts throughout the Persian Gulf make this option tricky and unlikely to succeed.In the long term, I hope the mainstream people of the Persian Gulf—including those who are trying to bring down the most fortified of dictators—will remember to lift up the most fragile of human beings.