The child catchers
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The child catchers
Report by Katharine Hibbert
Across Pakistan poverty-stricken parents abandon, or even murder, their
offspring on a daily basis. But thanks to the determination of one
remarkable couple, thousands of unwanted babies now have a future
The sign above the crib in a dusty Karachi street is less a commandment
than a plea. "Do not kill," it says, in English and Urdu. "Leave
the baby to live in the cradle." Almost every day a desperate woman
obliges, abandoning her illegitimate, disabled or simply unwanted child
in one of 300 similar cribs, or jhoolas, throughout Pakistan. In a
country racked by natural disasters, war and drug-trafficking, where
39% of the population live below the poverty line, these children are
relatively lucky. They are taken in by Bilquis Edhi, a redoubtable
58-year-old with hennaed hair and bright eyes. Her nickname, "Mother
of Pakistan", is well earned. The charity she and her husband, Abdul
Sattah Edhi, run has rescued more than 16,700 unwanted babies since
1952, and today takes in an average of 450 a year.
Many are adopted by Pakistani families who cannot have children. The
rest are brought up in the Edhi Foundation's network of 17
orphanages. "They're basic by western standards," says Fatima, a
British Muslim from Luton who adopted her two children, Shehla and
Mohammed, now 10 and 6, from the Edhi Foundation while she was working
as a nurse in Pakistan. "The cots are metal and the floors stone. But
you can tell the children are loved. My little boy was three when I
adopted him, and Bilquis and everyone who works at the orphanages had
really cared for him. You can see that the children are happy."
Children who are not adopted are educated within the orphanages and
grow up calling Bilquis and Abdul Sattah "Ammi" and "Abbu"
("Mummy" and "Daddy"). Boys are taught trades, and girls learn
to be homemakers. Many choose to stay on to work within the foundation.
For others, Bilquis arranges marriages as a Pakistani mother would, and
the foundation raises the girls' dowries.
It only takes a walk through Karachi to see the fate of unwanted babies
not lucky enough to end up in Bilquis's care. In the teeming port
city of some 12m, armies of ragged children carry out backbreaking
labour, or beg in organised gangs. In the sprawling heaps of rubbish
and in drains, the tiny bodies of newborns are often found, garrotted,
burnt or asphyxiated. Their births are not registered, so neither are
their deaths. "We come across more important cases than these every
day," says a Pakistani police officer. "That leaves us with no time
to probe these cases. It is not that we don't consider infants
important, but usually such cases are impossible to follow up on."
Instead, they call the Edhi Foundation, which collects and buries the
little bodies. They are the only people who keep account of how many
are found. It is sometimes as many as 50 a month, though the number has
decreased as they have left out more cradles.
Anwer Kazmi, a spokesman for the foundation, says that almost all the
abandoned and murdered babies are girls. About 3% are disabled; only 1
to 2% are healthy boys. "Female babies are a liability all over the
subcontinent. Males can work for the family when they grow up. A girl
can't work, but still has to be fed and clothed, and her dowry has to
be raised." Typically, a dowry is three times the father's annual
salary. For many Pakistani families, especially those with daughters
already, a female or a disabled baby is unaffordable, says Kazmi, yet
they cannot afford not to try for a son. The country is governed by
Sharia law, which forbids abortion and adultery. Kazmi speculates that
many of the abandoned, healthy boys are illegitimate, their mothers
driven to abandon them by the fear of public execution by stoning, or a
private honour killing.
The first jhoola appeared in 1952, outside a charitable dispensary run
by Abdul Sattah Edhi. He had been horrified by widespread infanticide,
and wanted to offer despairing mothers an alternative. He met and
married Bilquis while she was working as a nurse within his dispensary,
and she took charge of the jhoolas project. Today it is only a small
part of the foundation they run, which has become the closest thing
Pakistan has to a social-security system. Funded entirely by donations,
it employs 3,500 staff and tens of thousands of volunteers across the
country. It provides ambulances and hospitals, shelters for the
destitute, and rehabilitation for drug addicts. Its aid lorries were
first to the scene of the earthquake in Kashmir last October, arriving
before the military. It was to one of the foundation's mortuaries
that Daniel Pearl, the murdered American journalist, was taken in 2002.
Their phone number, 115, is as well known in Pakistan as 999 is in the
UK, and all across the country, it is their ambulances that will be
found at the scene of emergencies. "The government knows it should be
doing what the Edhi Foundation is doing," says Kazmi, "so they stay
out of our way."
The foundation has faced attacks from hardline mullahs, some of whom
have declared that the jhoolas are as sinful as abortion. "Leaving
unwanted babies to die in rubbish dumps is the biggest sin," counters
Bilquis Edhi. The foundation's volunteers have been kidnapped, and
its property burnt by fundamentalists. "I am a Muslim," says Abdul
Sattah Edhi, "but essentially I believe in humanity above creed or
class." The children in the orphanages are raised as Muslims, but the
Edhis will consider prospective parents of any religion, trying to
match children to adults they resemble. They reject aid from the
Pakistani government and from international organisations. "We've
got to stay independent," he says, "and the Pakistani people need
to help themselves." Potential adoptive parents are not allowed to
donate money to the foundation. As Bilquis Edhi says, "We do not sell
babies here."
The Edhis themselves live modestly in a two-room flat within one of the
orphanages. Their day starts at 5am for morning prayers, followed by
breakfast of dry bread and a cup of tea. Simply dressed, both often
work 14-hour days. They hope their own children, two daughters and two
sons, will carry on the work of the foundation. The Pakistani people
hope so too. As an Edhi Foundation volunteer puts it, "Above is
Allah, and below are the Edhis."