Bayazid never knew how he came to be a little boy alone in the streets of Rawalpindi. He had a memory more of forces than of people, a crowd, a hand, a hand no more. Yet the bazaars in those early nineteen-fifties were not so crowded as that, and Rawalpindi a town small enough that a lost little boy should be found.
"I was dumped while being wheeled into emergency surgery after surgical complications. I'm lying on a gurney, literally bleeding out my ass, and the nurse tells me my partner wants to talk to me. She then tells me that when I get out of the hospital, she won't be living at our place anymore." "The nurse walks in between her and me, gives the now-ex a look that would peel paint, says 'that's enough' and wheels me into the operating theatre.
I felt an inner devastation that caused so much emotional distress I could no longer hide it or hide from it through my work. I did not feel like doing anything except cry and share my suffering with anyone willing to listen. After Karla left me for the third time, I went to a meditation retreat in Estes Park, Colorado, led by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who founded mindfulness and was nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The emotional journey of three newborns, abandoned in different regions, converges fifty years later as they search for their identity and shared history.
