It was the summer of 1990 and 27 year-old Ichiro Nagata was in a clinic near Ushaiger, Saudi Arabia. The region had been dealing with a severe drought and disease. One of Ichiro's former professors from Harvard Medical School was leading a group of Doctors to assist the region through the summer, and asked Ichiro to join for the summer before returning to Japan to his wife. Ichiro didn't like the prospect of leaving his new wife, whom he had just married a month prior, but the two agreed this was a great opportunity.
From there, things moved quickly. He was in Saudi Arabia just two days later. Since then, he had been very busy treating many of the day-to-day needs of the people who lived in the area. He took pride in his day to day work, truly enjoying every life he could save, or even just every smile he could provide.
Most of Ichiro's duties kept him in an air conditioned tent; but in the Saharan heat, the air conditioner only improved the temperature to the point of slight discomfort. Whenever he got a break, he liked to sneak out of the back of the tent and appreciate the beauty of Ushaiger. Ushaiqer was one of the oldest settlements in the Najd region of Saudi Arabia. Pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and Kuwait would stop there as they would journey to Mecca for Hajj.
He would walk through the stone streets and imagine what the site may have looked like 700 years ago. Many of the mud buildings were nearly as old as the town itself. One of Ichiro's favorite spots in Ushaiger was a long, dead end dirt road. Buildings lined up on both sides, and the street ended with a mosque. The mosque and the building next to it, an orphanage, were the only two active buildings in the area. He didn't know if it was irreverent, but he would sit at the corner of that road and eat his lunch to escape the chaos of the medical tent.
About a week into his stay, Ichiro was taking his turn at the front desk. A woman with an infant timidly entered the tent. The child was silent, hanging on tight to the woman. Ichiro looked up and then back down to his work, expecting the translator to talk to the woman first.
"Dr. Nagata?" The woman asked in English. Ichiro looked up and the woman was in front of his desk. He was surprised, she was the first person in the village that he was able to talk to without a translator. She was an older woman. She had a kind face, despite her tired appearance. Ichiro didn't know her profession, but he knew she worked hard at it.
"Yes, hello. Can I help you?" Ichiro said readily, rising from his desk. Upon closer inspection, he could see the baby had a handful of the woman's hair and was trying to bite her ear. "Could I hold your baby for you?" He asked, trying to help.
"No, no I have him," she said softly as she tried to pry his hands out of her hair. "My name is Nadine. I run the orphanage in the village. This is one of my charges, he's been running a fever for days now and nothing I do seems to help," she teared up and looked to the ground and composed herself. "Please Doctor, save this child!"
"Of course," Ichiro grabbed his thermometer and stethoscope as he rushed around the desk. "What's his name?"
"His name is… well we call him Jamad. It means cold or freezing. We call him that because of how well he gets along with others," she said as he pulled a few strands of hair from her head and pouted. She winced as he did, but she refused to let herself get angry with the child. "I suppose that's a bit mean to call him that, but he was brought to us without a name."
"Without a name?" Ichiro pondered as he filled out the forms.
"Yes, a man brought us this child a few months ago. The young man told us that he had found the child in the desert, and he needed medical care. There wasn't much wrong with him, but he sure is fussy. Whatever he faces now seems much more severe."
Ichiro motioned Nadine and Jamad to the examination area. After helping Nadine pry Jamad's small hands out of her hair and his baby teeth off of her ear, he placed him onto the examination table. The small child flailed without Nadine to hold onto, despite seemingly disliking her. The baby was sweating more than usual in the heat, his skin was pale.
"Hey Jamad," Ichiro said in a soothing voice. "I'm just going to take your temperature."
"Careful Dr. Nagata, he broke a few of our thermometers. He doesn't like medical treatment," Nadine warned cautiously. However, Jamad gave Ichiro no issues during the pre-exam. Jamad was hesitant at first when Ichiro approached with the thermometer, but eventually gave in. As expected, the young boy had a high temperature.
"Dr. Lane" Ichiro called into the walkie talkie on his hip, "I have a baby in bay 1 with a temperature of 101. Urgent." He put his walkie back and looked at Nadine. "Dr. Lane taught me much of what I know. Jamad will be in good hands."
The woman smiled, feeling her first bit of relief in days. Ichiro respected Nadine for never letting a bad child cause her to lash out in anger. Dr. Lane showed up relatively quickly and Ichiro excused himself back to his desk.
His time at the desk was short-lived though. A few minutes later, Dr. Lane yelped in pain. Ichiro watched him as he stormed up to Ichiro's desk.
"Ichiro, you specialized in pediatrics, right?" He asked, holding his thumb.
"Yes sir."
"Could you administer treatment to the child? I believe you keep up with pediatrics more so than me." Lane played himself cool as he guided Ichiro out of the chair and sat down behind him.
The young doctor returned to the woman from the orphanage. The woman rubbed the back of her head guiltily.
"Jamad bit Dr. Lane… I am so sorry Dr. Nagata," the woman continued to apologize as Ichiro watched the baby. The baby was still sweating, yet bizarrely had not cried the entire time he had been there.
"It's alright," Ichiro assured Nadine as he prepared to treat Jamad. "I work with children back in Japan. I know how to help them feel at ease."
Nadine watched intently throughout the whole process. Ichiro administered ibuprofen for his fever and prescribed an antibiotic. Over the next few days, Nadine would bring Jamad every day so that Ichiro could check up on him. Whenever they would walk in, it seemed that Jamad found a new way to torture his caregiver. He would spit, bite, scream, and one day, he could have sworn he saw Jamad smack Nadine in the face. Nadine never let this bother her. She was determined to care for Jamad.
Though it was a different story for Ichiro and Jamad. Although unsure at first, Jamad began to take a liking to Ichiro. No matter how badly Jamad misbehaved for Nadine, he would immediately stop as soon as she handed him to Ichiro. Nadine noted one day that she saw Jamad smile for the first time.
After Jamad's fever broke and he returned to good health, Ichiro stopped eating his lunch at the corner of the dead end road. He would walk a little further down the road to the orphanage and eat his lunch with Nadine, Jamad and the other orphans, then play games with them before he had to return to the tent. He missed his wife and he missed his home, but the orphanage became like a second home to him.
All of a sudden, summer was over. With only two weeks left in Ushaiger, he felt his trips to the orphanage felt more and more bittersweet. All the children finished their lunches and were ready to go outside to play. Ichiro hadn't even finished half his lunch. A little girl, no older than eleven, ran up to Ichiro and Nadine.
"Will you play soccer with us Mr. Nagata?" she asked excitedly.
"Qadira!" Nadine scolded. "Mr. Nagata hasn't finished his lunch yet. Please give him time to eat."
She shooed the children out of the building to play outside with another woman working in the orphanage. She returned to her seat with Ichiro and rocked Jamad's crib behind them.
"What's on your mind Ichiro?" Nadine asked her friend.
"I'm going back to Japan in a couple weeks. I'm happy to go home and see my wife and home, but I'm going to miss you and the kids. You all have truly been a light since I met you."
"Ichiro," Nadine sighed. "I never had children, and you know what? I don't regret a second of it. The children of this orphanage are my children. I love them, I take care of them, and I would do anything for them. But Jamad had disliked me since the day he arrived," she shrugged her shoulders. "Perhaps he was angry that someone had abandoned him. Perhaps he was angry because I wasn't that person. I loved him all the same. But ever since he met you, he's changed. At first I was shocked to see him tolerating your existence. Then I saw him smile with you. Now, he interacts with some of the other kids. He even has stopped attacking me and others. You opened his heart to love, now he's ready to develop like any other child. If you worry that you will miss the children, I want you to know that you will be an excellent father."
Silence hung in the air. Ichiro saw his tears hit his pants. He looked confidently at Nadine.
"I want to adopt Jamad."
Silence hung again. Nadine began to tear up. She stood up and turned to Jamad's crib. Ichiro couldn't see her face, but could hear her voice tremble.
"Ichiro, you are the only one I would want to raise him," she took Jamad from his crib and put him in Ichiro's arms. Ichiro smiled as he held his new son, still sleeping in his arms.
"I cannot call him Jamad though, can I? You said you called him Jamad because he was cold. He's not cold anymore. I said you have all been lights in my life this summer. So I will call him Diya. Diya Nagata."
Over the next two weeks, Ichiro said his goodbyes to the children and to Nadine. With tears in their eyes, he began to walk down the road for the final time, holding his new son. He turned, sunlight streaming behind him.
"I'll remember you all! I promise!"
From there he went to the airport; and from the airport, he took Diya home to his new, loving family.