MY GOOD FRIEND AND HIS ADOPTED DAUGHTER

A long lost friend visited me yesterday. We became friend a long time ago, way back in 1989.

Yes, it was twenty years ago.

He still looked the same. A same person, except that he is now in a different stature. He is going to a country representing the King, the SPB Yang DiPertuan Agong. He is a new Ambassador of Malaysia to that country.

He had five passports in his hand and he showed me one of them, a brown covered passport. I took it and realised that it was a travel document called Certificate of Identity, belonged to a pretty five years old girl. It was actually not a passport, but can be used to travel in-leiu of passport.

He told me that he had adopted the girl and the girl cannot be issued a proper passport because she is stateless. Meaning that she is not a citizen of Malaysia and also not a citizen of any other country. Her mother, an Indonesian lady abandoned her five days after gave birth to her in Malaysia. Because she was abandoned right after birth, no one can register her birth in the Indosesian Embassy to claim her citizenship as the right to register is only accorded to her maternal parents, who had already disappeared.

After hearing the story, I knew that my friend is taking a huge responsibility. Not only he will look after the girl's welfare, he would also have to accept the girl as his own. When she grows up, she will definitely ask a lot of questions about her identity as she is diferent from other siblings. Any wrong words from the family members would have a huge consequences.

I asked a quite important question to my friend. Would he take the girl as his own and he said yes. I asked him another question, if he considered the girl as his own, is he going to distribute his asset and property fairly between his children including the adopted girl knowing it very well that the girl is not entitled even a single cent from his estate. He told me that he knows it very well that the girl would not be entitled of anything in the event of his death under the Islamic Law of the country. But he had already vowed that the girl is one of his own. To make sure the girl would get a fair share of his estate, he transfered one of his plots of land in Kedah under the adopted girl's name and the land is left under a trustee until the girl reached the age to hold the property. He told me that if he dies tomorrow, he will die happy because he did not abandon the girl, not just like the girl's real mother abandoned her.

The law may not recognised the girl as his own child, but his action would secure her welfare and she would have no doubt as being part of the family.

I was amazed. Not everybody have the same heart as my friend.

I wish him well for his new ambassadorship. May god bless him.