Umaru took out of his bag what he calls his passport - a folio-sized piece of paper folded into four, the only paper that protects him from being arrested by the Immigration Police. It is a decision of Judge Dan Liberti from the Custody Court, according to which the bearer "shall be released from custody to the supervision of the guardian by October 13, 2006, the date on which he reaches maturity." The guard read it carefully, with annoying slowness. I was afraid we would miss the train, but said nothing. At her request, I explained that I was the guardian and showed her my ID card. She checked it thoroughly, compared the number with the number on the court decision, and only then let us through.

That was neither the first nor the last time that security guards or policemen stopped us, both at the railway station and on the street. We had already become used to the looks, and to questions like "What is the connection between you?" and even "Are you his mother?" That question was put to me - with a smile, it must be said - by a security guard of Ethiopian origin, and I replied, "Yes, isn't it obvious?"

The intensity of the run-ins with guards and police was one of the things I did not anticipate when I decided to become the custodian of an African youth and thus get him released from prison. Not that that would have made me change my mind.

Serious doubts

I met him at the beginning of January, when I was doing research for an article on African minors being held at Tzoher, the Immigration Directorate prison in the Negev desert. He spoke fluent English and acted as my interpreter. There were youngsters there who had fled from a life of poverty and want, and others who were orphans and had lost their entire world. Some of them had arrived in the wake of a fantastic rumor to the effect that there was work in Israel and that it was possible to make $3,000 a month. But they were arrested at the border and spent weeks or months in prison. When I asked later why those who could not be deported were not released, it was explained to me that because they are underage they are not released into the street, but only under the supervision of a responsible adult.

In most cases it is compatriots - veteran migrant laborers or those who have acquired some sort of legal status - who acted as custodians. A compatriot of Umaru's, a veteran refugee from Guinea-Bissau, wanted to act as his custodian, but was rejected. At that time he had been in prison for two months - longer than the time he had worked in Israel before being arrested - and he spent another month in prison before being released. I reached the decision to become his custodian on the way back from the prison, but I did not act quickly. I wanted to wait, to get to know him better and consider the implications of the move for my life. I spoke with him several times while writing the story, and later as well. He was always very serious and seemed to be trying, albeit with little success, to help his mates in prison. I thought he was intelligent and sensitive, but it was clear to me that this might be an erroneous impression.

It was precisely because I had serious doubts that I did not consult with anyone before going to the Hotline for Migrant Workers and signing a declaration, in the presence of a lawyer, that I agreed to act as custodian for Ballde Pinto, a citizen of Guinea-Bissau who was incarcerated at Tzoher. Only after signing did I call my son, Eyal, 26. He sounded enthusiastic: "Really! I'll have a new brother - and an African, too. What a scene." My daughter, Michal, 23, got the news by e-mail at one of the stops on her trip through Tanzania. She got back a few days before I was invited to a meeting with Judge Liberti, and together we organized a place for the new lodger. I told myself that if it didn't work out, he could disappear in Tel Aviv, and at least I would have got him out of jail.

Two months later, a friend told me that she envied me for having been able to make the decision and make the move. Indeed, the first answer to the question of why I did it is - because I could. I could, in large measure, thanks to the fact that my children were full partners and so was my partner (though he works abroad and is in Israel only a few weeks a year). I couldn't have done it without the support and help of my family - nuclear and expanded.

My children were not really taken by surprise. The decision to bring into my home an African youngster without papers and effectively without an identity was perhaps the peak of a tendency that has marked my life in the past few years - that of blurring the line that separates the professional and the personal, work and life. I never aspired to make a complete separation between my personal and professional life, and in recent years the line of separation has grown increasingly hazy.

What began from curiosity to find out what happens afterward to the people I write about developed, in time, into a network of personal relations. Since I started to focus on migrant laborers, some of my journalistic sources have become my good friends. They told me riveting stories about their lives before coming to Israel, and I also learned a great deal about their lives here, which unfold right next to us, yet seem to occur in a different country. The more I got to know them, the more I understood how little we actually know about them. It was this curiosity and unease which led me to write my book, "Tiftehu, mishtara!" ("Police! Open Up! Migrant Workers in Israel") which was published last week.

Like everything else, this style of work has a price, too - such as totally forgoing any claim to objectivity. For example, the considerable time I sometimes devote to those who were the subjects of articles, long after the stories have been published. There is also another price to pay, one that is far steeper: the personal difficulty that arises whenever someone close to my heart is arrested. Friendship with migrant laborers entails many farewells from people one has grown close to, and that is never easy. I am willing to pay the price, because I enjoy the great advantages that accompany this style of work - learning a lot and being a witness to and sharing in things that would otherwise remain foreign to me.

That's what happened, for example, when officers of the Immigration Police came to the door of my friend Gloria, a migrant laborer and a nun who assists Spanish-speaking migrant laborers. I was sleeping on the sofa in the living room of her Jaffa apartment, as I often do. At 6 A.M. she went to church for the morning service and I stayed in bed. She is usually back at 7, and we have a cup of coffee together and talk a little before work. On that day she returned almost immediately after leaving, escorted by three officers of the Immigration Police. Just that morning she had forgotten to take her passport, in which there is a legal visa.

While she looked for the passport, they waited at the entrance. Through the open door they could see me, as I could see them, and I heard one of them suggest, "As long as we're here, why not check the whole house? Maybe we'll find more." I thought about the single mother and her 3-year-old son who share Gloria's apartment. I wasn't afraid that she would be arrested, but I thought it would be right to spare the child the experience. I went over to them and asked what the problem was. "Show us your passport," one of the policemen told me. Obediently I fetched the passport, a blue one that opens from right to left. "How long have you been in Israel?" he asked politely, as though the very notion that an Israeli would be present in the same apartment as migrant laborers was inconceivable.

This style of work also has its beautiful moments. When I met Umaru and his friends in prison, they looked like a pretty downcast group of despairing youngsters who had lost faith in everything around them. A few months later I met some of them in Tel Aviv and we sat on the grass in a public park, laughing and exchanging jokes about their time in prison. They even looked different. It's doubtful whether I would even have known about their release if I hadn't maintained contact with them.

The diary

Umaru fled from a country that neglected his education and made it possible for him to be exploited as a child slave. That episode had a powerful impact on his life, and in large measure decided its continuation, until his flight to Egypt and from there to Israel. He doesn't like to talk about it, but has recently begun to set down his life story, in English, from which the following excerpts are taken:

"The first time that I saw the inside of a classroom was when I was 12 years old. It was a Monday morning; there was light rain when I was sitting out of the classroom waiting for my new friends to finish their class and go play football with me. I found a small piece of chalk and started to write my name and draw a house on the floor. Meanwhile, I chanted with them after the teacher: 'one time one equal one, two times two equal four, three times three equal nine', and so on. I was not comfortable sitting out there, even though I was enjoying it, and I was curious to see the inside of the classroom too. So I got up and went to the door and looked inside.

"I saw a large room with walls painted blue and white. The varnished wooden desks smelt as if they were new, and the students looked neat, sitting in rows of desks, all dressed in their beautiful uniform (blue pants and white shirts). All this was new and wonderful to me. I looked all around the classroom and then I realized that everybody was looking at me. I was different from them in the way I was dressed and certainly in the way I was gazing at this classroom.

"The grass outside was green and shiny as it was the beginning of the rainy season when everything grows, and there was noise of children all around from other classes. I was very happy that day. I felt that I am beginning to live a real life. This was how a classroom should look, I thought. This was how I imagined a classroom when I was seven and my parents told me that I was to go to study with a well known Sheikh in Quebu, away from home in the capital, Bissau. He promised my parents to teach me Marabou (the secrets of the Holy Koran).

"I was told that I was going to school where I'll learn how to read and write. This was one reason why I went gladly; the other reason was that my Grandmother lived in that village. I lived with 22 more children of different ages; in the house of one of the Sheikh's wives (he had 4). The school was in the backyard of the Sheikh's house, not in a building, with no blackboard and no desks and chairs. We learnt the Arabic alphabet. This, I realized later, was all the learning I was going to get. In the beginning of every rainy season we were divided into three working groups: farmers, shepherds and beggars. The farmers, mostly the elder kids, were sent to two remote villages to take care of the Sheikh's farms. They hardly ever studied. The shepherds took care of his animals (Sheep and goats). I belonged to this group even though I was one of the youngest. The youngest were sent to beg in the city. They were not good enough for other jobs and they could get more from people. If you walk on the street and see an eight years old child stopping you and laying his small hand on his stomach, saying "give food to a hungry child of God," you'd hope to give him whatever you have. Of course that was the most hated job. I thought that the reason for not including me in the group of beggars was that my grandmother lived there and they didn't want her to see me begging. The beginning of my service, with the group of shepherds, was not bad. I was the youngest of my group and I liked running after sheep, playing with them and sometimes riding on them. In the dry season everybody stayed in Quebu, at the Sheikh's place, as there was little work to do, but whenever someone in the village needed help with any kind of work, they came to the sheikh and asked for a certain number of children in different ages, according to the work. We were sent to do the hardest jobs: we repaired roofs of houses; for some people we did all the seeding and harvesting of the rice and peanuts, and we carried wood for fire on our heads from the forest, very long distances - sometimes 12 Km and more.

"Work was the most important thing and it was compulsory. Different punishments were used on those who didn't work good, and sometimes without any reason: we were made to take off our cloths and stand outside in the cold morning with only our underwear, or forced to kneel on small stones. And on many occasions we were beaten up with branches of trees, all over the body. I thought all this was just to let us feel that we were away from our families and defenseless.

"I was beaten up many times, but one time was more than just beating. I was ten years old then, and I was working regularly. One day, in the end of the rainy season, there was a family ceremony - a memorial day of my grandfather's at my grandma's house - and I went there instead of going to work. I knew I would be punished for it, but I was not thinking about how bad it would be, just enjoyed being with my family. At night, dressed all in new cloths that my mother brought me, I went to study (in the daytime we worked). The sheikh was there with two of his wives in the veranda, and the students outside not yet shouting but reading in low voices. I went straight to where the small wooden boards were packed, and took mine and went to sit with the others. I started reading but I half waited to hear him calling me, 'Umaru.' Then, without saying a word, I got up and, with my face down I stepped to the veranda, where he was sitting in his hammock. I came bowing down by his feet and knelt there, as we were ordered to do every time he called us.

"'Where have you been?' he asked. 'At grandmas,' I replied. 'What was there that you were very important to be there than doing your duties?' He asked. I explained. 'Goddamn you!' he said, and sent me to bring some tree branches. I brought them and then he told me to take of my shirt and lie with my face down. I did so, hoping to hear one of his wives asking him to leave me, but such a thing could happen only if the ground talked. After half an hour of beating, my back was not bleeding but it was covered with blisters full of blood, so until the next day, if my back was touched, even by a fly, blood burst out. My face was swollen and heavy from crying, as if I was bitten by bees, but I was not released. I was ordered to stand on my feet and every now and then, he called and ordered me to fan him, massage his toes, bring him water, or crack peanuts for him.

"I stayed two hours in that situation. I started to feel sick because I could not ask for anything, not even to drink water or go to toilet. And all the time I looked at the two women (his wives) in the face and remembered my mother. They went on with their business as if everything was normal and for them it was. My eyes filled with tears but I held it and did not cry. I stayed there until almost everybody left and then it was more than I could hold. I sat in a corner leaning my head against the wall because I could not let my back touch anything. The last thing I remember, was one of his wives saying, 'Let him go to sleep now,' and then I saw many faces around me, as I fainted.

"'Take him with you and take care of his back and make sure nobody sees it,' the Sheikh ordered.... For three days I was not allowed to go out, nor to study or to go to grandma. When I finally went to grandma, she asked me how it was in Afia - a village near by. I realized that she was told by my friends that I was sent to Afia by the sheikh, with some other children. I could not tell her what had really happened for fear that the Sheikh will beat me again, so I just said it was fine. Later on I got sick and even though the sheikh did not want to let my grandma take me to hospital, she insisted. In the hospital I went through a full check up which showed that I was physically punished. The doctor asked me what happened? And I told him that I fell from a high tree. I was afraid to tell him the truth, or else the next time, the sheikh would kill me just to shut me up."

Shortly after this incident, Umaru escaped from the sheikh along with a cousin and a friend, and returned to his parents' home. His father insisted that he attend a Muslim school, but in the afternoon the boy and his friends went to their school, where there were two shifts. In this way he got to see a classroom from the inside for the first time in his life, and thus he obtained his initial education - second-hand. Whether out of anger at the system that made his exploitation possible, or at his parents, he became politically active in groups that were persecuted by the authorities in 2002. He then fled to Egypt and three years later, when his Egyptian visa ran out, moved on to Israel. He managed to work for three weeks washing dishes in a Tel Aviv restaurant before being arrested.

Living with whites

While I was waiting for the judge's decision, lively conversations took place between the prison and Tel Aviv. Umaru wanted very much to get out of prison, but was also very apprehensive. "I don't know what it will be like to live in the home of a white family," he told Paul, a refugee from his country who has been in Israel for a long time. "Maybe I won't have it good with them, maybe they will expect me to work in their house." Paul reassured him: "First of all, get out of prison, and if you don't have it good there, leave and come to us."

At Umaru's request, one of the first things I did, even before the end of his first week in my home, was to go and meet Paul, Albino and Daniel. All three are adults who have families in Guinea-Bissau. Daniel, whose English is good, led the conversation, and even though it was just polite small talk, as is usual among people who don't know each other, it was obvious to me that they were checking me out, examining me to see whether their kid was in good hands. These are people who are neither from the same family nor the same tribe as Umaru, and who have no commitment to him, but who nevertheless consider him a son. For me that was a moving discovery. We are still in touch with them and call them "the family."

The first days were filled with small misunderstandings, most of them amusing. I remember that I started to worry when he went to take a shower on the first day and didn't emerge for a long time. Maybe there was no hot water? Maybe the drainpipe was overflowing and he was ashamed to say anything? I remembered Naim, the Arab youth in A.B. Yehoshua's novel "The Lover," who sat on the edge of the bathtub in the home of his Jewish hosts, wearing red silk pajamas and ashamed to come out. When Umaru finally did emerge from the shower, it turned out that he was not ashamed at all; on the contrary, he had simply enjoyed taking a long shower and then grooming himself.

In short order he became the pampered kid of the family. The one for whom one always cooks the food he likes (rice) and who is taken into consideration when deciding what to watch on television and whose friends - African refugees and migrant laborers - are invited over. I learned a great deal since his arrival in mid-February, and so did he: computer courses, a course to improve his English, and he also learned some Hebrew. One of the first things he did, even before going to sleep on his first day in my home, was to write in his diary. The material he has accumulated there will likely serve him as the basis for his autobiography, which I have no doubt that he will write one day.

Sometimes I am curious to see what he is writing about me and my family, and he promises, with African politeness, that "maybe sometime" he will show me. After the time period granted by the Custody Court expired, Judge Liberti extended it by two and a half months, until the end of December. Until then Umaru is supposed to obtain a passport and leave the country. He wants to get a passport because he does not intend to remain here and work illegally. But things are not so simple. His connection with his parents was severed even before he came to Israel - they left their home and moved to another city - and his efforts to obtain a passport depend on a friend. If he doesn't meet the deadline or get another extension, he is liable to find himself an illegal against his will and face the danger of arrest.

He also needs a passport if he wants to go on studying, and there is nothing he wants more. He is corresponding with universities and colleges around the world in the desperate hope that someone somewhere will be impressed by his desire and ability to learn and admit him, irrespective of his formal education. I imagine that the farewell from him will be the saddest I have experienced so far, but nevertheless I will be happy to see him leave in order to study and build his future.