But unlike paintings that reflected the hand of an adept and talented artist, these were nothing of the sort.  Instead, they were wild and unrefined, amateurish, with objects and shapes lacking any sophistication or maturity.  As if hastily and sloppily colored.

Hundreds of pictures displayed a cacophony of objects, shapes, pictures and numbers, some recognizable and some not.  There were animals, human stick figures, cars and buildings.  Clouds, flames and trees.  Everything one could imagine. An actual menagerie of images drawn by young hands and stitched perfectly together into an attentive patchwork covering each wall.

Individual pages provided a glimpse inside the mind of a child.  It was a collection only one other person in the world besides Saad knew existed.

That person was sitting in an equally comfortable group of chairs in Zambia in a bright and openly lit room just outside the ramshackle village of Kaindu, where large African tulip trees waved outside in the warm morning breeze.

The woman looked up from her computer tablet when the door finally opened, and a neatly uniformed staff member peeked her head in.

“Are you ready?” she asked in Arabic.

The older woman, in her late fifties, trim with long, black-dyed hair, nodded.  She lowered her device and leaned back in the chair.  “Send them in.”

The younger woman nodded and momentarily disappeared before the door swung open wider, and she ushered several others inside.

She whispered and pointed forward, instructing the children to line up against the wall and allowing the dark-haired woman an unobstructed view of each.

One by one, they complied, walking in short steps until reaching their spot along the wall and sheepishly turning forward.  They were all cleanly dressed.  Girls between the ages of six and nine, as requested.

The dark-haired psychiatrist casually rose from her seat and walked several steps forward to the first girl in line,  carefully examining her up and down before moving to the next.

Slowly.  One at a time.

When finished with the initial inspection, she would take each into an isolated room for a more thorough examination, looking for marks to indicate signs of physical abuse.  Then would come the questioning and assessment to determine whether any of the girls might require mental or emotional counseling, something that would take days before she would do the same with the boys.

16

16

Leonard Townsend’s reaction to Angela and Joe’s story was not at all what they were expecting.  Rather than shock or even a laughing dismissal, he instead stared at them for an uncomfortably long time.  No questions.  No statements.  He just stared at them with no movement of any kind.

When he finally did move, it was to lean down and quietly reach into one of the desk’s side drawers to retrieve a piece of paper.  He then picked up a pen and scribbled a message onto it before looking back at them and standing up.