大象传媒

This article has been updated since it was first published.

A beautiful baby crossed cultural divides to warm the hearts of the family next door, to the point where they became known as mum and dad.

That's exactly what happened to Sandra Mbuthia at the age of six months. Her mum and dad arrived from Kenya to live in Watford, her parents Martin and Peris did not know many people and were struggling to hold down full-time jobs and manage child care for their baby daughter who they both doted on. But leading parallel lives between night shifts and days shifts, they hit breaking point. Peris needed a solution: “This was not the life, there had to be more. Martin said leave it to me; I will see how we can get someone to watch the baby while we are working. Something.”

Adiba, Sandra and Iqbal

They were not of my religion, they were not of my ethnic group. We had nothing in common.

Peris, Sandra's mother

Across the street lived the Zafars, a Muslim family of five children and two big-hearted parents. They heard on the grapevine that the young Christian couple living opposite were having problems. They knew what it felt like to start out in the UK with nothing. They sent word via the couple’s landlord that they could help.

One day everything changed

At the centre of the Zafar family, the middle child, was 18-year-old Saiqa. Her mum Adiba confides she's always been the favourite. She was thinking about friends, university and that all-important huge wedding when the time came. Then one day baby Sandra arrived on her doorstep and everything changed.

Early on a summer morning Martin got up, zipped baby Sandra up inside his jacket and took her across the road on his way to work. Adiba answered the door but she didn't speak English, so Saiqa shot downstairs to translate: "I was like 'No way!' I was really excited, we were getting this toy almost in the house."

Martin remembers his hushed conversation in the early light. "I'm Martin, this is Sandra. Saiqa said ‘Come on in, come on in.’ I was like ‘Oh my God, thank you.’ And then I said ‘she won’t bother you, she’s a good girl.’ And that was it, I left."

That day started off a defining relationship between two neighbouring families, one helping the other because they cared enough to want to. And because they fell in love with Sandra, especially Saiqa: "We were just besotted. As a Muslim family we didn’t think she’s a different colour to us, they are practising Christians, they don’t eat halal, they don’t wear the headscarf. No, somebody needs help and we’re able to give it.”

Turbulent times

Saiqa reshaped her life around caring for Sandra and the bond between them grew. Within weeks Sandra had pretty much moved in, going home every other weekend.

Baby Sandra

"So it literally became like they had custody of the baby!”, Peris recalls.

Peris and Martin felt like they had found a family in the UK when their own were so far away. But things didn’t always run smoothly. There were turbulent times along the way, like when neighbourhood tongues started wagging that Sandra was the love child of one of Saiqa's brothers. And when Sandra started to talk, Peris was shocked: "Her first word was Abba, that’s Dad in Urdu. I sat Saiqa down and said I think my daughter is going to get confused, she might not know English and then it will be awkward because we can’t communicate with our own child.”

Then one day there was a letter to say Martin had lost his case for UK citizenship. The family decided to go back to Kenya. It was painful for everyone involved, especially Saiqa: "I remember crying and hugging Sandra, kissing her continuously because I thought she’s only four, she is never going to remember us."

So what did this union between two families over a child they both loved mean? In frank and moving interviews the people involved tell the story of their coming together, their parting and their emotional reunion. Saiqa sums up how she feels about it now: "It is all about humanity. That is what Christianity teaches you and what Islam teaches you. It is all about love, companionship, trust and acceptance. Fears of the unknown just disappear."