From Russia with love

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

PHILADELPHIA - Life, for many people on this planet, is anything but fair. Desired outcomes are often so improbable, no matter how hard anyone tries to make it happen.

This is a story about orphan twins, the couple that adopted them, the discovery of who was left behind, and the effort to do something about it.

Improbable?  It certainly is.

Lisa Salem, adoptive parent: To find your purpose in life is the most amazing feeling and this is it.

They are two regular people in an average suburb in America—Lisa and Hythem Salem. He an immigrant from Jordan, she a small town girl from Minnesota. And when it came time for a family, they decided not to have children the usual way. 

Lisa: We decided that there was more children in the world than there were parents. And that we could do something.  

And that was the fateful decision, or attitude really, that made the whole amazing story happen.

Lisa: Adoption was a choice for us, not a necessity.

For close to half a year, Lisa searched and searched, many countries, scores of adoption agencies. Yhen she and Hythem were swept into something quite beyond anything they might have dreamt.

Lisa:  You just go where you’re meant to be.    We were supposed to be in Russia. 

In August, 1998, the Salems received this videotape from a Russian orphanage, showing fraternal twins a boy and girl, who’d been given up at birth, their parents too poor to care for them.

Lisa: For us, it was a no-brainer.

But behind those faces were problems almost too many to count --  the babies were born 3 months premature, were left unattended in their crib, they say.

Lisa: They had scabies, a staph infection.

Hythem Salem, adoptive father: Double hernia.

Lisa: Just from crying and nobody coming.

Hythem: Ear infections.

Lisa: their ears were draining. We did have doctors, three in the United States, who told us not to adopt them.  That they would have cerebral palsy. That they would have brain damage.  That they would never be whole.

But the Salems refused to be discouraged and five months later, in Jan. 1999, video camera in hand, they arrived in Moscow, boarded a train and rode mile after mile before they could meet their babies.

Lisa: What comes particularly to mind as I  walked through the orphanage and saw the babies in the beds.  Is that there’s no line. It’s not a Russian baby, it’s not an American baby. It’s just a baby. That needs love and attention.

They named their children Joe and Sophia.  And the cheerful picture of this, they knew, was deceiving.  Here they were,  just 10 days shy of their first birthday, Joe weighed a mere 11 ½ pounds, Sophia 12.  About half of what they should have weighed.

Lisa: And when we took ‘em to the pediatrician here, I remember his hands shaking, because he didn’t know what to do.

There were months of constant feeding, sleepless nights tending to terribly weak, feverish babies.

Lisa:  I remember Hythem spending nights with Joe.  I’ll never forget. One night, he had tears rolling down his cheeks.  And he was telling Joe, “I’ll make you whole.  I’ll make you whole.”  They just needed food. They just needed food and love and a family. I mean, to look at them now, who would know?

Joe: I’m Joe.

Keith Morrison: And?

Sophia: I’m Sophia.

Morrison: How old are you guys?

Joe: Six.

Morrison: Both six?

Both: Uh Huh.

Morrison:  How can you be the same age if you’re brother and sister?

Joe: We’re twins!

Joe and Sophia Salem were in kindergarden, when we first met them, in April, 2004.  Their medical problems gone, the dire predictions of an unhealthy childhood happily forgotten.

Morrison: What else do you do besides go to kindergarden?

Sophia: I go to ballet.  Joe goes to t-ball.

Joe is the athlete, Mr. Social and Sophia, the shy ballerina.

Lisa: They’re the most loving, caring kids.  It’s like, they appreciate what happened in their life. And where they are now.

Mission accomplished, or so it seemed. 

It was as much as anyone gets such a thing, a happy ending... but who knew that somebody had thrown the celestial dice, and impossible odds were coming up?

Morrison: Where were you guys born?

Joe & Sophia (together): Russia.

Morrison: Where’s Russia?

Sophia: Where the brothers and sisters are.

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