When Sher carried Keilah, we were already living through a collapse of relationships that had once appeared secure. We believed some relatives and former associates were trying to break our marriage, and we feared threats against our safety. I do not need to turn this chapter into a recital of every argument. The important thing is what Sher and I chose. We stayed married. We guarded the child she carried. We made plans together.

Keilah Abigail Bailey was born on January 24, 2018, in a Jamaican hotel where we had been staying. I helped deliver her in the bathroom. The first thing that amazes me about that morning is the arrival of a new human being, not the type of building around her. There was our daughter. There was Sher, magnificent. And there was me discovering another role in the life we had built together.

In the months that followed, we secured her passport and travelled to the United States. Sher and I had already gone to America as young entrepreneurs and students; now we returned as parents of an infant, carrying knowledge, working plans and a desire to keep our family intact. We were leaving a country in which we had received awards, built laboratories, taught children and experienced tremendous love. We were also leaving a situation we had come to regard as unsafe.

That contrast shaped our later thinking about international welcome. A skilled person can have a whole history of service, education and friendships while possessing no safe place to return to. A child arrives in the world innocent of those histories. A competent civilization should be capable of receiving the family and enabling the adults to contribute without punishing the children for where their parents were born.

Keilah would see more of the world before starting school than many people see in a lifetime. We travelled with her and spoke to her, let her taste fruit, meet people, touch water and appear in our videos. She was not cargo accompanying an engineer. She was our daughter and, before long, one of our fellow authors.