LOVE IN THE TIME OF EBOLA

Her family begged her not to return to Sierra Leone. But the love of her life was there. So Najmeh Modarres had to make a choice.

Najmeh Modarres and her boyfriend, Killian Doherty, in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Najmeh Modarres looked out the airplane window, the reality of her decision to return here coming into focus through the clouds.

Her mother had tried to change her mind. Please, Naj, she told her. Don’t go back to Sierra Leone, not now.

“Do you have to go?” her mother had asked back at the family’s home in Portland, Ore.

Her father made a similar plea. So did her best friend. Naj, as everyone called her, had been living in Sierra Leone for a year. Her trip to the United States was just a month-long visit. But in that time, a smoldering Ebola outbreak in West Africa began to burn out of control. People were fleeing the country. Panic crept in.

Don’t go, Naj, everyone told her.

Now, her plane was descending toward Lungi International Airport.

Naj was coming back for her boyfriend of three years, Killian Doherty. He had moved to Sierra Leone to be with her. Now she was returning to him. She also was driven by the belief that they could still help people here, that not returning would amount to desertion. Her decision stood out amid the flood of despairing stories pouring from the Ebola epidemic. But her friends and family worried that this one would end in disaster.

When her mother asked her to not return, Naj replied, “Mom, if you don’t want me to go, then you don’t know me.”

Homa Modarres was embarrassed, because deep down she understood. Naj had always been passionate. “I knew I couldn’t stop her,” she would later say. “But as a mother, I had to try.”

Now, Naj, 30, was landing in Freetown. Many of the other passengers on the Air France flight last month wore T-shirts with NGO logos or jackets with government lapel pins. Some studied the latest reports of the dire Ebola epidemic. A handful of men in blazers slipped on white surgical gloves, just in case.

Naj, dressed in a blue Africana jumpsuit, wore a slight smile. She looked as though she were on vacation. She strode into the small airport terminal, past the Ebola warning posters and the technicians with bleach water for hand-cleansing and thermometers for detecting fevers — all signs she was returning to a place very different from before.

Outside the airport, she hopped onto one of the large water taxis that connect the airport to the mainland. The light was fading. The wind off the water whipped her wavy brown hair. When the 20-minute boat ride ended in Freetown, she ditched her life jacket and climbed onto the dock.

She scanned the crowd. There was Killian. She hugged him — and thus violated one of the new Ebola rules about avoiding close contact.

But she was home.

Days later, the couple sat together at a beachside restaurant, sand at their toes. Sierra Leone has some of the most beautiful beaches in Africa, although Ebola had emptied them of tourists. Still, Florence’s Restaurant remained a popular spot with the small ex-pat community. The couple ordered Carlsberg beers and lobster skewers to share.

“Naj’s coming back here, of course it means everything to me, you know,” said Killian, 38.

But, he added, it was Naj’s idea to come to Sierra Leone in the first place. She couldn’t very well just leave him behind.

Killian Doherty and his girlfriend, Najmeh Modarres, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with their dog, Sashi.

They met by chance. Naj, who holds a master’s in public health from Tulane, was working on an HIV/AIDS project in Botswana. She took a trip to visit her brother in South Africa, who happened to share offices with Killian, an architect. Naj and Killian realized they had both volunteered years earlier for Common Ground Relief in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

They got to talking, which eventually led to dating. But they had never lived in the same country. She moved to Baltimore for a job with Johns Hopkins. He moved to Rwanda to train architects. They flew back and forth. They spent Christmases in Derry, Ireland, with his Catholic parents. They flew to see her parents, who are observant Muslims, where Killian didn’t touch alcohol, “which is hard for me,” he said with a laugh.

They wanted to be together. So she started looking for jobs in Africa. She found one: research manager for a Harvard program aimed at helping former child soldiers from Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Last summer, she moved to Freetown. Killian joined her. His shop, Architectural Field Office, specializes in projects in developing countries. He doesn’t design hotels or villas. He found a job working on a new school and started a project teaching locals to use a computer mapping system to record the location of historic buildings in Freetown.

They got a house in the hills with ocean views. They got a dog and named her Sashi. They bought a car.

Sierra Leone can be a difficult place. The power grid is iffy, the roads rough, traffic chaotic. Services are limited. And then came Ebola.

“This is a true test,” Naj said.

“We’re partners, you know,” said Killian, rubbing her back.

Naj’s job ended in June. Harvard suspended the program. So she went back to the United States to take a break. And that’s when the headlines about Ebola began creating panic thousands of miles away in the United States. Ebola is a famous and feared disease, a deadly virus without cure that is spread by contact with bodily fluids, including sweat and tears.

Her mom thought the situation was too dangerous. Her father, Masoud Modarres, hoped his daughter was taking a calculated risk. He worried less about her contracting Ebola than the outbreak causing social unrest. They pleaded with her to stay in the United States. Plus, Killian was set to start a doctoral program in architecture in London this fall. The couple was thinking about staying in Sierra Leone while he flew back and forth for his seminars. Her parents pushed them to move to London instead.

While Naj expected the parental resistance, she was surprised when it came from her friends.

“Everyone was giving her grief about going back. We thought she was crazy,” recalled Jean Lau, her best friend and former college roommate. “She went back for him.”

They just couldn’t understand. This wasn’t just some minor inconvenience. This was Ebola — the worst outbreak of the virus in history.

It made Naj nervous. She had second thoughts. Her original flight back to Sierra Leone was canceled as airlines began dropping service to the Ebola-stricken region. She rebooked. She was determined.

“I feel like it’s my duty,” she said. “And, yeah, it is a bit like I brought him here, I’m not just going to leave him here. We have a life here.”

And life does go on in Sierra Leone. Ebola changed many of the daily rhythms — no large public gatherings, a night curfew — but not all of them. People still go to work and go to the store. But Naj and Killian take precautions to avoid the disease. They wash their hands continually and avoid areas where the virus seems entrenched.

Now, they were just another couple on the beach eating lobster and drinking beer.

Soon, Killian will start school in London. They plan to fly there together. But Killian could do much of his coursework in Sierra Leone. Naj is looking for a job here. This, for now, was home.

Thousands of miles away, her parents worry, but they are proud of their daughter.

And her best friend, Jean, has a new respect for the couple. Naj’s decision to return to Sierra Leone reminded her of a quote. She couldn’t recall where she saw it or even if she remembered it correctly. It was about how you can’t define true love because love is beyond definition.

Going back to an Ebola-stricken place because the love of your life was there, Jean said, that’s love.

“They’re making it work in a time of Ebola.”