After being given to a foreign soldier, Sohail Ahmadi disappeared on August 19 amid the chaos of the evacuation of Kabul airport, but last week the baby found his family again after five months.
Sohail's father, who was just two months old at the time, gave the baby to a soldier who was overseeing the panicked crowd that had gathered at Kabul airport after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.
Child and father divorced. Despite many efforts, Mirza Ali Ahmadi had not been able to locate his son. A taxi driver, Hamid Safi, was the one who found the baby crying, abandoned on the airport floor.
"I took him to women to breastfeed him", without success. "I continued to look for his family," said the 29-year-old man who had gone to the airport to leave his brother, who had fled Afghanistan. "Then I called my wife and took the baby home."
The couple insists that they continued to search in vain for the baby's family. They named it Mohammad Abed. "If we had not found his family, we would have protected him and raised him as our own child," assures Hamid Safi.
For three days the baby's father was looking for his child at the crowded airport. Desperate, the former US embassy guard left for the US with his wife and four other children.
"Like his mother"
Just last week, Sohail's family was able to locate him in Kabul, with the help of police and social media.
The boy was handed over to his grandfather, a difficult separation for Safi and their three daughters.
"I felt responsible for him, as if I were his mother," explains 27-year-old Fatima Safi. "He used to wake up often at night (…) Now when I wake up he is not there and I cry". And her husband admitted that it was "difficult" to give the baby to his grandfather.
On Sunday, Sohail's grandfather, Mirza Mohamed Kasemi, invited the Safi family to his home in Kabul to spend some time with the baby. "They took care of him for five months and have been tied to him," he notes.
Kasemi was also looking for his grandson and is now excited that Sohail will go to the United States, although the process may be time consuming. "It was difficult for my daughter. "He cried and did not eat anything," he explains.
Until Sohail goes to the US to be reunited with his parents, his aunt will take care of him.
Yesterday on the phone his father did not hide his joy: "we were so sad these five months (…) But when we found our baby, we were happy that God returned our child".
Source: RES-EAP