KABUL — A baby lost during the chaotic evacuation of
tens of thousands of Afghans at
Kabul airport has been reunited with his
relatives after five months, his elated grandfather has said.
اضافة اعلان
The boy's father handed two-month-old Sohail Ahmadi to a
foreign soldier among jostling crowds desperate to flee the Taliban after the
Islamists seized the capital in mid-August.
The pair were separated, and what happened next is unclear —
but taxi driver Hamid Safi said he found the baby crying and alone on the floor
of the airport the same day.
"I took him to some women to breastfeed him but they
would not. ... I kept looking for his family," said Safi, who had gone to
the airport to help his brother with evacuation.
"I then called my wife and she said to bring the baby
home."
The couple said they kept searching for the boy's parents
but on failing to find them, gave him the name Mohammad Abed and began to care
for him.
"If we had not found his family then we would have
protected and raised him as our own child," Safi, 29, told AFP.
Meanwhile, Sohail's father Mirza Ali Ahmadi searched for
three days at the airport for his missing son, finally choosing to board a
flight to the US with his wife and four other children.
Kabul's only airport was trashed in August when tens of
thousands of people scrambled to evacuate on any available flight as the US
wrapped up their withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.
Many Afghans feared a return to the
Taliban's hardline rule
of the 1990s or retribution for working with the
US-backed government or
foreign forces.
'Responsible like a mother'
It was only days ago that relatives of Sohail's were tracked
down in Kabul with the help of social media and police, and the boy was handed
to his grandfather in a heart-wrenching goodbye for the Safi couple and their
three daughters.
"I felt responsible for him like a mother," said
Safi's wife Farimah.
"He used to wake up a lot at night. ... Now when I wake
up he is not there and that makes me cry.
"I'm a mother. I understand he will not be with us
always and he needs to be with his parents," she told AFP.
Her husband said handing back the baby was "very
difficult" and he was sorely missed.
On Sunday, Sohail's grandfather Mirza Mohammad Qasemi
invited the Safi family to his home in Kabul to spend time with the boy, who
was showered with affection.
"They looked after him for five months and were very
attached to him," he told AFP, adding that the couple had initially been
hesitant to hand him over.
Qasemi, who said he too had been searching for his grandson,
is excited that Sohail will now be able to join his parents in the US.
"It was hard for my daughter. She was crying and not
eating anything," Qasemi said, wiping his tears as he watched Sohail sleep
in Farimah's lap.
Until Sohail joins his parents he will be looked after by
his aunt, Qasemi said.
"We were in a bad condition these past five months, ...
but when we found our baby we were happy that God had given our child back to
us," father Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from the US.
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