In the chaos of the evacuation of Kabul airport on August 19, the image of a baby handed over to American soldiers over the barbed wire of the perimeter wall had marked the spirits. Little Sohail Ahmadi’s father was trying to put his son to safety, while he was leaving the crowd panicked by the return of the Taliban. He lost his track for five months.
The little boy did not find his family until last week, even though his father had been looking for him for three days after the chaotic evacuation of Kabul airport. The place had been taken by storm by tens of thousands of Afghans seeking to leave the city at the same time as the last American troops, to escape the regime of the Taliban.
Sohail Ahmadi was separated from his family in the chaos of the Kabul evacuation. At last, he has been found and reunited with his relatives https://t.co/35gAah2ZgP pic.twitter.com/dlbiFYx6TT
– Reuters (@Reuters) January 9, 2022
Unable to find her baby, aged two months at the time, Mirza Ali Ahmadi, a former security guard at the American embassy, had resigned himself to leaving for the United States in order to bring his wife and their four other children. safe. He continued his research there, appealing to the police and social media.
His efforts eventually put him on the trail of Hamid Safi, a taxi driver who, all this time, had picked up the child. The 29-year-old says he found Sohail alone and abandoned, crying on the airport floor.
He first tried to entrust him “to women to breastfeed him”, while continuing to “look for his family”, in vain. “So I called my wife and she told me to take the baby home,” he explains.
“He’s not here and that makes me cry”
The couple decided to take care of the little boy, naming him Mohammad Abed. “If we had not found his family, we would have protected and raised him like our own child,” says Hamid Safi. His wife, Fatimah Safi, 27, confirms: “I felt responsible for him like his mother. He used to wake up often at night […] Now when I wake up at night he’s not there and that makes me cry ”.
To soften the separation, the little boy’s biological grandfather, to whom he was entrusted while waiting to join his family in the United States, suggested that the Safi come to his house to spend some time with the child. Mirza Mohammad Qasemi says he is relieved to see the ordeal of his daughter, Sohail’s mother, over. “It was difficult,” he says. She cried and ate nothing ”.
Confirming that he has been “in a sorry state for the past five months”, the baby’s father is delighted to be able to hug his son again. Having contacted the American authorities to organize his repatriation, he knows that the process could be long but still enjoys his joy, “happy that God. [lui] returned [son] child”.
