It was August 19, 2021, as the US military left Afghanistan in utter chaos at Kabul airport: to avoid the tragedy during a crowd movement, a father lifted his baby from two months above the perimeter wall and handed it to a soldier. The scene was broadcast everywhere, and this baby has become a symbol, that of despair in the face of the Taliban threat.
What happened next? No one wondered, until in November, reporters from Reuters tracked down the thread. They discover that, a few hours after his gesture, Father Mirza Ali Ahmadi, managed to enter the airport with his wife and children, and that he frantically searched for his son, Sohail, in the middle of the crowd, in vain.
This Afghan baby has been reunited with his relative after being lost during the Kabul evacuations in August ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/Mfi2g4gkfx
– Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 10, 2022
A security officer at the American embassy, he was one of the few Afghans who could be evacuated, but the soldiers made him understand that the flight was going to leave, that he had to embark. So reluctantly, his wife screaming in pain, the family boarded the plane and took off without the newest child.
Upon arrival, in Texas, at the military base where they still reside today, they made calls on social networks, contacted all their acquaintances on the spot. But it is ultimately the Reuters investigation that allows the child to be located, safe and sound, in the home of a 29-year-old taxi driver, Hamid Safi, who explains that he found him alone, sitting on the ground in the airport in crying. He too looked for the parents, without success, so he took the baby home, and together with his wife they decided to raise him with their children, like a son.
On hearing the news, the family, stranded in the United States, sent the grandfather to pick up the child, but the taxi driver refused to hand him over, it took weeks of talks to convince him to go their separate ways. of his protege.
Five months later, for the second time in his life, Sohail with his round face and big black eyes, made the headlines again but this time in the arms of his grandfather and his aunt, in Kabul, before perhaps, soon, to find those of his mother and father, who hope to be able to repatriate him in the coming weeks.