KABUL.- Sohail Ahmadi was barely two months old when he was handed over to a foreign soldier on August 19 amidst the despair of the Afghans during the evacuation of Kabul after the Taliban seized power. After five months his family desperately searched for him, until last week they found him again, in one of many stories of families separated by the chaotic operation.
In August, Sohail had been handed over by his father to a soldier, standing high above a crowd terrified by the rise of the Taliban to power, after seizing the Afghan capital.
The father and the child were separated. Despite their intense searches, it was impossible for Mirza Ali Ahmadi to retrieve her baby.
It was a taxi driver, Hamid Safi, who found him, crying and abandoned on the airport floor. "I looked for his family," says the 29-year-old, who had gone to the airport to leave his own brother, who was to be evacuated. "So I called my wife, who told me to bring the baby home."
The couple claims to have unsuccessfully searched for the boy's parents. They named him Mohamad Abed and started raising him.
"If we had not found his family, we would have protected and raised him as our own son," says Hamid Safi.
For three days, Sohail's real father had searched the crowded airport for his son. Desperate, this former security agent from the United States embassy, left with his wife and four children to the North American country.
In August, the Kabul airport had been seized by Afghans eager to leave the city at the same time as the last of the western troops, after 20 years of war.
Several Afghans feared for the return of Islamists to power, recalling the cruel regime of the 1990s or for fear of reprisals against collaborators of the previous government or foreign forces.
Just last week Sohail's family was able to find the baby in Kabul, helped by social media and the police.
