The picture became famous around the world. One of the symbols of the chaos of the Western powers evacuation of Afghanistan as the Taliban took over the country. A tiny two-month-old baby wearing just a little top and a diaper, mouth open and crying, eyes and fists balled shut, is handed up from a crowd of people waiting by a wall at Kabul airport.

From on top of the wall, uniformed soldiers peer through the barbed wire and steady their comrade as he leans over the rolled wire and grasps one of the baby’s arms with his gloved hand. That baby turned out to be Sohail Ahmadi.

Sohail’s father, Mirza Ali Ahmadi, worked as a security guard at the US embassy and he, his wife Suraya and their other four children had visas to leave the country. But as the crowds at the airport intensified, Mirza Ahmadi told Reuters in November that he feared Sohail would be crushed.

Lost

Mirza Ahmadi thought the soldier was American and after he and the family had made it to the other side of the wall, he would reclaim his baby and be allowed to board the plane. But Reuters said that as Sohail was lifted away from them, the Taliban forces pushed the crowd back and more than half an hour passed before they finally got inside.

The family searched but Sohail was nowhere to be seen. According to the news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), Ahmadi spent three days searching for his son at the airport before eventually agreeing to board a flight to the US.

An official, explains Mirza Ahmadi, told him the baby had probably been evacuated on a different plane and they would be reunited in the US. But as the family ended up at a military base in Texas, there was still no sign of their son.

Raised as his own

A taxi driver, Hamid Safi, who had given his brother’s family a ride to the airport to be evacuated found Sohail "alone and crying on the ground," according to Reuters. Safi and his wife had three daughters but longed for a son. Safi says he tried to locate the baby’s parents but after failing to do so, took him home to raise him as his own.

Safi told Reuters that his mother's "greatest wish before she died was for him to have a son." In November he said "I am keeping this baby. If his family is found, I will give him to them. If not, I will raise him myself."

Safi and his wife took Sohail to a doctor for a check-up and then decided to call him Mohammad Abed. "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," Farimah told AFP.

Pictures on Facebook

Soon after Sohail arrived in their lives, the Safi family posted pictures of him and their other children on Facebook, where some neighbors spotted the picture and connected it with the Reuters' story about the missing baby. They posted comments on Facebook underneath a translated version of the Reuters' story.

It seems that through these comments, Mirza Ahmadi’s father-in-law, Mohammad Qasem Razawi, who lives in the northeast of Afghanistan, tracked down Safi and journeyed to him to try and get Sohail back. According to Reuters, Razawi "traveled for two days and two nights to capital bearing gifts --including a slaughtered sheep, several pounds of walnuts and clothing."

But initially, Safi refused to give Sohail back. He told Reuters he wanted to be evacuated from Afghanistan too along with his family. His brother is now based in California.

Mirza Ahmadi then tried to get the Red Cross to help them but say they "received little information from the organization." That is when Razawi told the Taliban police that Sohail had been kidnapped by Safi.

An agreement reached

According to Reuters, Safi denied these allegations to the police and explained he had been caring for the baby. The police dismissed the complaint but then helped the two men come to a settlement. Sohail’s family agreed to pay Safi about €840 to cover the expenses incurred for his care.

Sohail was then handed back to his grandfather on Saturday. Safi and his wife were both crying, reported Reuters. Razawi told Reuters he cried too and reassured Safi that "you both are young, Allah will give you male child. Not one, but several. I thanked both of them for saving the child from the airport."

The next task is to get Sohail to the US for him to be reunited with his mother and father. Reuters said both parents watched the handover by video link and were "overjoyed." Razawi added that it was "like a wedding indeed. There are celebrations, dance, singing."

'I was always crying for my baby'

Mirza Ahmadi and his wife and children found an apartment in Michigan in December. Surya Ahmadi, the boy’s mother told Reuters she had been "so sad and always crying for my baby. Now I hope he arrives here safely. Last night, I did not sleep due to happiness."

The US state department say they are working on reuniting the boy and his parents but the timing is still "unknown." A US official told Reuters that there are no regular evacuation flights leaving the country and the US government is in "discussions with the Qataris as well as parties in Afghanistan about the case."

"We were in a bad condition these past five months..." said Mirza Ahmadi on the phone to AFP. "When we found our baby we were happy that God had given our child back to us."

With Reuters and AFP