BANGALORE, 15 December 2002 — Thanks to Arab News, a long lost family is reunited.
Bangalore’s Shamshad Begum’s plight was highlighted in a report from this correspondent which the daily published on April 4, 2002 under the headline “Help me find my gallivanting husband.”
The report brought a deluge of response. And Shamshad Begum has informed Arab News that her husband Akram Sharif has arrived in Bangalore, after a full 10 years. Following publication of the report which carried Shamshad’s e-mail address, a number of Indian readers helped the distraught wife find her husband who was living without any valid documents in Sharaorah in the southern parts of the country.
Those who contacted Shamshad on e-mail sought phone numbers of Akram and his close associates. Such was the bombardment of phone calls that Akram had to leave his isolated existence in Sharoarah and head for Jeddah en route home. But as misfortune would have it, he landed in the custody of police who sent him to Makkah prison (Islahiya) promising to find a sponsor to fund his trip back home during Ramadan. Akram arrived in Bangalore on Nov. 27 after being deported by Saudi immigration authorities.
Akram thanks Arab News and all others who helped him come out of the miserable existence in Sharaorah where following a minor scuffle with his sponsor, his papers were taken away just two years after his arrival in the Kingdom. Thus began a period during which he led the life of a recluse, often hiding from the police eyes, working illegally and mostly at subsistence level wages and frequently changing residence. But publication of the story made it impossible to hide himself any more.
Even his friends advised him to give himself up to the authorities.
Shamshad is all praise for the Arab News story while his two children, 11 years old Saniya and 14 years old Zaid are jubilant over the reunion of the family.
Akram told this correspondent over phone that he is picking up the thread of life once again in Bangalore and would start setting up his electrical contract business.
For Saniya it is her maiden meeting with her father who had left in 1992 when she was just four months old. Akram memorized four out of the 30 juz (parts) of the holy Qu’ran in the prison and has vowed to lead a life of rectitude.
