JEDDAH, 24 December 2007 — The 18-year-old mentally handicapped Indian boy who became separated from his family in Muzdalifah on Tuesday night was found in good health at a hospital in Makkah yesterday.
“Yes, we have found our son,” said an extremely delighted and relieved Lateef Khan, the father of the missing boy. “Abdul Azeem was at Al-Noor Hospital where he was listed as unidentified and was being taken good care of,” he said.
“When I went in, he was on a hospital bed and in hospital clothes and was being fed intravenously. The first thing I did was to take his hand in mine. I held onto it for a long time, comforting him. When I kissed him on the forehead, he gave me a broad smile. That smile will remain frozen in my mind forever,” said Khan in a voice choking with emotion.
The next thing Khan did was to break the good news to the boy’s distraught mother, Naheed Afroz, who spent four troubled nights at the holy sites looking for her son.
“I was in the Holy Mosque praying for my son when my husband announced the good news on my cell phone,” said Afroz. “I went straight into prostration on the marble floor in the immediate vicinity of the Holy Kaaba. Thanks be to God. This is nothing short of a miracle,” she said with lot of effort. “I have not been able to speak. These four days have taken a heavy toll on me.”
Khan, who comes from Nagpur in India’s Maharashtra state, works as a medical doctor with the Ministry of Health in Taif. Afroz is a qualified civil engineer from Hyderabad but worked until recently as a teacher at the Indian school in Taif. Abdul Azeem is one of the couple’s two sons.
After being at Arafat on the second leg of the pilgrimage on Tuesday, the family was spending a night of quiet contemplation — like three million other pilgrims in a city close to Mina — when Abdul Azeem went missing. The frantic parents then called the media and placed advertisements in local newspapers seeking help.
What alarmed the parents was their son’s precarious condition. Besides being mentally handicapped, Abdul Azeem has a history of epileptic attacks and has always been on medication. His story, when it first appeared in this newspaper on Thursday, gripped the attention of many people in Saudi Arabia.
“We are thankful to people of all nationalities, Saudis, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Filipinos, for extending tremendous moral support to us by calling us and comforting us during these last four days. The Indian Mission helped us a lot. God bless them all,” said Khan.
The boy’s father said he was confident that Abdul Azeem would eventually be found. “I knew God was testing me. I had full faith in Him. I was more worried for my wife. She has taken care of the boy for 18 long years. She protected him like you protect a fragile flower,” he said.
Khan said his wife often wondered who was taking care of her son. “I always told her that if God has created him, then surely He will provide sustenance to him. And that indeed was the case. He was being taken good care of by the nurses in the hospital. This has only reinforced our faith in God,” he said.
Khan said the news of the boy’s presence at the hospital was given to him by their Bangladeshi neighbor in Taif, Jamal, who was also on Haj and who refused to go back after the end of the pilgrimage. “He was with me at all times and he helped me in searching all hospitals and medical centers in Mina and Makkah. He was told by somebody that an unidentified boy had been admitted to Al-Noor Hospital. That is when I discovered my son.”
Khan said he was very thankful to the Egyptian doctor and the Hyderabadi, Kashmiri, Pakistani and Filipino nurses at the hospital. “They took great care of him. The boy looks like he has lost some weight. But he is delighted.”
The happy family has returned to Taif and, according to the boy’s mother, he burst into laughter the moment he arrived at home. “He cannot talk. We can only read his expressions and he seldom laughs, but he burst out laughing today. What more can I ask for? Thank you everybody.”
Meanwhile, delighted Indians celebrated Abdul Azeem’s reunion with his family by sending text messages to each other. Among them was Rifat Jabeen, one of the first to report the incident to the media. “I was very moved by the boy’s plight. I couldn’t bear it when I first heard the story at the Indian Mission camp in Mina,” she said.
Like everybody else, Rifat’s seven-year-old daughter, Malak Suhel Khan, was caught up in the emotional drama. “Who will care of him?” she repeatedly asked her parents. Yesterday she too was delighted.
