A Facebook page helped reunite a mother and son who had been separated for 44 years, and both had thought the other was dead.
Wissam Mohamed, 44, was born to a Jordanian father and an Egyptian mother who were going through a divorce at the time of his birth.
Two weeks after Mohamed’s birth, his father told his wife that the child had passed away in the hospital because he had become ill. The father lied because he was afraid of losing his son in the divorce.
All this time, the mother thought that her infant son had died two weeks after his birth.
When the couple’s divorce was officially formalized, the baby’s mourning mother left for Cairo, Egypt.
The child lived for decades without knowing anything about his mother and believing she had passed away. According to Mohamed, who spoke to CBS News, he just recently began to think that his mother might still be alive, when his attorneys said they were unable to find a death certificate.
Although he was aware that she could be alive, Mohamed was unable to find her. Earlier this year, his aunt in Jordan discovered pictures of his mother, which sparked a series of events that would eventually result in a reunion.
The aunt shared the images on social media, and after viewing the post, an Egyptian friend contacted the “Missing Children” Facebook page. Engineer Rami el-Gebali created the page in 2015 to reunite lost children with their families around the Middle East. The page has two million followers.
Mohamed was able to locate his lost mother within 24 hours.
After that, things developed swiftly. Mohamed took a flight to Cairo the following day, on December 7, to meet his mother. They met there in the company of el-Gebali, the creator of the missing children Facebook page. El-Gebali said the two first behaved like strangers.
Mohamed claimed that after giving his mother a hand kiss, she felt moved and “didn’t want to leave his grasp.”
El-Gebali, emotionally moved by the reunion, said he had grown “addicted” to reuniting missing children with their lost parents.