Stranger's kindness, Google Search help reunite pair
Austrian mum's 22-year search ends in Egypt
DUBAI (Farrag Ismail, AlArabiya.net)
Inga Borg was surprised to learn that the daughter she lost 22 years ago was alive and well in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, and the Austrian mother is now looking forward to their reunion.
Borg said she gave up all hope two years ago, and has been surviving on tranquilizers and sleeping pills in her hometown of Graz in southeast Austria.
The daughter - originally named Benta - turned out to be Nadia Mohamed Al-Husseini, a graduate of the Faculty of Commerce at Helwan University in the northern Egyptian port city of Alexandria.
Borg divorced her Egyptian husband in Austria in 1984, and was given custody of the little girl, who was four years old at the time.
Borg, 57, told Al-Arabiya.net that Nadia lived with her and her half-sister Camilla in Vienna, and her father would spend a couple of hours with her each week.
"On May 5, 1985, he took her and never came back," the mother said.
Borg said she spent years trying to track them down, but all her efforts, and those of Austrian and Egyptian authorities, were met with failure.
Unknown to Borg, Nadia was conducting a search of her own for her mother, but she too had given up hope after the Austrian embassy in Cairo said the documents she submitted -- given to her by her father two years ago -- were too old to lead to anything.
"I gave the embassy my parents' marriage contract, my custody ruling from a Vienna court after they were divorced in 1984, and their wedding photo," said Nadia, who has lived in Egypt with her father since the age of four.
Desperate, Nadia turned to the Internet: "I Googled names of Egyptians or Arabs living in Austria until I found Hamdi Suleiman," Nadia said. "I talked to him on MSN and asked for his help."
Nadia sent all the documents she had to Suleiman, a long-time resident of Vienna. A few days later, Suleiman managed to track down the mother's unlisted address in Graz through the Vienna City Council.
The mother describes the moment that changed her life forever: "One day, my neighbor told me that someone came to see me, but I wasn't home. He left his cell phone number. When I called him, he asked to come over and said he had something I lost a long time ago," Borg said.
Suleiman called Nadia from Borg's home and then handed her the phone. The two women spoke by video conference, seeing each other for the first time in 22 years.
"Nothing can describe how I felt," Nadia told AlArabiya.net. "We started talking in English. She knows no Arabic and I know no German. When we used up all the words we knew, Hamdi starting translating."
Nadia has since been issued a temporary Austrian passport. She says she plans to visit her mother in the next 10 days and to move there permanently.
"My husband didn't mind, although he has a good job in Alexandria. I'll go first, and he'll join me later," said Nadia, who was married two years ago.
Nadia said she does not remember anything about her life in Austria: "I was only four years old. I couldn't remember what my mother and sister looked like. After I saw my mother in the video call, I could see the resemblance."
Borg said she wants nothing to do with Nadia's father or his family.
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