Lost for three decades, Egyptian man found alive and back with family

Dubai: Thirty-three years after disappearing as a teenager, a man in Egypt has finally been reunited with his family.

The boy vanished while travelling by train from his village to another province, according to local reports. Friends later told his family he had been injured in a scuffle onboard, but beyond that, no trace was found.

After years of searching, hope faded and the family mourned him as lost forever.

The twist came decades later when retired police officer Amara Kamal befriended a colleague at his new workplace. During a conversation, the colleague mentioned a brother-in-law who had mysteriously gone missing three decades earlier on his way to Port Said.

Intrigued, Kamal tapped into his old contacts and began investigating. He eventually came across a school document with the missing boy’s photograph. To his surprise, the face closely resembled that of a man in his late forties living in the city — a man with no known relatives and suffering from partial memory loss.

When a photo of him was shown to the missing boy’s elderly mother, bedridden at the time, she instantly recognised her son.

“That is your brother,” she told her other children, urging them not to lose him again.

She died shortly afterwards, having lived just long enough to know her long-lost son was still alive.