Farhiya was separated from her father when she was a baby
She didn’t see him for nearly 40 years
They were reunited thanks to a stranger on social media
“Congratulations! We found your dad!” read an email in Farhiya’s inbox.
“I couldn’t believe it when I first got the news.” she says. “It was a dream come true. But I always kept faith this moment would one day arrive.”
When she was growing up, Farhiya used to ask her mother what her dad was like.
“She would tell me to look in the mirror,” says Farhiya. “You talk like him, you walk like him, you even argue like him,” her mother would reply.
But apart from a few black and white photos, that was all she had to go on.
Thirty-nine-year-old Farhiya was born in Leningrad – now St Petersburg – in 1976 to a Russian mother and a Somali father.
Siid Ahmed Sharif was one of many young Somali officers invited to study in the Soviet Union as the USSR sought to expand its influence in Africa.
He and Farhiya’s mother planned to marry, but a year after Farhiya was born, Somalia went to war with its neighbour, Ethiopia – and the Kremlin sided with Ethiopia.
So very soon Somalia expelled Soviet advisers from the country and all Somali students in the USSR, including Farhiya’s father, were told to go home.
“My mum and I were visiting my grandma in Western Siberia when we first heard on radio about the war,” she says.
“I remember her telling me later that she immediately knew what this meant for our family, what this meant for my father.”
Sharif had 24 hours to pack his bags. With his loved ones away, he couldn’t even say goodbye but he left a note with his parents’ address in Mogadishu.
“I knew he did not walk out on us, he had not left us or abandoned us,” says Farhiya. “He only left us because of the circumstances.”
But those circumstances also made it impossible to stay in touch.
The family was separated for nearly four decades.
Despite this, Farhiya’s childhood was a happy one.
“I was surrounded by unconditional love from my mum. Her relatives gave me so much love and care, I felt very special,” she says.
“I was proud of my heritage, was proud of looking different… My classmates, my teachers at school and the university always told me I was special.”
Read more: ‘I found my dad on Facebook’
Source: BBC
