Mansour left the house to meet the trafficker, anxious to learn any news. The guy had shared with him the previous day that he might be able to unearth information about one of Mansour’s brothers, Ali.

Stepping into the trafficker’s office took immeasurable courage on behalf of Mansour, and we’re still dumbfounded as to how he racked up the nerve to question, to push this criminal that had much evil on his conscience. But push he did, and after bribing him even more, learned that his one younger brother, Ali, 9-years-old last they had seen each other, now lived in the South of Russia, not far from border with Chechnya, in a city called Stavropol.

We were later to learn that the trafficker knew of Ali’s whereabouts because he, too, had been separated from the family to leave on his own; only he didn’t make it to a safe haven, but was sold into slavery in Stavropol.  

Mansour was given a phone number, and with these digits began the unraveling of a trail of serendipity.

Safely back in Copenhagen we called the number time and again, reaching only Russian speaking people and stranded with our lack of language skills. After days of calling, finally an Afghan man picked up and Mansour spilled his heart. The number we had called turned out to belong to a phone booth in the midst of an Afghan bazaar in Stavropol, and, surprisingly, the man who had answered turned out to know Ali, and his whereabouts. A new number was shared. Breathless with anticipation Mansour called…

An old lady answered the phone, spoke no Dari or Pashto, but recognized Ali’s name and passed on the receiver. 30 seconds later, 5 and a half years of silence was shattered, the two brothers, through a trail of improbable roads, had reconnected. Across Pakistan and Russia through Copenhagen, back to Peshawar and through a phone booth in Stavropol, they had finally found each other. The first question they posed each other was: “Do you know where the rest of our family is?”

David and Christopher