24 yrs after she was sold, a daughter tracks her father down to a teashop

At the other end, the private detective handed over the phone to Ibrahim Sherrif, 65, deaf and mute, working as a cleaner in a small eat-out near the bustling town square in Arcot, near Vellore, 130 km north of Chennai.

“He cannot hear nor speak. But I am sure he heard my voice,” Naseema told The Sunday Express on phone from Jeddah. “He began to utter noises. I understood how he felt.”

It’s an incredible story that’s just entered the last, happy chapter. Of a poor widower whose youngest and “favourite” daughter was whisked away by a relative and “sold” to a couple in Chennai for household work. Of an eight-year-old, youngest of three, who was later sheltered, educated by a Brahmin couple from Mysore. Of her husband, moved by her tears over the years, who got in touch with a detective agency in Chennai.

But really, it’s the story of Ibrahim Sherrif, now waiting for his passport, a small, shabby worn-out cloth bag crammed with his belongings, ready to board a flight to Saudi Arabia. To live with his daughter, once again.

“The story begins 24 years ago when Sheriff, then earning his living by rolling beedis in Kanchipuram, struggled to look after his three daughters, Mumtaz, Shamshad and Naseema, after his wife Rohaya Bee died of tuberculosis,”’ says R Varadaraj, Director, Sun Detective agency, who made that phone call to Jeddah last month.

“While the eldest daughter was married off, the second was sent to a nearby house for doing domestic chores. It was Naseema, Sheriff’s favourite, who enjoyed the privilege of going to a nearby school.”

But Naseema’s life was about to change. “A distant relative picked her up one day when her father was not around, took her to Chennai, and handed her over to a couple, both police constables, for doing household chores,” says Varadaraj.

Then began the dark days. Naseema remembers being tortured and forced to do gruelling household work. She says she was often beaten up by the couple, who even used a hot iron to sear the skin on her hands.

After two years, a street vendor helped her escape. “She told him her house was in Anna Nagar. But she didn’t know and failed to clarify that her Anna Nagar was in Kanchipuram, not the posh residential colony in Chennai,” says Varadaraj. She was later found crying on the streets of Chennai by a milk vendor who handed her over to a Hindu couple in the city, hailing from Mysore.

“The couple looked after her like she was their daughter, imposing no rules, not even insisting that she remove her burkha. Soon, Sayad, the brother of the couple’s “rich” neighbour, sought her hand in marriage. The Brahmin couple was so careful that they had Sayad screened, even making him walk in front of Naseema so that she could see he was not an invalid,” says Varadaraj.

And Naseema began a new life, leaving the country with Sayad when she was 20.

But memories of her father continued to haunt her — of how he had doted on her, carrying her on his shoulders to school on rainy days so she didn’t dirty her feet. Finally, Sayad, a business consultant, wrote an email to the Police Commissioner in Chennai; then he called Varadaraj.

Ten days later, the detective called back. “Finding my father means so much to me. Now, I too have a family, just like my husband,” says Naseema, breaking down.

“I never thought it would be possible to find my father so soon. I had never stopped thinking of him. Even when I went into labour to deliver my two children, my only thought was my father should have been at my side,” she says.

According to Varadaraj, two staffers of his agency first traced Zaipuneesa in Chennai, the relative who had taken Naseema away. And through her, they found Ibrahim Sheriff. Naseema says she lashed out at Zaipuneesa in whose house she first talked to her father last month. “But there is so much happiness in my life now, I can forgive her,” she says.

For Sayad, her husband, it was the “most exciting moment” of his life. “It always pained her that she could not find her father and her sisters. There is not a day when she did not pray to Allah to help her find them,” he says.

Ibrahim Sheriff, meanwhile, “is smiling all the time” these days, says his brother Adam with whom he had been staying all these years. “I am waiting to fly to my daughter and see my grand-daughters,” conveys Ibrahim in sign language. Naseema says she will now take care of her family. Ibrahim was so poor that his second daughter has remained unmarried, counting out the days in an orphanage where she had grown up — his eldest daughter was married when she was quite young.

“All this will change. We will either bring my father here to live with us or we will settle down with him in India.” says Naseema, now a mother of two. “Twenty-four years is a long time to wait.”