The Sharjah boy is back, and so is our faith in humanity

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The Sharjah boy is back, and so is our faith in humanity

It had been over two weeks since the 15-year-old Indian schoolboy Mohammed Perwez Alam had gone missing from his home in Sharjah.

By Vicky Kapur (From the Executive Editor's Desk)

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Published: Sun 21 Jul 2019, 8:51 PM

An entire nation waited with bated breath for this happy ending. And it came in just when hope had started running a little low in supply. It had been over two weeks since the 15-year-old Indian schoolboy Mohammed Perwez Alam had gone missing from his home in Sharjah, following a dressing down he received from his mother for watching YouTube videos late in the night. We've all been there. There was an age when we thought that everyone - including (or rather especially) our parents - didn't get us at all and that the regulations, the instructions, and the interrogations were all unnecessary and excessive. even cruel.
We were confident to the extent of being cocky, we were opinionated to the extent of being rebellious, and we were adventurous to the extent of being imprudent. In short, we were all teenagers once. So in a fit of rage at being chided, a teen steps out of his house, perhaps vowing 'never to return' - like many of us might have done when we were of that age. But then a majority of the kids cool down or develop cold feet in a few hours if not minutes, and decide to give their parents another chance. Even as most children know in their hearts that what their parents said or did was for their progeny's good, the heat of the moment can get to even the best of us. For some, it may take a few days to reconcile, but most children eventually repent and return home.
It was that window of hope, of rationality, of plausibility that was fast closing itself in the case of Perwez, who had been away for 15 days. Law-enforcement authorities had sent out appeals on social media to the public for help. The desperate father had announced a reward of Dh5,000 for anyone who could give information leading to the safe return of the boy. To play our role, Khaleej Times had initiated a multimedia #KTforGood campaign to #BringPerwezHome and had announced it in a missing boy poster on the front page of our Thursday edition.
The unconfirmed news first broke on our social media channels when one of our Facebook followers alerted us at around 9.30pm that the boy may have been found in Ajman. It was a simple one-liner in response to our pinned-to-the-top campaign post to help reunite the boy with his family. From the second our social media team spotted the FB message, the KT newsroom WhatsApp group lit up instantly. The excitement was palpable among every member of the team - irrespective of whether or not they were involved in chasing the story. The commotion, the emotion, the elation, the passion, and the trepidation in the group was as if one of ours was on the brink of returning.
But as much as we wanted to believe the tipoff and share it with our audience, we just couldn't. We needed confirmation that it wasn't a false alarm. There were, of course, those industrious souls diligently manning their posts that late on a Thursday, and they went about, with clockwork precision, executing their job of seeking confirmation from the authorities concerned and the family. KT's indefatigable reporting and multimedia teams created two separate cells and immediately rushed to the police station and to Perwez's home in anticipation of the good news. We were all wishing with our entire might for this tipoff to be true, for his parents' and the nation's prayers to be answered, for Perwez to return home safe. And what an exciting and sensational climax it was when, with minutes before midnight on Thursday, we were finally in a position to confirm to our audience that Perwez had been found - and that he was in fine fettle.
Not just UAE residents, but our audience thousands of miles away who had been tracking this story with concern heaved a collective sigh of relief when we finally had confirmation from Sharjah Police. As the proverbial cherry on the cake, within minutes of that, we had visual confirmation of Perwez meeting, hugging, and kissing his dad at an Ajman police station. We had to literally stop press well past midnight to reproduce that image on the front page of Khaleej Times' late city edition of Friday. Our team of reporters and multimedia journalists - some of whom had been in the field since the previous morning - did a remarkable job of bringing you the story in real-time, including live videos of Perwez's reunion with his family well in the wee hours of the morning on Friday.
All credit, however, goes to the UAE's law enforcement authorities who managed to bring Perwez home in good health. Sheltered and fed by random strangers for over two weeks, Perwez is back. And with it has been restored our faith in humanity.


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