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Ahmad brings joy to childless taxi driver, wife after 18 years of marriage

By Dana Al Emam - Jul 26,2014 - Last updated at Jul 26,2014

AMMAN — This Eid will be unique for taxi driver Mohammad Saleh and his wife Aisha, who have become the foster parents of eight-month-old Ahmad, a child Saleh found on the back seat of his vehicle last November.

“I bought Ahmad new clothes for Eid and I prepared everything he needs,” Aisha said in tears of joy as she received the child on Saturday. 

“I have been waiting for this day for too long,” added the 33-year-old foster mother who has been married for 18 years without conceiving.

“I will protect him and I will do all I can to ensure him a good life,” she said, adding that the entire family is “excited” to see Ahmad.

When her husband found the baby, he not only delivered him to the nearest police station, but also remained committed to visiting him every day at the Zarqa hospital. 

The baby stayed there two weeks for medical examination, during which Aisha breastfed him.

“When doctors and nurses saw how much I cared about the baby, they suggested that I adopt him if his parents remained unknown,” Saleh told The Jordan Times, adding that he changed the baby’s government-given name Tareq to a name he prefers “Ahmad”. 

Social Development Minister Reem Abu Hassan told The Jordan Times that the child, who resided at Al Hussein Society for Social Care, was given for adoption to Saleh and his wife based on a juvenile court decision issued last week.

“The case of this child was extraordinary,” she said, adding that 134 other families had filed adoption requests with the ministry before the taxi driver and his wife did, but the ministry took the case of the Saleh family into consideration in applying the spirit of the law.  

Abu Hassan added that the ministry made sure the foster family met the requirements for child adoption.

Authorities confirmed that Aisha had breastfed the baby and that there is no blood relation that connects him to the couple. They also studied the couple’s financial and psychological ability to foster the child. 

“Our aim is to protect the child… we are happy that he will move to a loving and caring family so he can grow up to become a good citizen,” Abu Hassan told reporters. 

The ministry, she added, is committed to following up on the child’s situation and providing the foster parents with any help they might need.

“The ministry provided the foster parents with the child’s medical record, which shows the vaccinations he had taken and the ones he still has to take,” the minister said.

A doctor at Al Hussein Society who supervised Ahmad’s medical treatment said the child is free from any chronic diseases or deformities.

“The baby’s biological signs are very good,” he said, adding that he has taken all vaccinations included in the national vaccination programme.

Under the system that allows for the adoption of children of unknown identity, over 1,000 children were adopted in Jordan between 1967 and 2013, according to the society’s figures.

Islamic and Jordanian law ban adoption but allow foster parenting, in which the child retains his or her original family name, or one given by the state.

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