It was Salah Ahmed?s birthday, but he?s the one who brought the presents.
The Fairfax father stopped off at Best Buy Thursday night, picked up a toy car and a PlayStation and headed up toBaltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
His wife, Nabila, and two sons were due in from Lebanon. They?d abandoned their vacation and evacuated in a rush; 7-year-old Samer and 9-year-old Osama left behind their toys.
Two planes were coming, and they were due on the first. It was 5:38 a.m. He was up all night.
“It?s been a tough week,” he conceded.
Another father, Rony Aboujawde, walked up to a group of men standing in the international arrivals sections, waiting for the evacuees to walk down the hall from customs and asked which flight was next.
Everyone else seemed to have spoken to his wife in the last day or so ? on the ship, in the layover in Cyprus, at the airport in Ireland. Aboujawde hadn?t heard from his wife, Grace, in days.
“I don?t know where she is,” he said.
“In Cyprus?” someone asked him.
“In Beirut.”
So Aboujawde flew in from Missouri to get as close as possible. He stood on his tiptoes and strained to see over others as the first plane unloaded.
Solo travelers and family members streamed out, hugging each other two and three at a time, not wiping away tears, squeezing their eyes shut.
“We?re here, we?re here, we?re safe,” a woman said.
Salah Ahmed walked away from the dwindling crowd and set the flower bouquet atop the toy car. Nabila and the boys weren?t there.
“She left before us,” a newly arrived woman said.
Rony Aboujawde had his hand at his mouth. His arm was shaking. He kept staring down the hallway.
“All roads lead to home,” said Rabih Ballout, of Burlingame, Calif., who had also watched in vain for his wife and children to come down the corridor.
About an hour later, Salah Ahmed walked back to the crowd as the next plane arrived. It was 7:17 a.m. Suddenly he waved and called to his wife, “Nabila! Nabila!” He kneeled and a little boy, wearing sneakers with a wheel in the back, skated into his arms.
He clutched and buried his wife and each boy in kisses. A crowd of family and strangers gathered, singing “Happy Birthday.”
“Tie your shoe. Tie your shoe,” he said to one of the boys, wheeling the suitcases away. “I heard something, that you left your PlayStation there.” “I got another one for you.”
The other families had walked off, and still Rony Aboujawde waited. Then she was there, pushing two 23-month-old girls in a stroller down the hall. He stooped and hugged each twin.
Aboujawde moved his family away from the crowd as Grace, wiping her tears away, asked, “What?s next?”
