The story started four years ago in a church in Egypt—location and identity of the church, and some names in this story, are not being reported as a cautionary measure—where a baby was found, apparently abandoned by his biological mother.

The priest, not knowing what to do, decided to hand the infant to a couple who had been childless for 29 years, and who desperately desired a child. The couple were elated to have the little boy to care for and bring up as their own; they applied for a birth certificate for him and gave him their name: Shenouda Farouq Fawzy Boulos. They had Shenouda baptised, and raised him as a Christian grounded in church for four years during which they were an indescribably happy, loving family.

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Mr Boulos’s niece, however, was not at all happy with the situation. Realising that Shenouda’s legal name as the son of Mr Boulos made him her uncle’s legal inheritor and excluded her from the inheritance, she made a claim to the police that the boy was not Mr Boulos’s son but had been trafficked. Egyptian law outlaws adoption, in accordance with Islamic sharia, but allows Takaful—literally “care”, in this case foster care—but children cannot be given their foster parents’ names nor can they legally inherit their money or belongings; they can only receive “gifts” from their foster parents.

Read more: Wataninet