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Hello, I'm Matthew Price.

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.

Every day we ask one big question about one big story.

Today how did a ma'ah find his mum?

Really the only thing you need to know before we start is that this is a beautiful story.

At times it's painful, it's about an Iraqi boy, nobody knew quite how old he was, 11 or 12, with a face scarred in a military

attack. He was brought for treatment in Britain and he stayed here because it was thought

he had no family left. And then almost 30 years later

there's this chain of events that change his life. And it started at Exeter

train station where a BBC cameraman called Andy Alcroft was covering a story.

I was setting up just outside the station and as you do normally I was just waiting and this man started talking to me and he's asking

oh who are you he do work for us at BBC and he started telling myself there telling me, say,

there's this story I really want to tell you about.

And obviously we often get people coming up to us,

telling us there are stories that the BBC should be covering.

Anyway, I got further talking to this man.

He said, oh, as I said, what's your name?

It's a really good story.

There's this friend of mine who was brought over from Iraq in the early 90s with terrible injuries he settled here he was always told his family were dead they'd been killed in this horrific attack back in 91

You should really do a story on him. I said, oh why is that? Why is that? He says, he's received this message on social media saying that his

family are still alive. And I was thinking was thinking oh this is this is really

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