One family's emotional Christmas reunion amid celebration at Manchester Airport
manchestereveningnews.co.ukAmid the sea of Santa hats and Christmas jumpers in arrivals at Manchester Airport, a family stands out as they clutch colourful garlands of flowers.
It’s Christmas Eve and they’re welcoming parents and siblings back from Saudia Arabia, who have been away from home for nine days completing the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. “We’re really excited to welcome them back, going on pilgrimage is an achievement,” shares Waleed Zulfiqar, 31. “We give these garlands whenever there’s something to celebrate, we actually picked them up from Pakistan because you can’t really get them in England.” READ MORE: The Manchester café opening its doors on Christmas Day for a special reason READ MORE: The shocking number of children who will be homeless in Manchester this Christmas Waleed, from Atherton, is just like so many family members waiting on loved ones arriving back home for Christmas in Manchester Airport.
He’s a new(ish) dad to a two-year-old daughter ‘that explains the bags under my eyes’, he jokes. And, with garlands in one hand and a bag of ice in the other, he’s a typical brother.
Pilgrimage or not, he takes a moment to give his brother a little stick. “The pilgrimage means you’re doing about 30,000 steps, and my brother is quite lazy normally, it’s clearly done a bit of damage," says Waleed. “He called ahead and asked me to bring him frozen peas.
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