In June 2006, after Melissa Engdahl had formally separated from her husband Joseph Hawach, Mr. Hawach took their two daughters to Australia for what he said would be a three-week visit with family there. Engdahl soon discovered that the visit was a cover for the abduction of her daughters to war-torn Lebannon. After many months of distress Engdahl was able to locate her children in Lebanon and, after executing a harrowing rescue, she brought them home to Canada. The children now live with their mother in Canada and have regular contact with their father who remains overseas.

For a complete account of Melissa Engdahl’s struggle to find and bring home her daughters read her book, Flight of the Drangonfly.

Below is G. Richards’s story published in the Calgary Herald on May 19, 2008

Custody nightmare’s behind them

A relationship between two young girls and the father who abducted them to Lebanon at the height of a war is slowly being rebuilt, at the gentle prodding of the Calgary mother who went to the proverbial ends of the Earth to get her daughters back.

BY THE CALGARY HERALD MAY 19, 2008

Melissa Engdahl

A relationship between two young girls and the father who abducted them to Lebanon at the height of a war is slowly being rebuilt, at the gentle prodding of the Calgary mother who went to the proverbial ends of the Earth to get her daughters back.

Melissa Hawach grabbed international headlines in December 2006 when she retrieved her daughters — Hannah, then five years old, and then two-year-old Cedar — from their father Joseph Hawach, who had abducted the girls during a trip to Australia.

Melissa has written a book about the custody ordeal.

Now, almost a 11/2 years later, the girls are reconnecting with their father through letters, photos and webcam chats in which the girls dance and sing — a step Melissa has encouraged.

It is, Hawach said, important to her that the girls, now seven and four, have a relationship with their father.

“It’s only them who would be harmed by denying (them a relationship),” she said.

Still, reconnection came with ground rules laid down by Hawach with the guidance of the girls’ therapist. First and foremost, Joseph had to apologize to the girls in a letter.

“He said he was sorry, he shouldn’t have taken them from their mom,” she said.

At the time, Joseph said he wanted to take his daughters on a three-week trip to visit his family. Instead, he spirited them away to his ancestral homeland of Lebanon at a time when the country was being rocked by explosions as the war between Hezbollah and Israel was at its height.

The strange series of events that unfolded between the girls’ departure to Australia that summer and the time that has passed since their return to Canada in February 2007 have been penned into a book called Flight of the Dragonfly.

The months that followed the family’s return to Calgary were tough and Hawach found herself circling the wagons in an effort to return some normalcy in the wake of the drama and paranoia. At the same time, though, the media continued to pursue stories of the book deal and the rumour actress Angelina Jolie had expressed interest in Hawach’s story.

Tucked away at their home beyond Calgary’s city southern limits, Hawach found herself angered by the continuing attention. But even she had to smile when her partner Patrick Lalanade came into Cedar’s darkened room one night bearing a newspaper, telling Hawach she had to at least laugh about the Jolie story.

“I felt like I was in the twilight zone,” she said.

At the same time she was getting re-acquainted with Cedar and Hannah in their new home, Hawach was also dealing with another piece of news: she was pregnant.

Unexpectedly stuck in Syria after retrieving the girls, Hawach had begun to crack. The stress of the past six months, coupled with the feeling of being in that country was a step backwards, sent her into a spiral.

A four-hour phone call with Hawach prompted Lalande to fly halfway around the world — a trip with unanticipated results. Their son, Tristan James — named for Hawach’s father, Jim Engdahl — arrived Nov. 17.

Hawach had wanted to wait a year so things could be more settled with Hannah and Cedar, but the addition of Tristan, now six months old, grounded the new family.

“He’s really tied our little family together,” Hawach said.

Since their return, life has — relatively — calmed down. Hawach ferries the girls to baseball and ballet, play dates and sleepovers as she also juggles life with the baby.

Hannah is more like her mum, sporty and active; Cedar, meanwhile, likes to apply green eyeshadow before she heads out to ball practice and has been seen out sporting a boa and tutu.

While her girls are safe at home, Hawach is calling for changes to be made in how local police handle parental abductions. Having her children in Lebanon at the height of a war upped the stakes, she said, making people act and react more quickly. “It wasn’t just a custody battle,” she said.

The same doesn’t hold true for other parents facing the same ordeal, she said, so she’s calling for international standards to be set.

“It’s so preventable,” she said. “We have all these forms for cigarettes or booze or, God forbid, you visited a farm in the last two weeks, but anyone can hop on a plane and travel anywhere with kids that aren’t theirs.”

On a recent trip to Montana, the border agent queried Hawach about all the stamps for Jordan and Lebanon and Syria in her passport.

Hawach gave the short version of events: her former husband took their daughters to Lebanon and Hawach went to pick them up. But when Hawach asked if the agent wanted to see her custody papers, the agent said no. “You’re the mom, aren’t you?” the agent asked before waving them through.

That incident frustrated Hawach because it highlighted how easy it is for children to be taken into other countries with no real documentation.

“Anybody can take a kid and get on a plane,” she said.