Meet Nissma Bencheikh and Roaya Jannatipour, two pre-med students and roommates at UC Berkeley who have the craziest friendship story
Months into their friendship, after deciding to share a dorm room together, the two young Moroccan women discovered an absurd fact about their past: Their mothers used to be best friends in Canada ... some 16 years ago.
Against all odds, their mothers crossed paths again almost two decades later and had a heart-warming reunion thanks to their daughters.
Their story has been making the rounds on social media ever since Bencheikh first mentioned it on Twitter, after which they were interviewed by Buzzfeed.
When Jannatipour and Bencheikh met through a mutual friend, they hit it off right away, having found out they have so much in common: They are both born in Canada to families of Moroccan descent and both are pre-med students at the University of California, Berkely.
But, little did they know at the time that their similarities run way deeper.
At the start of this school year, the friends decided to become roommates. When they moved in together, they found out that their mothers were very good friends back in Canada 16 years ago.
It also turned out that the roommates have photos with each other from when they were still babies.
The discovery came as Bencheikh's father was helping her settle in her dorm and began asking about Jannatipour's background.
Having learned the name of Jannatipour's mother, Bencheikh's father remarked that his wife had been close friends with the former.
It turned out that Bencheikh and Jannatipour's mothers had gone to college together and got pregnant around the same time.
They were actually so close that Jannatipour's mother not only named Bencheikh's sister, but even cut her umbilical cord.
The mothers lost touch with each other when Jannatipour's family relocated to California, while Bencheikh's family moved to Virginia.
But, against all odds, they met up again earlier this week.
After finding out about their past, the two decided to reunite their mothers
Jannatipour told ABC News that her mother had been trying to reconnect with Bencheikh's through social media, but could not track her down.
So, Jannatipour and Bencheikh organized a surprise reunion for their mothers on "Good Morning America."
The show shared a video in which the mothers are seen bursting into tears as they hugged each other when they met up in New York City on Monday.
"I missed you so much," Bencheikh's mother told her long-lost best friend, who told ABC News that she thought of the former as "my best friend and my family."