This Gift

"Tortured by misfortune and blessed beyond my wildest dreams."

...The unlikely story of how an armless Afghan boy became a world champion swimmer.

God took my arms but he gave me THIS GIFT 

by Anita Mitchell

The road to the Olympics and Paralympics comes from unlikely places and often reveals the best of humanity. Abbas' journey from Kabul, Afghanistan to Turkish refugee camps to the Tokyo Paralympic Games has been profiled in the New York Times, CNN and News Nation. He has been interviewed by Angelina Jolie and Khaled Hosseini and has one of the most inspiring stories in the world.

    The future looked bleak for Abbas when he was born armless. With so many other problems in Kabul, people with disabilities there are a low priority. After years of being bullied for being different, he sought refuge and peace in the water where he learned to swim and began to compete.

  If 15-year-old Abbas wanted to excel with his unusual skill as a swimmer, he knew that he had to leave his large and close family. How he left, how he traveled through Iran, how he petitioned the UNHCR to come to the United States, how he made the Tokyo refugee Paralympic team, how he became a US citizen and what complications ensued in his life is a beacon of triumph and a salute to the human spirit. 

    Abbas is a role model not only for people with disabilities, but for anyone with a lofty goal where detours are placed along the way.

    Abbas always had a champion's mindset, whether it was in how he played marbles, performed martial arts or eventually excelled to world class levels in Paralympic swimming.

Abbas is training with Swim Fort Lauderdale Masters Swim Team for the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games.

"Beneath Abbas's humility, his politeness and boyish charms, is a bottomless reserve of grit and steel. How else to explain the extraordinary arc of his young life? You would be hard-pressed to come up with a more unlikely story. Born armless, in the midst of conflict, in one of the poorest nations on earth, Abbas leaves home, becomes a refugee, travels halfway across the world, and somehow ends up representing his birthplace before the whole world in the Tokyo Paralympic Games. Abbas has shown us all what human will is capable of. He is an inspiration to anybody with a dream and obstacles lying in the path to it. Whenever I think of him, what he has accomplished, everything seems a little more possible. He is one of my heroes."   

Khaled Hosseini

Award-winning author of The Kite Runner, And the Mountains Echoed, Sea Prayer, and A Thousand Splendid Suns