The Electronic Telegraph Sunday 7 October 2001 James Mossop
A SINGLE Afghan, surrounded by 37,500 runners and watched by another 900,000 spectators on the streets of Chicago, will run the city's marathon today fearful of those who see him as a talisman of the terror that changed the world on Sept 11. Abdul Wasiqi has had the vengeful phone calls, the sneering jibes and the dark looks. It doesn't matter that he abhors the Taliban, works and studies hard and one day wants to run an Olympic marathon in a US vest. An accent and an Arabic name are hate bait to some people. His real story is one of determination to succeed, born of his family's escape from Afghanistan during the war with Russia when he was five and many relatives had been killed. He is 25 now, studying for a Masters degree in organisation and leadership and another in political science and business. He dreams of helping the world be a better place. After leaving Afghanistan he arrived with his parents in Saudi Arabia; a few years later they moved to Germany and after the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 his uncle, who had made it to Chicago, invited him over and helped him pay for his tuition. He is a slight, quietly-spoken man, intensely polite, but he has had to surmount several difficulties. He started running in Germany and was out on a spin one day when he was attacked by what he calls "two rather immature people". They berated him for being a foreigner in their land, taking people's jobs and even though he said he was helping out at the local nursing home, they beat him up. He almost lost his left eye. He could not see for two weeks and was kept in hospital. Now the verbal pummelling is as strong as ever in Chicago. "It is very sad," he told me. "When I watched the TV on September 11 I could not understand how anyone could do that. They were taking advantage of innocent people who had nothing to do with politics, people just going about their work. "Everybody wants to have revenge. Everybody wants to make other people pay for it. I can understand that. In the first week everyone was coming at me from all angles as if I had something to do with what happened in New York. My name is Arabic, my life is not Arabic. I have an accent. "In Germany, those people took action without thinking and it has been happening here. Society looks at us differently now and it is very tough. They question your reason for being here. They talk of damaging your house. "I thought that standing on the start line in the Atlanta marathon with five minutes to go was the toughest, most nervous thing I had ever done. Now it is tough again with people looking. You have to sense what people are thinking and that is a different challenge. The Taliban is a bad government. Innocent people are being killed in that country." Wasiqi became a driven man as he watched the opening ceremony of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. As Afghanistan entered the stadium, first in alphabetical order after the Greeks who traditionally lead the parade, he noticed there were no athletes. Just one Afghan carrying his country's flag. "I felt very sad," he said. "It became my ambition to run for Afghanistan in the 1996 Games." He was 16 when he gave a false birthday that would allow him to enter his first marathon. His time in Hamburg was a struggling 3hr 55min. He tried again in Berlin and finished in 2-33, then won the Gottorf marathon in 2-18. He wrote to the Afghanistan Olympic Committee - currently suspended from the Olympic Movement - saying that he wanted to represent his country in Atlanta. He managed the qualifying time easily, but then the nightmare began. Afghan officials made him ditch his favourite shoes and wear their sponsors' gear. They could not handle the paperwork that goes with an Olympic team and he found himself doing it with distractions at every turn. Three miles into the 26.2-mile race he tore a calf muscle badly. He was in agony but he would not surrender to the pain. "It was the toughest thing," he said, "but I have always said I would never give up." He was 111th of the 111 finishers in 4hr 25min, an hour behind the second last-runner. The marathon route had been re-opened to traffic and the stadium was being prepared for the closing ceremony but sympathetic officials decided to allow him that last, physically damaging but mentally uplifting lap of the stadium. The band played an impromptu fanfare, the crowd roared, two volunteers stood with a tape across the finishing line and Wasiqi said: "I represent my country to the world to see that Afghanistan is living. It has not died." He looked to Sydney 2000. An Afghan fund-raiser in Pakistan was supposedly collecting money to help Kabul send a team to the Olympics. Nothing happened other than the suspicion that he was lining his own pockets. The International Olympic Committee suspended Afghanistan because of the Taliban operations. Wasiqi persisted from his American base. The day before the opening ceremony he received a call from a prominent Afghan in Melbourne who told him not to travel. Then the Australian Embassy in Washington rang him and said they would pay for his flight and provide him with a visa. When he arrived he was told that the ban on Afghanistan was blanket. He raced around trying to talk to officials for three days and then returned home to Chicago disconsolate. Now he looks to Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008) and does not rule out 2112. His reasons are more than winning marathons. He sees himself, when his running days are over, in some kind of ambassadorial role, preaching peace and understanding. He said: "I have been working with a professor in Boston and we are publishing a book on international relations and conflicts based on Afghanistan and the Taliban regime; the way they treat other people, about the history of Afghanistan, the Russian invasion, general education and understanding different cultures. "There is beauty in education. A degree changes people's attitudes towards you. The United States is my country, Saudi Arabia is my country, Germany is my country, Afghanistan is my country. "I would like to build bridges of understanding. There is a bridge between the United States and Britain but there is not between the US and Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan and Germany. "In the next 10 years my goal is to run a marathon in under two hours [the world record is 2-05-4] and then I would like to work for the State Department, building those bridges. We can work, in 10 years' time, to understand the individual. I have a meaning to my life." Eamonn Condon www.RunnersGoal.com
