War leaves Afghan boy in messy state, homeless

A boy from Afghanistan who made headlines for donning a plastic shirt with football superstar Lionel Messi’s name and eventually meeting his idol is now homeless after being displaced by a Taliban attack.

Murtaza Ahmadi became a global sensation overnight in 2016 when a photo of him wearing the homemade Argentina jersey went viral.

The seven-year-old lived with his family in the Jaghori district of the Ghazni province.

In early November, the Taliban attacked the area, forcing more than two-thirds of the population to flee.

“I miss our house in Jaghori. Here I don’t have a ball. I can’t play football or go outside,” Ahmadi told Efe news on Tuesday in Kabul, where his family has been living for the past two weeks.

The boy, in a message for the Barcelona legend, said, “Take me with you. I can’t play football here. There’s just the sound of explosions and gunshots here.”

Ahmadi lives with his parents and four siblings in a small room of a rented house on a hillside west of Kabul, after having stayed in the neighbouring Bamyan province for some time.

His eyes welled up when he was asked about the two jerseys and a football, which Messi had gifted to him in Qatar in 2016. “We left them behind in Jaghori. We could not bring them, because we left the house in the dark of the night and my mother told me to leave the ball and shirts at home,” he said.

Afghan security forces have driven out the Taliban from the area, but the family has decided not to return home. The family had been receiving threats on phone due to their son’s sudden fame, his elder brother Humayoon Ahmadi, 17, said.

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