Afghan baby Trump has enough enemies
kabul — Donald Trump flops over his pink and white baby walker and rolls it around his family’s modest home in Kabul, blissfully unaware of the turmoil his ‘infidel’ name is causing in the country.
The toddler’s parents named him after the billionaire US President in the hope of replicating his success. But now he is at the centre of a social media firestorm in Afghanistan after a photo of his ID papers was posted on Facebook. A self-confessed fan of the American tycoon, Sayed Assadullah Pooya said he and his wife have been inundated with “vulgar and insulting” comments attacking their choice of name for their third child. Some Facebook users have gone as far as threatening to kill Sayed for giving his son an “infidel name”, while others have accused him of endangering the boy’s life.
kabul — When Asadullah Poya’s wife gave birth to their third child in a tiny village in rural Afghanistan, he immediately thought of Donald Trump.
Not Donald Trump the upstart politician, who at that time was in the thick of the 2016 presidential campaign, but Donald Trump the celebrity businessman. He had just recently read a Dari translation of what appears to be “Trump: How to Get Rich,” published in 2004 by the then-star of “The Apprentice,” and was transfixed.
“I loved his personality. I thought he is the best at economics and he is great at politics,” Poya said. “I thought ‘This is a great man.’ I liked the way he decides he wants something and then he goes and gets it.”
So when his baby came into the world in August 2016, and he saw that the boy had an unusual shock of blond hair, he named him Donald Trump, hoping it would bring him good fortune. It hasn’t. Poya’s own parents were furious that he had given their grandchild a non-Muslim name. The imam of the village mosque devoted an entire Friday sermon to the matter, calling the name an insult. The opposition doesn’t have much to do with President Trump’s politics, but with the decision to break with tradition and name the boy for a non-Muslim.
“Every day the situation got worse,” Poya said. “Every day in the house, when I was calling my son Trump, my father got angrier
When I was calling my son Trump, my father got angrier and angrier, until finally my father couldn’t tolerate it anymore
Asadullah Poya
and angrier, until finally my father couldn’t tolerate it anymore.”
It was then that Poya decided to pack up his family, leave his teaching job and the family farm, and move to the Kabul.
Poya and his children —— Donald Trump, his older sister Fatima and brother Karim —— now live in a simple one-story house that they share with their landlord.
But Donald Trump isn’t liked in the capital either.
On Thursday, five neighbours approached the landlord and demanded he throw Poya out, calling him an “infidel” for not giving his son a Muslim name. Others have accused Poya of naming his son Donald Trump in order to improve his chances of gaining asylum in the United States. On the campaign trail, Trump had called for a ban on Muslims entering the US, but what about a Muslim refugee named Donald Trump?
Poya insists he does not want to leave the country, and that he never intended his son’s name to be in the news. He says a local government official in the district where he registered his son’s name posted the identity card on Facebook. —