Armless Syrian boy thrives in US, awaits family
SHARON:Ahmad Alkhalaf has had a busy year.
He attended Democratic President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address as a special guest of a congressman. He learned to bike and rollerblade, took martial arts and gymnastics classes and spent his summer playing soccer and swimming in a lake at a day camp in the Boston suburbs.
And he received his first pair of prosthetic arms after his were blown off three years ago in a refugee camp bomb blast that also killed three of his siblings. But as the 11-year-old Syrian boy looks to another year in his adopted home, he says his dream is to be reunited with his mother and four surviving siblings, who are living in Istanbul.
“I want my mom to come here,” he said on a recent Saturday as he kicked around a soccer ball in a park. “I feel like I’m losing her. It’s been too long. I can’t take it anymore.”
Ahmad’s father, Dirgam Alkhalaf, said those hopes largely hinge on whether Republican President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to curtail the flow of Syrians and Muslims to the US. Alkhalaf has applied for asylum and hopes to petition for the rest of the family if he and Ahmad are permitted to stay.
“I can only be hopeful he’ll do the right thing,” Alkhalaf said of Trump through an interpreter. “No matter what people say, I’m optimistic.”
Trump transition team officials didn’t return emails seeking comment on the family’s case. Alkhalaf said he can’t return to Turkey after renouncing his temporary residency status there. Returning to Syria, where the Sunni Muslim family lived just outside the battle-scarred city of Aleppo, also isn’t an option. “There is nothing left in Syria for us. Our home is destroyed; the government is outtogetus,”hesaid,referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, which he says conducted the 2013 bombing. “I’ve got nowhere to go if the US doesn’t want me.” AP