Wrestler fled the Taliban in Afghanistan
THERE is an Arabic expression that transcends life’s daily trials, a phrase Zaki Mohsin invokes every day. Its meaning is “God willing,” but its power lies in something more self-reliant - that a little resilience today will yield greater outcomes tomorrow. Inshallah. Mohsin muttered it upon waking each morning at 3.30 to pray in his family’s sunbaked, 15-person orange home on the western edge of Kabul. He whispered it before earning accolades across Asia as a rising star in the sport of judo. And he repeated it as his family spent a frantic two weeks uprooting their lives and fleeing Afghanistan, putting Mohsin’s dream of an Olympic gold medal on hold.
Less than three years later, Mohsin, now 19, is a senior at Edison High in Alexandriaand one of the region’s most dominant high school athletes in a sport he had never tried before his arrival in Virginia on Sept 9, 2014. The former judo phenom won a state championship in his first season wrestling for Edison, and he will aim to defend that title Saturday at the 5A state meet at Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake.
“This is everything to me,” Mohsin said. “I need to leave everything (on the mat).”
Mohsin has had to adapt to wrestling in the same way he has had to adapt to a new country. It was in 2014 when his father, Zubair, an interpreter for the US coalition forces in 2002, informed him that his family would be moving to America under a Special Immigrant Visa.
But Mohsin’s signature wrestling move is a direct descendant of a manoeuvre he debuted in judo at age seven. Zubair can recall Mohsin’s first junior national judo tournament in Kabul, when he checked into the championship bout at 33 kilos (roughly 73 pounds) - with eyes nearly as wide as his waifish frame. His opponent was the competition’s two-time defending champ, at least two years older than Mohsin and a head taller. Immediately after the traditional pre-match bow, Mohsin swept his right foot across the giant’s leg, hoisted him over his shoulders and brought him crashing backward to the mat. The match was over in three seconds.
Zubair had sensed his son’s potential when he began tossing opponents like garbage bags on his first day of judo training one year earlier, but the tournament crystallised some bold words from his coach, Yama Samak.
“He was saying to everyone that ‘ I can guarantee if Zaki continues judo, one day he will be able to bring the medal from Olympics,’ “Zubair recalled.
From that day forward, Mohsin’s destiny became tied to making history.
Afghanistan has only two Olympic medals, a pair of bronzes won in taekwondo by Rohullah Nikpaiat the 2008 and 2012 Games. Zubair hoped his son could achieve gold, and the ensuing years lent traction to the idea.
At age 12, Mohsin won a gold medal at his first international judo tournament in Moscow. He reeled in more medals in Sambo and kurash - martial arts similar to judo - in Uzbekistan, Nepal and Taiwan. He trained for five hours a day, six days a week, before and after school, and competed at training camps in South Korea and Thailand. Eventually, Mohsin became his country’s top-ranked junior judoka.
But with his fame came danger.
Mohsin and his then-22-yearold uncle, Zafar, knew that trouble lurked the moment they saw the three men loitering across the darkened side street, their eyes peering out warily from faded scarf masks. Heading back from evening judo practice, Mohsin and Zafar were five blocks from their home in a neighbourhood Mohsin said became dangerous after nightfall.
“As soon as they started following us,” Mohsin said, “my uncle was like, ‘Anything I do, you just do it.’ ”
The men stopped them and demanded everything in their pockets. Zafar, now an MMA fighter living in Germany, refused. One man lifted his jacket to reveal a handgun. Another flashed a blade.
Zafar sucker-punched the nearest stranger in the jaw and barreled toward another. Mohsin, then 16, ducked under a punch, grabbed a thigh and shoulder and threw this latest adversary onto his back, knocking the wind out of the third assailant.
It was called te- guruma, Mohsin’s favourite judo technique. Mohsin and his uncle escaped unscathed.
Even amid the ever-present dangers, Mohsin’s childhood in Kabul was mostly a happy
His family spent a frantic two weeks uprooting their lives and fleeing Afghanistan
one. He played soccer, volleyball and video games and rolled around on the mats in the fitness gym owned by his father, a professional bodybuilder.
But violence and fear became too normalised and too close to home for Mohsin’s family in Kabul.
“You’re like, ‘OK, this happened. Tomorrow again it will happen,’ “Mohsin said. “. . . It’s like everybody got used to it.”
By the summer of 2014, Zubair and his wife, Khatera, had had enough. They summoned their four children to deliver some news: They were all moving to the United States in two weeks.
Zubair, now 36, had submitted his application for the Special Immigrant Visa - an expedited visa for Iraqi and Afghan nationals who worked with the US Armed Forces or under Chief of Mission authority as a translator or interpreter – about one year earlier.
Kabul’s security situation had been deteriorating, and Zubair had received threats from members of the Taliban.
Zubair survived ambushes as a QRF interpreter working alongside US coalition forces in 2002. — WP-Bloomberg