The migrant who became

ABDULRAHMAN Abdulrab Mohamed sometimes cooks Hungarian beef stew, his favourite dish, for his three sons using spices from Yemen, where he grew up.

The 45- year- old paediatrician, who has lived and worked in the town of Gyula near Hungary’s eastern border with Romania for almost two decades, says he has become a Hungarian at heart.

The doctor, who treats hundreds of newborn babies each year, among them many premature ones, was voted by his patients on the Internet as “Doctor of the Year” for his dedication. He received the prestigious Astellas prize in Budapest recently.

A former migrant to Hungary, Abdulrahman said he had found his true calling as a doctor in Gyula, where he is fully accepted by Hungarians.

This embrace by Hungarians has not changed since last year when the country became a key route for hundreds of thou- sands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. The influx prompted Hungary’s government to erect a fence along the country’s borders with Serbia and Croatia to keep out migrants. Surveys showed most Hungarians supported the idea.

“My heart beats faster when a Hungarian wins ( in sports), when I hear the Hungarian national anthem,” Abdulrahman says, adding that he had never felt like an outsider in the town.

“I do not feel an alien here, they let me into their house, to their most valued treasure ( their child) ... and they place a lot of trust in me,” said Abdulrahman, who has been a Hungarian citizen since 2007.

His case is one of the success stories of integration in Hungary, which granted asylum or some other kind of international protection to just 508 migrants last year.

In his consulting room, the doctor treats a small girl who has a skin problem in a playful manner which puts both her and her