Little Ahmad's Afghan Dance: Why this video of an Afghani kid is the strangest thing on Internet
The video lays bare the spirit of Afghanistan. There's no tomorrow. But there is a now. And it can be celebrated. Despite everything!
You must have heard the name of Ashraf Ghani. He is the President of Afghanistan.
You must not have heard the name of Ahmad Syed Rahman. He is just a little boy — but has the whole world in tears for Afghanistan.
A video of Ahmad dancing with a prosthetic leg in a hospital has gone viral. No, he is not a dancer. He is just dancing in happiness because he is again standing on his feet. The video includes some voices and some faces — all radiant with joy for the little boy.
A little boy from #Afghanistan's Logar province, who received artificial limb at Orthopedic Center of the International Committee of the Red Cross, shows his emotion by dance. He has lost his leg in an explosion in Logar. Footage: ICRC pic.twitter.com/3lNzg5iNgC
— TOLOnews (@TOLOnews) May 6, 2019
A number of people get their limbs amputated. It's become a hard fact of life. But what makes this particular video so moving is the story attached to it — and the fact that the video gives no hint of that story.
Ahmad is five years old now. When he lost one leg, he was just eight months old.
Along with his sister, Ahmad was caught in crossfire between the Taliban and the US-backed Army — both children were injured. Such clashes are common in Logar — the province in which they live. Security forces routinely lose their lives and limbs in Afghanistan. So do ordinary civilians. And so do helpless, tiny children.
But who is brooding, sulking or shedding tears? Not those who have guns pointed at them; not those who have lost a leg at the age of eight months; not those who have both their children injured in a landmine blast.
They go about with their lives as though nothing happened; they raise a toast to life after getting a new limb; they dance to the tune of life itself, with all its joys, and all its hopes.
And that’s what Afghanistan teaches the rest of the world — even through a short video like this.
In 2018, Afghanistan went to Parliamentary polls — only the third election since 2001 after the fall of the Taliban. This year, the country will vote for a Presidential election. Afghan peace talks hold a candle of optimism to the tension the country has been seeing for the past two and a half decades. It’s going on hand-in-hand with Taliban attacks. No one knows what the future has in store for the Afghans.
Amid all these uncertainties, the sure-footed steps of a five-year-old Ahmad still speak of hope.
And that is why his video made us cry.