Entrepreneur Mehdi Akbary is visiting his wife's family in Afghanistan when an explosion sets the world on fire. For Mehdi, it is like reliving a memory. He travels back in his mind to his early childhood in a village in central Afghanistan.
Mehdi faces hardship from the first second he enters the world. He is paralyzed from the waist down and can only crawl and hobble. The neighborhood Mullah tells his parents that it is God's will and any attempt to correct the problem would be blasphemy. Mehdi, undeterred, learns to walk by the age of seven. Unfortunately, his challenges are far from over.
Mehdi and his family attempt to flee the growing violence in the area. The van carrying most of his immediate family is attacked, and seven of his relatives, including his mother, die. Witnessing the explosion decades later, he flashes back to this one defining moment in his life and traces his journey from poverty in Afghanistan to financial success in Canada.
In this vivid new memoir, Mehdi Akbary shows how he honors his family by trying his hardest in everything he does, as his ambition and perseverance take him on adventures all around the world.
About the Author: Mehdi Akbary was born in central Afghanistan. Despite being paralyzed from the waist down at birth, he was walking by the age of seven. Akbary suffered other hardships in his early years. When he was eleven, he lost seven members of his family to an explosion.
As a teenager, Akbary decided to travel the world. He played tennis and squash but lost his chance at a competitive career when he hurt his knee at seventeen. Since then, he has lived in over a dozen countries. Now, Akbary lives in Canada where he is an entrepreneur.
Akbary has made and lost large amounts of money in the risky world of business and investments. He lives in Barre, Ontario, Canada, with his wife and two daughters. He is the owner of a mergers-and-acquisitions firm and has used his wealth to give back to his home village in Afghanistan.
