Navid Karim-Panah, 12

(From: 12-year-old Navid Karim-Panah)

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

In the name of God, the Life Giver... I will start telling the story of my life. Since I was born, I have lived through fights and arguments. My father was in love with heroin. My mother fought with him for about 12 years so that he would quit his addiction. But my father was still in love with this habit.
For this reason, my mother separated from my father and they got a divorce. I was only three-years old at that time and my mother and father were arguing over whether we should stay with my father or my mother. But eventually my mother won and she took us from our father. But she gave away her right to all the dowry my father owed her and she kept me, my brother and my sister.

My mother, brother and sister and I rented a house in the Taleqani area [of Isfahan]. For one year, a generous man paid our rent. We had no one there other than our grandmother. Then that generous man who was paying our rent, left this world and died. My mother had no other choice -- at one time we sold our cooking-gas capsule to pay the rent.

After a while my mother got married. The other suitors only wanted my mother but not us kids. But that man married my mother. We lived comfortably for about two years. After a while we lived in a house in the Darvazeh Shiraz area. But because of the problems that we had, my step-father would stay with us for one or two months and again we would go through hard times and my mother would get highstrung more and more, day by day.

I was in second grade at that time and I loved sports a lot. I still love sports a lot and one day I would like to become the champion of the world in martial arts. Every day I dream about sports equipment. When I see kids with a basketball, I get depressed. I say to myself, I am sleeping hungry at nights, so don't even think about having a basketball. And sometimes I cry and get depressed when I see people exercising in bodybuilding gyms and ask myself, why can't I have these sports gear?

But I should give credit to my mother who handles these problems. She is very highstrung and she might hit me sometimes. The idea of running away from home gets into my head sometimes because I think if I run away, there would be one less bread-eater in this house. But I started thinking straight again and I told myself that it might break my mother's heart because she is very highstrung.

And one day I want to become the champion of the world in Tae Kwan Do because I love sports.

This was the story of my life and dreams.