DEVELOPING Person on fire outside Trump's hush money trial rushed away on a stretcher
A person who was on fire in a park outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place has been rushed away on a stretcher.
The room is freezing cold. There’s a gauzy curtain over the window that lets in soft morning light. The street outside feels forbidden and hostile. If not dangerous.
And now to the story of Anzorat Wali.
The empty room is where she and her older sister Nilab practise taekwondo. Anzorat has a black belt, and a fistful of medals that jingle. She can’t remember exactly how many golds she’s won, but it’s a lot.
And it all stopped the day the Taliban arrived. The shattering of dreams. The end of freedom. A life that now feels hopeless, and she’s only 19.
“I don’t want something big,” she told me, in a soft voice and confident English, sometimes smiling, sometimes unbearably sad. “It’s our right to do something for ourselves, to fight for ourselves.”
They practise at home because all the gyms are closed to Afghan women and girls. Taekwondo has become a world reserved for boys only. Boys have rights. Girls don’t.
“Women’s rights mean nothing to them,” she says, a teenager’s lament that comes across more as weariness, than anger. “We’re getting worse day by day, just sitting at home, eating and sleeping. Nothing else.”
The two of them used to train by jogging around the neighborhood. Everybody knew about the Wali sisters. The Taliban took that away. Now, they rarely go outside, trapped in their home by fear.
“I had lots of hope and dreams,” says Anzorat, her voice trailing off into tears. “We have nothing now. Our rights, our freedom, our jobs. I mean we have nothing here.”
She uses that word a lot. “Nothing.” In two syllables, it sums up a young state of mind, adrift in despair.
She took up taekwondo for the purest of reasons: to learn to fight. Years of training have given her strong, firm legs and a forceful kick.
“It was necessary for any girl to know fighting for self defence in Afghanistan.”
But then she started winning competitions, and out of that grew her biggest dream, to compete at the Olympics. This is a young woman never been satisfied winning silver or bronze.
“What an athlete wants is to do something for myself, for my country,” wiping away more tears without embarrassment.
Her family is Tajik, which is not a good thing in Afghanistan these days. It was a Tajik leader who resisted the longest against the Taliban.
Her brother Milad worked for the foreign affairs ministry. Her sister and her mother held good positions in other departments. They were untroubled and comfortable. The Taliban took that away too. Now they’re all jobless.
“Life was so good,” he says. “Just a normal life. There were no problems.”
Until a beating from the Taliban put him in the hospital. He was waiting in line to apply for passports. Relatives in Vancouver are trying to get them to Canada.
“I felt just a small pain, but after one night it got worse. I told my family this is going to kill me.”
He is immensely proud and protective of his younger sister. As happens when somebody close to you achieves astonishing success.
“She was in love with her sport,” he says. “And when I saw her, she had a happy look on her face.”
The look her face gives off now is more like sorrow. She returns to the words that slip out of her mouth like a moan.
“We have nothing now. We have nothing.”
A person who was on fire in a park outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place has been rushed away on a stretcher.
Soulful gospel artist Mandisa, a Grammy-winning singer who got her start as a contestant on 'American Idol' in 2006, has died, according to a statement on her verified social media. She was 47.
Scottish comedian Samantha Hannah was working on a comedy show about finding a husband when Toby Hunter came into her life. What happened next surprised them both.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
One day after a Montreal police officer fired gunshots at a suspect in a stolen vehicle, senior officers were telling parliamentarians that organized crime groups are recruiting people as young as 15 in the city to steal cars so that they can be shipped overseas.
Police in Sault Ste. Marie charged a 22-year-old man with animal cruelty following an attack on a dog Thursday morning.
The Body Shop Canada is exploring a sale as it struggles to get its hands on enough inventory to keep up with "robust" sales after announcing it would file for creditor protection and close 33 stores.
Ontario Provincial Police have landed a suspect following a fishy theft in Beachburg, Ont.
The U.S.’s Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a video that appears to show unauthorized personnel in the cockpit of a charted Colorado Rockies flight to Toronto.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.