12-year-old author writes about life as a refugee and making Toledo his new home

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - When you’re born somewhere coined “The Land of the Free,” like the U.S., it may be easy to forget about all the opportunities here. The story of 12-year-old refugee, turned author, Tanzeel Ahmad and his family, may serve as a good reminder.

“I was born in Pakistan. We had to leave our country because we were facing persecution because of our beliefs,” said Ahmad.

Ahmad says he and his family escaped to Thailand and stayed there for five years after leaving Pakistan.

“There were a lot of difficulties there that we had to go through, sometimes we had no food,” said Ahmad.

Tamsel Adel, Ahmad’s brother, tells 13abc they couldn’t even afford schooling until they got to the U.S., adding most of their prior learning came from YouTube.

“We actually learned English from there,” said Adel.

Ahmad says he didn’t even plan on writing a book. In fact, the possibility didn’t even cross his mind until his sixth grade teacher approached him during a writing assignment.

“It was actually an essay where you could write about anything, but I wanted to do a personal narrative. When I gave her the rough draft, she wanted me to write a book,” said Ahmad.

That’s exactly what Ahmad and his teacher did, they wrote a book together and called it “My Story of America.”

“I’m proud of him,” said Adel.

“It was amazing just sitting there writing,” said Ahmad.

“I’m proud of him and I thank god,” said Esma Adel, Ahmad’s mother.

We asked Ahmad what’s next.

The soon-to-be seventh grader at Washington Local Schools said he will continue to study hard, because one day he wants to be a doctor and he also hopes to write another book.

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