You may be aware of the 13-yr old Qatari boy Ghanim Al Muftah. Ghanim is very popular in Qatar and has over a million followers on Instagram alone. He is a local hero. Ghanim is not only an inspiration for people with disabilities but also to people who are physically fit.
Ghanim has also featured in the ‘My Incredible Story’ as a youth ambassador that was launched by the Organising Committee to highlight the obstacles and challenges faced by differently abled individuals.
In addition to being an aspiring paralympian, Ghanim has already established himself as a philanthropist and an entrepreneur. Ghanim runs a charity, a sports club and has also opened an ice-cream shop. Ghanim was honoured at the ‘Arab Social Media Summit’ last year with a Youth Award for his immensely popular Instagram account.
Today we’re going to tell you about another such resilient person, who hasn’t given up on life in the face of the most testing circumstances. Instead, he chose to grab the challenges by the horns and tame them with his sheer determination. His name is Naveed Iqbal.
Naveed is a Pakistani citizen, who has been residing in KSA - Jeddah since he was 2 years old. Naveed is now 29 years old and the only son of his family. His father has been working in Saudi Electric company - Sec since the past 35 years.
Life was good for Naveed, until one fateful day in the year 2008, he met an accident on the Makkah-Jeddah highway.
“My friend was driving my car. The car rolled upside down 5-6 times. I lost my sensation on the spot, my lungs had collapsed, forcing the doctors to put me on a ventilator for a month, I had a tracheostomy tube in my neck for a year. I could only move my right hand and that too slightly. In a way, the accident had left me completely paralysed”, says Naveed.
“It was a horrifying experience and I can’t thank my family enough, who have done more than I can ever repay while taking care of me, for more than a year my family used to turn me on my sides by placing pillows around me”, Naveed recalls.
However, despite these trying circumstances Naveed didn’t accept his fate lying down and surrender. With his sheer determination to be self-reliant and do at least something productive he has made profound changes to his life.
“Although, I am still paralyzed, my trunk is not stable, I can’t sit straight. I have no control over my fingers. I do have urine infection and bedsore issues. I don't feel anything below my chest even today, but I can say that I am happy and I exercise daily, I have a life to live, I don’t have anything to lose”, Naveed says in a determined tone.
Following the accident Naveed took up web-design and coding to do something productive and credits his friend Sana for giving him the confidence that he can do it.
“Sana was a very good student at the University and she motivated me that I can learn coding, she made me have faith in myself. Sana taught me the basics of coding such as HTML, CSS. Following which I learnt CSS3, Javascript, HTML5 and jQuery on my own”, says Naveed.
“It only takes me 4-5 lines of code to finish any web theme”, Naveed revealed.
Naveed’s hard work and determination has given him the confidence to market his coding skills, his work can be checked here. He started BloggerTheme9 in 2013 and offers various web theme templates for purchase.
“I would just like to say that people need to ignore negative people and stay with positive ones only. Its best to stay alone rather than having a company of negative ones. You can do anything in this world till the time there's no one to tell you 'that you can't do it'”, Naveed added.
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