Refugee Al Khalifa finishes last but says “I have my life back”

Anas Al Khalifa, a member of the Paralympics Refugee Team, finished last in his two canoe races on Thursday but still felt like one of the biggest winners in Tokyo.

“I’m very proud of myself,” Al Khalifa said. “I definitely have my life back.”

He was completely soaked after the races and, in spite of numerous interviews, he was desperate to get back to his room and his cell phone.

Al Khalifa wanted to try to reach his family in Syria to know if they had been able to watch his races.

“It’s hard because we often don’t have electricity or internet in Syria,” said the refugee, who now lives in Halle an der Saale in Germany.

“The last time I had contact with them was a week ago.”

The 28-year-old fled Syria’s civil war and ended up in Germany.

Al Khalifa got a job but in 2018 he fell off a roof while installing solar panels and was paralysed.

He then heard his brother had been killed in Syria.

His life had turned into a tragedy.

But then he met Bulgarian Olympic canoe medallist Ognyana Dusheva, who took him under her wing in Halle.

Quickly he developed a love for the canoe and qualified as part of the six-person refugee team for the Tokyo Paralympics.

“I’ve seen a lot of people here who had it worse than me, and they keep fighting,” he said. “When I see those people, I have to keep fighting, too.”

He wants to compete at Paris 2024, maybe for the refugee team or maybe for Germany.

In the long term though, he hopes to return to Syria.

“When the war is over, I want to go back because I was born and raised there. And because that’s where my family is.”