Enchanted Soudah: a journey above

“I started very late. Sports were not yet part of our culture. I was the first and only athlete in my community. It was not part of our daily lives,” Ali recalls.

His family grew up in Soudah and had no television at home. “There were no distractions, just simple village life,” Ali recalled. Outside of school, he spent most of his time working in the wheat fields, tending the crops on his family’s land and helping his father on the farm.

“Every day we went to the valley, moving back and forth and covering long distances on foot.” Ali said these walks and hard work growing crops laid the foundation for his early childhood athletic training.

“It required both physical endurance and energy,” he said. “But as I got older I wanted to give myself a bigger challenge, so I started doing other activities and taking up sports.”

He is now a father of nine children and won his first marathon in 1985. Since then, he has encouraged his children to follow his example.