He has been hailed as Iraq’s superman: a role model for the nation’s youth who flies, glides, dives and races motorcycles. He has already made the Guinness World Records by taking part in the first skydive above Mount Everest. But last week Fareed Lafta, a Dubai-based extreme sports fanatic, returned to Baghdad to seek backing for his ultimate ambition — to be the first Iraqi in space.
“I want to represent my country, and to be one of the men like Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin, who showed with all humility what it is to be a good human,” he said.
In his badged blue flightsuit and cap, he cut a curious figure as he lobbied for support among the suits, robes and turbans in Iraq’s parliament.
“I don’t know the mechanisms, I am not a politician, and I don’t want to be. I just need help to send me into space,” he said.
Before he leaves the earth’s atmosphere, Fareed, 30, plans to become the first civilian to skydive above Baghdad since the war — a mark of the improved security environment. He has brought his rig and parachute with him and is ready to go as soon as he can get clearance from the authorities.
“Diving over a city that has suffered from war is recognized in the skydiving community as a symbol that the war is over. Because I want to say to all the world that we are now in peace, and it’s not war any more,” he said.
Fareed’s growing fame in Iraq is timely.
“Iraqi youth need a role model like Fareed to take their mind off guns and violence,” said Ammar Shaabandar of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in Iraq.
Fareed has been addicted to adventure since he was a boy.
“I would climb to the top of the cupboard in my bedroom and jump off. My mum got mad and punished me because I made a mess of my room. But it was the informal start of my career, aged five. My parents still think I’m crazy,” he said.
Raised in Baghdad, he left with his family for Dubai at the outbreak of war in 2003. There he continued a boyhood passion for motorcycle racing, quickly turning professional. He also became a scuba diving instructor and started freediving, achieving a lung-busting depth of 80m. He then took to the air, hang-gliding and paragliding to an international standard and gaining a private pilot’s license.
But it was the decision to take up skydiving that really changed his life, he said. He moved to Russia last year as part of an international team planning a record-breaking jump over the Himalayas. In Nepal they spent 21 days acclimatizing before the jump last October.
“We jumped from 9,000m, only about 500m or so above the peak of Mount Everest,” recalled Fareed, who sports the Iraqi flag on his jumpsuit. “It was amazing, truly amazing, to be soaring above Mount Everest. For a few minutes, I was emperor of world. I reached nirvana, absolute happiness.”
The kick from his Everest exploits was not enough, however. So in March, the restless Fareed returned to Russia to train as Iraq’s first cosmonaut. His fitness and skill levels meant that he completed the training in two months. Usually it takes trainees six months to learn how to breathe properly and cope with the G-forces, he said.
He specialized in space video and photography, and he wants to film while doing a walk outside the space shuttle.
For all his achievements, Iraq’s lone superman confesses to being lonely.
Iraqi girls do not want to come near a man who lives life at such a breathless pace, it seems.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS