An Afghan, who thought naming his son after the then Republican Party presidential candidate now US President, Donald Trump would bring him good fortune, has regretted “It has not.”
When his wife gave birth to their third child in a tiny village in rural Afghanistan, Asadullah Poya said “I had become inspired after reading a Dari translation of Trump’s How To Get Rich book.”
“I thought, ‘This is a great man’. So, when my baby came into the world in August 2016, I saw that the boy had unusually blond hair. I named him Donald Trump, hoping it would bring me good fortune. It has not,” Poya said.
Instead, members of the beleaguered family are facing death threats and had been forced to move their house to Kabul.
Associated Press reported that the relatives and neighbours were furious that he broke with tradition and gave his son a non-Muslim name. They have received death threats online. Mr Poya’s own parents were furious that he had given their grandchild a non-Muslim name. The imam of the village mosque devoted an entire Friday sermon to the matter, calling the name an insult.
Eighteen-month-old Donald Trump’s, identification document is displayed by his father at his house in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, March 15, 2018.
“Every day, the situation gets worse. Every day in the house, when I was calling my son Trump, my father got angrier and angrier, until finally my father couldn’t tolerate it anymore.”
It was then that Mr Poya decided to pack up his family, leave his teaching job and the family farm, and move to the Kabul.
Mr. Poya and his children, Donald Trump, his older sister Fatima and brother Karim, now live in a simple one-storey house that they share with their landlord. But Donald Trump is not liked in the capital either.
He said a local government official in the district where he registered his son’s name posted the identity card on Facebook. This led to dozens of people commenting on the boy’s name. Mr Poya said he and his wife had to block their Facebook pages after they received hundreds of angry comments and threats.
On Thursday, five neighbours approached the landlord and demanded he should throwout Poya, calling him an ‘infidel’ for not giving his son a Muslim name.
Others have accused Poya of naming his son, Donald Trump in order to improve his chances of gaining asylum in the United States.
Mr Poya insists he does not want to leave the country, and that he never intended his son’s name to be in the news.
“If Donald Trump wants to change his name when he is older,” his father says he is free to do so.
“But now it is my decision, and I have decided it is Trump.”
Poya says he would like to meet Mr Trump and ‘talk to him and tell him please bring peace and stability for Afghanistan. He is the president. He can do it.’
Undeterred by the controversy his son’s famous name has ignited, Poya said that if he has a fourth child and it is a girl, he would like to name her after President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.
