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For an Afghan boy, Muhammad Ali was the 'man of steel'

For an Afghan boy, Muhammad Ali was the 'man of steel'

Growing up as an Afghan immigrant in California, there were only a few names that were instantly recognizable in my family.

There were the titans of the Cold War-era politics that had managed to turn our country into one of its main events — Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, our prime minister; the U.S. president, Ronald Reagan; Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union.

Then there were the Afghan and Iranian pop stars, whose music filled our house and our car rides to school — Ahmad Zahir and Googoosh. As the ‘80s and ‘90s wore on, it was the groundbreaking music videos of Michael and Janet Jackson and Madonna that first defined Western culture to my siblings...

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