Word: reza
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...want to grow tall." That was the birthday gift Reza Garakani, 14, one of the world's shortest dwarfs, would ask of friends and relatives year after year. His parents would joke and bluff their way through the painful moment. "Maybe next year, champ!" Later in the night they would cry themselves to sleep together. Their son's wish, like that of more than 50,000 other Americans who suffer from some form of dwarfism, had long been ungrantable...
...immigrants from Iran had eagerly awaited Reza's birth in June 1974 as the symbol of their new life in the U.S. Houshang Garakani of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., a psychiatrist, had just launched his private practice in Manhattan. His wife Sadri had won entry into a master's program in educational psychology at New York University, an initial step on the path that would lead to her becoming president of the Englewood Cliffs board of education...
...hospital resident broke the news to a sedated and groggy Sadri barely a day after Reza's birth. "I have bad news. Your son is achondroplastic." He explained that the boy's long bones, those of the thighs, shins and arms, would not grow much. "It's O.K. His father is short too," she remembers answering drowsily. The doctor ran out of euphemisms. "He'll be a dwarf." She collapsed into sobs, protesting, "God, I don't deserve this. I have done nothing wrong." It was another day before the fighter in her took over, and she began to prepare...
...Reza, from early childhood, felt guilty for the pain his condition caused the family. He tried to compensate by becoming a totally undemanding, problem- $ free child, and to disarm potential tormentors with charm -- or stoicism when, as often happened, they persisted in their cruelty. "He's never cranky," says Giancalo Chersich, a classmate and friend of Reza's from early childhood...
...Reza reads a lot, especially stories about the weak using stratagems to beat the strong. An example is The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill, the tale of a battle between pushcart vendors and truck drivers that the pushcart vendors win despite apparently hopeless odds, a triumph of brain over brawn. The movie The Elephant Man brought tears to his eyes. "It reminded me of my problem. I am small, but not bad or strange." He likes Tom and Jerry cartoons. "I feel like Jerry. Tom picks on him the same way people pick on me." In a world full...