Zahi Hassan Anissi was born in 2007 in Brazil, the firstborn of his parents, from the town of Ghazieh in southern Lebanon. As the days went by, his parents noticed that their two-year-old son did not respond to being called. He has poor eye contact and interaction with those around him, and is hypersensitive to loud noises. Doctors diagnosed these symptoms as signs of autism spectrum disorder. And so the journey began.

When Zahi’s behavioral issues started to become more pronounced in his first year of school, when he would have seizures when he heard loud noises, or if there was the slightest change in his routines, the administration called his parents to ask them to find a solution. The father said those days were very difficult and painful for them and their child.

His father searched for the best doctor and the best treatment for Zahi there, but all doors were closed, so the family decided to return to Lebanon in 2014. As soon as they arrived, they started looking for a suitable center for their son, and as soon as his father heard about a special education center in Beirut, he rushed to enroll him in it, even though it was about an hour and a half away from where they lived. Zahi spent four years at the center, where he underwent behavioral, educational, communication and other therapies.

Believing in their son’s cause, the parents decided in 2018 to establish the As-Safir Center for Specialized Education in the southern Ghazieh area, and Zahi was transferred to this center. After several years of rehabilitation, he was transferred to As-Safir High School, where he was integrated into the tenth grade, and today he is on par with his friends in academic level, but not without certain difficulties in some subjects, such as Arabic language and math, where he was given materials below his grade level, and a teacher followed Zahi in class moment by moment.

The importance of integrating Zahi with his classmates, says his father Hassan: Zahi began to rely on himself for his personal needs, communicate with teachers and fellow students, and abide by the instructions given to him.

The parents’ dream was not only to develop their son academically, but also to discover his talents. They discovered his love and passion for foreign languages, and his creative ability to write fictional scenarios and imitate voices. The parents, despite all the obstacles and difficulties that did not affect their morale, began to work to develop them.

After a years-long journey of resistance, 16-year-old Zahi is fluent in English, French, Brazilian and Spanish. He writes the scripts, draws the cartoons, speaks in more than four voices, and then shoots the scene, turns it into a video and publishes it himself without anyone’s help.

Recently, Zahi decided to write his first novel. “One day, Zahi told me that he wanted to write a book, turn it into a movie and submit it to win an Oscar, so he went into his room and wrote the story in two hours,” his mother recalls. His novel, which he wrote in record time in English and in a distinctive style using his imagination, was released. His brilliance was admired by all.

The father said these words calmly: “I ask the parents of these little angels to be patient, to believe in their children’s abilities, not to be ashamed of them, to accompany them wherever they go, and to forget that there is a society watching them or looking at them, because what is the most that can happen? A tantrum in the street or the supermarket?

The hope of survival filled the parents’ hearts, so God gave them the ability to endure. They did not care about harsh storms or rough seas. Instead, they continued to march in the battle of life with patience and dedication to bring their son to the path of success and excellence, instead of cursing the circumstances in submission and surrender.

In the end, there are many stories to which history attests to the strength of their willpower to reach the top, to which is added a story of success and patience whose hero was Zahi Hassan Anisi, who became a writer whose name shines among writers and authors.