If you take a quick glance at Bayezid Hossain, you can tell that he’s been through a lot in life. Wisdom seeps from his eyes, and the wrinkles on his face express all the trials and tribulations he’s endured through decades of hardship and hard-won experience. Those observations might be true, but for one thing, Bayezid Hossain is not a small old man, he is a child who was born with an extremely rare condition that makes him appear to look much older than he is.
In the image here, Bayezid is only seven-years old. While he might appear to be filled with enough wisdom to match a sage, he really is a kid just like any other kid. However, he was born with a rare disease. The disease makes the boy, who lives in Bangladesh, age prematurely eight-times faster than normal. Besides the premature aging problem, he was also stricken with Cutis Laxa, which is a condition that makes his skin hanging loosely in folds, only making the aging process appear more pronounced.
The condition does not only affect the small boy. His mother, Tripti, was devastated when she realized that her baby boy was born with a rare condition. She just wanted him to be healthy, and seeing his wrinkled skin, made her know that something was not right.
Not only was it hard for her to deal with the abnormality and rare condition, but Tripti was also just a child herself when she gave birth to her son. She was a teenage mother, and it was very hard for her to wrap her head around what was happening.
“Doctors had no idea what to do,” she said. “They said they had never seen such a baby.”
Because Bayezid looked different from other babies they’d delivered, doctors kept far away from him, afraid of the newborn child. Their ignorance meant that he did not receive the care he deserved. But the general public still treats him with scorn and distaste. Other children keep far away from him as well, and they also bully him.
Anyone who spends some time with Bayezid quickly realizes he’s a kid just like every other kid, except he looks different. That’s why the neighbors, who know him well, have nicknamed him “The Old Man.”
Although he looks different from his peers and is unlikely any child the doctors had ever seen, he is otherwise a normal boy. He may even be smarter than a lot of his classmates, proving that despite the abnormality, he has what it takes to stand out from the crowd and prove that he’s got a brain on top of his shoulders.
Besides being a center of attention, Bayezid has been called the real-life Benjamin Button. That character was born into the world an old man and “aged” backward until he became a baby and disappeared.
While Bayezid might be different, he loves life and has a smart head on his shoulders. Don’t let his different appearance fool you into thinking otherwise. He’s just as deserving.
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