JEDDAH, 3 December — “I’ve come to challenge my compatriot Azad Khan Masood, whom your newspaper featured on Friday as the world’s tallest man. He’s only the world’s tallest liar.”
With these words, Nasir Ahmed Soomro, 24, marched into the Arab News office last night.
Like Masood, Soomro is Pakistani. And he too claims to be the tallest man in the world.
“I’ve sought recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records,” said Soomro, who hails from Shikarpur, Sindh province.
Soomro, who has performed Umrah and is preparing to visit the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, said the Guinness Book had kept the judgment on the world’s tallest person on hold as they have received conflicting claims from a South African (8’), Tunisian (7’ 8”) and a Somali (probably shorter than the other two).
“I’ve been flown here courtesy of Saudi Arabian Airlines,” he said, flashing the tickets issued to his family. “I’ve toured 15 countries since 1998 and have been mobbed wherever I went,” he added.
Masood had taken up a sports officer’s job in PIA for a brief period.
“I replaced the world’s tallest person, the Pakistani Alam Channa, after his death nearly three years ago. In fact, the government sent me as an unofficial ambassador to the World Cup cricket tournament in 1999 when I watched the semifinals and the final in England,” he recalls.
“I don’t know whether I will grow taller,” he said. “However, doctors stated that I’m still growing and will probably exceed my present height.”
Soomro is 7’ 8” tall, the same height claimed by Masood, but somewhat thinner. Soomro weighs 110 kg, as against Masood’s 150 kg.
Soomro, who sleeps on the floor and sports size 18 shoes, said there was a standing instruction from the police in his native Shikarpur and Karachi, where he presently resides, not to venture out at weekends. Police have difficulty in controlling the crowd that inevitably follows him in shopping malls and other public places.
The son of a mason, Masood lives with his mother. He is the second eldest among three sisters and three brothers. He is the only person with extraordinary height in his family.
He is accompanied by a six-member team, which includes manager Ghulam Abbas Jagirani and Shabbir Khan Joyo.
Soomro during his four-month visit to Taiwan recalled his meeting with Taichung’s Guinness World of Records Museum President Steve Day.
Day is quoted to have said that the tallest man ever recorded was Robert Pershing Wadlow, born in 1918 in the US and died in 1940. When last measured, he was found to be 8’ 9” tall.
Soomro attended several charitable events along with his elder brother Zubair Ahmed Soomro while in Taiwan. “I’ve visited Britain, France and Japan, but I was impressed by the economic prosperity and kindness of people in Taiwan,” he added.
Taichung’s Guinness World of Records Museum presented him a certificate of gratitude.
Soomro is always elegantly dressed. “Most of my suits and shirts have been given to me by business houses,” he says.
