I'm a chess player; I play chess.

No matter the obstacles that I will face, no matter how much you try to blacklist me, no matter what you do to try to ruin my career or slander my reputation—these difficult times... have only invigorated me even more to reach the top of chess. There will be a day when I will be the best chess player in the world.

Suddenly, I don’t know how to explain it, the chess pieces seemed to come alive for me. It was like I could now see the chess pieces moving on the board on their own. I started beating everybody. I, the slowest of the slow, had now gone something like a hundred games without losing. I could do no wrong. It was magical how the pieces spoke to me, showing me where to move.

Being the undisputed world champion is a relief. We instituted a unified chess title, I am the absolute world champion.

To become a world chess champion.

Someone finally understood all the “hell” that I’d been through since a child when I’d first tried to understand language. And yet in other forms of communications, like painting, sculpture, music, math, problem-solving, and chess, I’d been very good. In fact, in high school, once I learned how to play chess, I’d play lightning-fast, intuitively seeing all these different possibilities at the same time, and I’d won well over a hundred chess games without losing a single game. And that included beating some of our faculty members who thought that they were very good at chess.

My life’s work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

I love chess, but it's the height of decadence.

"I have so many achievements"

I am not some sort of freak. I might be very good at chess but I'm just a normal person.

Since childhood I had treasured the sublime study of chess, the swim through ever-deepening layers of complexity. I could spend hours at a chessboard and stand up from the experience on fire with insight about chess, basketball, the ocean, psychology, love, art. The game was exhilarating and also spiritually calming. It centered me. Chess was my friend.

Chess is the gymnasium of the mind

At the age of eight, my dream was to become a world champion; and now I've achieved that title. I've achieved it not only for myself, but achieved it for the British people and also the Pakistani community - and all the Muslims in the country. It's a great feeling, a dream come true for me and Insha'Allah in the future, I want to achieve more things like this.

A few months back Major Terry and his pet student, Drosen, had brought in a guy from San Diego to play chess with me. I’d had no idea that he was rated and was really good, so I’d beaten his ass real fast. He’d gotten all mad at Major Terry and Drosen for not telling him that I was as good as I was. He’d accused them of setting him up to publicly embarrass him. I’d had no idea what the big fuss was all about. I hadn’t even realized that there was such a thing as tournaments and championships for chess just like we had in wrestling. I’d quit playing chess at school after that incident. Now I only played at home with my dad’s older friends, Roberto and Salvador Montoya, who’d both been very good chess players in Mexico City. I beat Roberto almost all the time, but his older brother Salvador beat me pretty regularly. And I’d recently been told that Salvador had been so good that he’d once gone to Cuba to play and that he’d come in third among some of the best international players in the world.