Hope
For our first My Story event of fall 2014, we had three guest speakers. Each of them told us how they arrived in America. One was a military Afghan translator who was contracted by the United States government. The other was a Syrian journalist, and the third a recent immigrant from Iraq. The latter intrigued me the most. He was a man who looked no less than 23 nor older than 27. When he lived in Iraq, life was relatively peaceful. However, a religious extremist group altered his family’s life forever. They began to threaten people to leave their neighborhoods, due to their religious affiliation. The group targeted his home, and threatened his family via phone. The phone message essentially told them to leave their home. At first, the family decided to not let the group dictate their life. However, his father disappeared, and died because of what the group did to him. As a result of his father’s death, he decided for his family to leave (he was now the oldest male of the household). Right from the moment his father died, you could tell he felt great responsibility for his family. When they fled their home, they stayed with relatives for a short bit. Yet, he wanted to go to Turkey so he could save money for his family’s new living arrangements. While he resided in Turkey, it dawned upon him to apply to America. After five years of waiting in agony, he finally was granted entry to the States. While this is a brief explanation of a critical period of time in his life, you can get a glimpse of what it was like to leave one’s country for a loved one. Currently, he resides in the States, but without his family. He hopes to bring them to the States, especially his mother. Overall, I understood three aspects of his life: pain, frustration, and hope. His pain came from dealing with his father’s death, and the aftermath of not only his own emotional pain, but that which comes with trying to be strong for his family. Then, while he awaited entry to the States, great frustration built within him. Lastly, his story ends with hope. The hope to reunite with his family in America, and finish his degree in higher education. If it weren’t for events like My Story, putting a face to displacement is relatively hard. But because of this event, we did so, and will continue to.
