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NYC-2000-04-16
Mohammad, who's Kurdish, suffers through the Gulf War bombings in Iraq, and then criss-crosses the Middle East and Europe, until he finally finds a home in the U.S.

No Place to Call Home

By Mohammad Ali

All my life, my family has been searching for a home. We lived in Baghdad, Iraq, during the Gulf War, with bombs falling around us. Then we had to sneak out of the country, into Jordan, where my father was not allowed to work. Finally, we tried to find a home in Europe-but ended up almost being sent to our death.

My name is Mohammad Ali and I am not a boxer. I come from the Middle East and I am Kurdish.

The Kurds are an ethnic group like the Chinese or Dominicans, but unlike those groups, we don't have a country to call our own. There are more than 25 million Kurds, and we mostly live in the mountainous parts of Turkey, Iran and Iraq. This area used to be called Kurdistan, but before World War I, we lost our land.

Ever since then we've been fighting to get it back. In the 1920s, we were promised our own state in Turkey, but Turkey didn't give us anything. Then the Kurds in Iran were given a state called Mahabad, but the Shah took it back after a year. The same thing happened again and again to the 4 million Kurds in Iraq.

The Kurds are fighting for our own country because we have our own languages and culture, and we want to be able to live according to our customs. But the countries Kurds have lived in are racist, and they have not granted us equal rights.

In Iraq, it was illegal to have a Kurdish school, or to teach your kids how to write and read Kurdish. Many Kurds have been killed because we don't want to renounce who we are.

Welcome in My Homeland

When I was young, I went to Kurdistan three times. You cannot imagine how beautiful the place was. The house my family rented had a small orchard with different fruit trees, and a small stream ran around the house.

When I went to Kurdistan for the first time, I said some words in Kurdish, and they welcomed me by saying "Farr Mu," which means welcome. I felt that I belonged to this place.

But instead of being able to live in Kurdistan, my family had to move from Kuwait to Iraq and then to Jordan. We were always looking for a home. Everywhere I lived, I felt I did not belong.

Sometimes I feel ashamed when people ask me, "Where are you from?" I just say to them that I do not have a country.

Looking for a Good Life

I was born in Kuwait and so were my parents, but I never felt that it was my country. The people speak Arabic and not my language, Kurdish.

Once I asked my father, "Why we are in this country and not in our native country? They do not speak our language." My father told me how my grandfather moved from Kurdistan to Kuwait more than 40 years ago because Kurdistan is very poor. In Kuwait, my family had a good life.

But my father used to visit relatives in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, and found that life there was even better, so in 1989 we moved.

Trapped in a War Zone

Iraq is north of Kuwait and south of Turkey. Like Kuwait, it is a country rich with oil. Baghdad was beautiful. My house was big, and outside we had a garden with the beautiful smell of jasmine flowers.

My parents' faces were so happy that, if you saw them, you would know they were thinking, "Wow, this will be our country." They dreamed we could make Iraq our home.

Our lives were good until Iraq started a war with Kuwait because Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader, wanted their oil fields. To get their homeland back, Kuwait called for help from the U.S., and the Gulf War began in 1990.

It only lasted a few months, but in Iraq, people suffered a lot from the bombs and from not having food, electricity or medicine for a long time after the bombing stopped.

Bombs Fell Day and Night

At the time of the war I was about 7 years old. The U.S. was bombing Iraq in the morning and in the night. My house used to shake every time a bomb hit the ground, and when the house shook more, that meant that the bomb was closer to where I lived.

The first attack was on the electricity building and the power went down. For the rest of the year, we had no power.

Everything was scary. I used to stay home all the time, sometimes inside the garage or the garden. It felt like jail. I used to sleep when the sun set and wake up at sunrise because we had no lights.

Sometimes I used to watch the sky from the garden and see the lights. I would count the many big lights and think about how my father said, "The big lights come from a plane when it explodes." And I was happy as a kid seeing the American planes exploding.

Praying for Peace

I didn't agree with Hussein, because we had lived in Kuwait and had relatives and friends there, but I was so mad at the U.S. I prayed to God to stop the war and the killing of innocent people.

During the war, and still today, most countries stopped trading with Iraq, so there was very little food or medicine in the country. Most of the hospitals closed and food was so expensive.

People could not work, so they sold their cars and things from their houses. Still, they were starving. My father had a hard time making money to buy food. He had difficult days when he had to go out in the morning and come home late at night.

At the time, Iraq's money had no value, and when you went to buy food you had to take a big bag of money. That was dangerous because it was likely somebody would rob you. At the stores, most of the time they only took dollars, even though I heard that if the police caught you with dollars they would cut off your hands.

Hunger and Violence

My father no longer wanted to stay in Iraq, but my mother and relatives did not want us to leave. They thought things would get better.

Life only got worse. People were dying for no reason, and brothers killed each other for some food. Kids would be playing and having a little fight and their parents would come out with guns and shoot each other.

One day I was standing next to my aunt's car making sure that no one would steal the wheels, but in the time my aunt went out and back, the two wheels on the other side were gone. I was shocked and ashamed of myself for not seeing the thief, but at the same time thankful to God that I wasn't hurt.

In those days, there were no feelings left in me. Life felt like a dark sky. It was an unforgivable time when rich people became poor and poor people became invisible.

The Government Was Killing My People

After the war, Iraq was a powerless country, and the Kurds were able to take back much of their land in the North. Their land is the most beautiful part of Iraq-green and mountainous. Many people go on vacation there, and it is where all kinds of food are grown.

If the Kurds were to get back all of their land, it would be much of Iraq, so Saddam Hussein wanted to stop them. He was so mad, he began killing any Kurds, whether they lived in the North or in the city, like my family.

The government killed more than 15,000 Kurds. And I felt a lot of hate in school from friends. I had felt that Iraq was my country, but my feelings changed when the people and the Iraqi government showed their feelings.

At that time, I wished that I had no feelings. I did not want to see these things. Then I felt that I am not Iraqi, but a Kurd.

Sneaking Out

Saddam Hussein also made a law to make all the Kurds leave Baghdad and go to the South and West-to the desert. It was dangerous and very poor there, so my father said we had to leave Iraq. At the time, the only place Iraqis could go was Jordan. We had to pay a lot to go to Jordan and we had to sneak out.

We were supposed to let the Iraqi government take our house and our things when we moved to the South, but instead, my father sold everything we had and we moved between relatives for six months before we left.

I became homeless and wanted by the government at the same time. I really felt sick with fear-moving a lot, remembering the beautiful house my family had, and being a stranger every place I went.

A New Country

It was a long way to Jordan, more than a day by bus along a highway surrounded by black rock.

But once we got there, the first few months were like heaven. My parents gave me almost everything I wanted. I was always with my two cousins and my brother, going around the city.

My life was cool, but my parents did not feel the same way. They wanted to get out of Jordan because we were being discriminated against.

My father was not allowed to work and I was not allowed to go to school. And for people who weren't citizens, life was dangerous.

Living in Fear

Around the house where I lived, every Thursday people closed the street and sold all kinds of animals. People also used to sell clothes and food illegally in the street, and most of them were Egyptian and Palestinian.

The police were so racist. When they would catch people, they would take the clothes and money, and if they weren't Jordanian citizens, sometimes they would beat the men so bad that their whole body bled. At the end, they locked them up-and sent them back to their own country.

It was not easy for me to see that. I was afraid to do anything wrong, because it was likely I'd end up in the hospital like the others.

Leaving Illegally

We couldn't afford to stay in Jordan because we were not allowed to work, and if Iraqi passport holders stayed for more than six months, they had to pay a little each day.

A lot of Kurdish families went back to Iraq because they had no more money left. But we couldn't go back to Iraq, either. My father wanted to go to Europe because he used to call his friends, who described how good their life was.

My father got us fake visas and we did not tell anyone that we were leaving until the last minute. We got on the plane so easy-they only checked for the visa and the tickets and then we went under the metal detectors-and I felt like I was on top of the world. I was wishing for a new world where everything would be perfect.

Stuck in a Refugee Camp

When we landed in Hungary, we went to customs, and the man took our passports and then started to look in every bag. They made us wait for about an hour, and then they took my father, my uncle and my father's friend to a room.

I did not know why they took them, but when my father came out, he looked down. When I saw him, I knew that they'd found out the visas were fake. My legs were heavy; I could not stand. I hoped it was just a dream and that they would wake me up before it became real.

Everyone felt mad, angry and disappointed. My father did not give up. He tried to deal with them and give them money to let us in, but they pushed it away. They put us in a refugee camp and kept us there for 21 days. It was like a jail, eating your lunch, then going back to your room or watching the TV.

Running Out of Options

One day, a car came to the camp and they told us, "Take everything and go." We thought they were going to let us into Hungary, but instead, they took us back to the airport. They took our stuff, but we did not want to go. Then they brought more security men with big dogs, so we had no choice.

We went to Egypt but did not leave the airport. My father called one of his friends, who got us tickets on a Swissair flight. Almost half of my father's money was gone, but he gave money to the workers in the airport so that they would not tell.

We thought we could go to Switzerland, but right at the door to the plane, they stopped us. The pilot knew that there were eight Iraqi passport holders getting ready to board, and because a plane had recently been hijacked by Iraqi people, he did not let us on. He said, "If you want them on the plane, bring another pilot, because I am not taking off."

Ripping Up Our Passports

Finally, we ended up in Yugoslavia, but we couldn't get in there either, so the same day we went back to Egypt. By then, we had no choices left and no money.

We had heard that if you ripped up your passport, they could not return you to your country, and you could be taken in as a refugee. So when the plane was in the air, my father's friend told him to go and rip the passports and throw them in the toilet. My father said that he could not get up. My father's friend took the passports and ripped them himself before we landed in Greece.

At the airport, we waited to be the last family. A man came and asked us, "Where are your passports?" We did not know how to answer him, but we showed him with our hands that we ripped them up.

Handcuffed Like a Criminal

He suddenly screamed and officers came and searched us. I felt like a criminal, and they even put handcuffs on me. I was only 12, but I felt suddenly like an old person trapped in a young person's body, dealing with the same pressure as adults.

They took us into a room with other people who had similar problems. It was filled with people and it smelled so bad. The bathroom doors were open, the toilets were broken, and the people would eat and throw their garbage in the room; nobody would clean it up.

We were all scared and feeling powerless. My father called the United Nations to help us. We were hoping they would let us stay in Greece, but in the end, they sent us back to Jordan.

When we got there, we were so afraid they would send us to Iraq because we didn't have our Jordanian passports.

We had broken the law when we left Iraq, and we had heard that people like us who were sent back there had been killed.

I was so scared getting off the plane in Jordan that this would be the final chapter of my life's book, and the end would be in Iraq.

At customs, my father asked them to call the United Nations to help us, but they did not answer him. Instead, a man said, "An Iraqi car is coming to take you all." We were all thinking how we were going to kill ourselves before we'd let the Iraqi government do that.

But then, a while later, a man came from the UN to talk to us. We told him everything that happened to us since we left Iraq a year before, and at first he did not believe us. He said, "That was a good story you made up." But when he called the countries that we had gone to, they told him that we had been there.

After a few days, he told us the UN would take us as refugees, but first we had to wait. We stayed for about three weeks in the Jordan airport. The men slept in a waiting room, and my mother, sister and youngest brother slept in a small room in a woman's bathroom.

Going to America

Finally, they let us back into Jordan, but kept us guarded in a hotel for our protection. The Iraqi government was looking for my father, and we were still afraid we'd be killed.

When they felt we were safe and left us to live on our own, it was like being reborn. My life once again started from scratch.

The UN gave us money every month, because my father was not allowed to work, but it was still not enough. We were very poor. I could never have imagined that all this could happen to my family, but I thought, "It is Allah's choice to test his slaves."

The UN arranged for me to go to school. I was happy because I'd been out of school for almost two years.

A few weeks after I finished the year, my family was accepted to go to the United States. We were so excited. Everybody in Jordan said to us, "You will have the best life."

People in the Middle East were always talking about America. They said that when you come here, the government will give you a house and money every month. They said you won't have to work, only go to school and have a lot of time with your relatives. I believed them. I was excited to move here and make America my home.

When we first got here, though, my aunt told us how hard our lives would be. My aunt had been living here for six or seven years, and she told us that when she first came, her family had nothing.

Like most immigrants, it took her family time to earn a good life. Now, she has a nice apartment, a car and enough money to send to their children who are living in Jordan.

Shocked by Our Apartment

The first few days, we stayed with my aunt. I went to Manhattan and saw all the high buildings, and it was amazing. I admired the reflection of the sun on the glass towers. I also used to walk around my aunt's neighborhood. Seeing all the beautiful houses and new cars made me feel that it would only be a matter of time until I could have a good life like everyone else in America.

I knew that nobody could get everything they wanted in the first year. But when we moved into the apartment my aunt found for us, we were shocked.

Our apartment wasn't very big. It was old and dirty, and full of mice and cockroaches. We slept without blankets and pillows, taking stuff from the garbage to the house, like an old TV, a carpet and some other furniture. I used to take stuff when nobody was in the street, because I didn't want people to see me taking things from the garbage.

We Felt Lost

My mom began saying she wanted to go back. My dad was quiet.

My aunt used to come every day and tell us this is only the beginning, it will get better. It was a big shock for my family to be living even worse than we were in Jordan, though.

We felt lost. Jordan was a little better because we knew the how to speak Arabic and used to get money from the UN. But here, we had no money.

My father found work driving for a car service in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He used to come back at midnight so tired that he would only eat and then sleep until he had to go to work. Sometimes, I didn't see him all day.

My mother did not work because my younger brother was only 3. Besides, my father did not want her to work, because in the Middle East, the men don't want their wives to work. It was hard to get by, but we didn't want to give up our culture.

Without a Dollar in My Pocket

I used to go to school without a dollar in my pocket. It's not a good feeling when you don't have money and your friends ask you to come and buy lunch with them. I used to make up excuses why I couldn't go.

After a few months, my family got food stamps. Still, my relatives in Jordan used to call us every week to send them money. My parents used to send something when we had it, but most of the time we were too poor. Our relatives didn't believe that we didn't have money. They think that if you are in America, you are rich.

When school started, I was in 8th grade. My first week, I was scared. I did not know what to do. I thought, "How am I going to make them understand me?" The first week I was like a statue in class. I knew only a few words, like "yes," "no," and "English." When the students or the teachers used to ask me questions I used to say "No English."

My ESL class was good, though.

In my class, only my sister and a friend from Syria could speak Arabic. I had no choice but to practice my English, and within a year, it had become my third language. I didn't speak it perfectly, but America became a better place once I could speak English. I made friends, and felt less like an outsider.

But I didn't feel completely accepted. I found out that there are stereotypes about Muslims. Some people think that Muslims like to kill and that we're all dangerous; we're not.

Some of my friends used to ask me questions like, "Do you think it's OK to kill? Did you kill Jewish people? Did you bomb somebody?" I had to say, "No, no."

Sometimes I would feel mad, but I think people like to learn about others and what country they are from, so I'd just answer.

Learning About American Culture

I also learned about other people. I never knew that Christianity had divisions like Catholic and Protestant. And Latino people-I'd never heard of them. I was really surprised to find so many Americans speak Spanish.

I didn't want to pick up some things from this culture, though, like the way kids in this country don't listen to their parents. It seems like the kids here have more power than the adults, because parents and teachers aren't supposed to hit their kids. If they do hurt them, the government may take the kid from the parents, or the teacher will get fired.

In the Middle East, the parents hit the kids. (If the kids called the police, they'd say you did something bad and you deserve it.)

If you have an attitude at school, teachers will hit you. The schools there say they're teaching both education and behavior. I think that's why kids there are mostly good in school-they stop misbehaving after getting hit a lot.

Here, when you do something wrong in school, they take you to the detention room and make you copy some words like, "I promise I won't do it again," then go back to class like you didn't do anything. I had friends who misbehaved just to get out of class.

Many kids here treat the teachers like a friend, but in the Middle East, the teachers seem more like fathers. Parents used to like that-the school was like a second home.

Another thing that bothers me is that when a kid gets to 18, their parents don't always have a say in their lives anymore, and the kids usually leave their parents. In the Middle East, most kids live at home until they get married, and then they live either with the husband or wife's parents.

Losing My Religion

I don't want to give up those aspects of my culture. But immigrant kids who came when they were young seem much more eager to become American.

Often, they don't know how to speak their parents' language, and they don't hold onto their home cultures. They say, "I'm American, that's it."

Even though I live here, I want to follow my own culture and my own religion. I feel glad to speak my own language at home, and read Arabic newspapers, watch Arabic TV and listen to Kurdish music.

I hate that the schools don't teach the Muslim religion. I used to take a religion class every day growing up. Now, I feel that I'm losing what I learned about the Koran and about the history of my people, even though I study it at home.

And I don't pray five times each day like I used to. Every Muslim has to pray five times a day from the age of 7 until the last day of her life. In the Middle East, we used to tell the teacher when it was time, and go to a prayer room. Here, I know I couldn't leave the classroom for 15 minutes each morning and afternoon.

I Want to Make My Parents Proud

Being away from your country makes it harder to keep your culture.

My parents warn me to follow my own culture and the good parts of America, like having a good education.

My parents talk to me about wrong and right, but what they really want is for their kids to have a better life than the life they had.

My father always talks to me about the different jobs that he has had. In Iraq he was an architect, but his jobs here have been awful.

He always says, "Do you want to be a dish washer in a hotel and feel the pain in your hands, or do you want to be a lawyer?" Or, "Do you want to work in a car service and be afraid all the time that you'll be killed, or do you want to be a doctor and help people?"

Last year, I started working in a flea market. It is really hard. I get up at 5 a.m. and come back home at 7 p.m. I understand how people with no education feel when they work 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Missing the Middle East

Every year our lives here have changed and gotten better. The first year I always felt like an outsider. After that, I stopped thinking so much about going back. Every year, the countries in the Middle East seem to get worse, and I started to think there's nowhere else I could live.

My father wants to stay in America for the rest of his life because he is sure that this country is stable and he is not going to lose everything; in Iraq, he lost everything he had.

I intend to go to college in America, but every day I think about moving to the Middle East and staying for the rest of my life.

I think all the countries in the Middle East are out of control, though. The person in power is often whoever killed the last president and took his seat. And they don't have the education to take care of the country.

I think the situation in the Middle East won't improve until we stop having dictators, and begin using the same system as the United States, like the Supreme Court, Congress and an elected president, so no one will have too much power.

Will I Ever Have a Country?

Still, I usually want to go back to Iraq or Kuwait. I can't move back to Iraq because we broke the law, and we don't have passports, but I think that we could go back to visit when we get American citizenship.

I really want to live in the north of Iraq where there are Kurds. Even if it's not our own country, it's the best we have.

I hope in the future that I will have a country, but I know that Kurdistan won't be a country unless the United States were to force the Middle East to give land back to the Kurds. I don't think that will happen, though.

I believe the U.S. does not care if the Kurds have a country, because if this country wanted to get involved, it could, just like when the army intervened in Kuwait and Kosovo.

So I think I will never have a land I can truly call my own.

"Think About It":
Prompts for discussion and/or writing:

—What part of Mohammad's story can you relate to the most? Why?

—After reading Mohammad's account of the Persian Gulf War, from the perspective of someone suffering the bombing, do you have a different view of that war? Why or why not?

—Mohammad felt Iraq was his country until he was treated badly by the people there. Has anything ever happened to make you question or change your mind about your own country, either the U.S. or the country you originally came from? What happened and how did you change your mind? Do you still feel that way? Why or why not?

—Before Mohammad comes to the U.S., he thinks life will be easy here. But when he arrives, he and his family have to struggle very hard to survive. If you are an immigrant, was your experience similar to Mohammad's? How did the reality of America differ from the way you imagined it? If you are not an immigrant, why do you think so many people from foreign countries think life is easy here?

—Because he's from the Middle East, Mohammad gets stereotyped as a terrorist by some of his American classmates. In what ways have you been stereotyped? How has it affected you?

—Mohammad likes many things about the U.S., but he also dislikes many things about this country and wants to hold on to his Middle Eastern culture. What aspects of this country do you like the most? What aspects of this country do you dislike or want to change? Do you ever think of living someplace else? Why or why not?