“My Life”

FROM IRAQ TO JORDAN
One day, when I was six years old,
I was leaving school and running to my house.
My mom was busy packing our house stuff.
My mom said, “You don’t have to go to school tomorrow.”
“Finally?!!!.” I said
My mom said, “Yes, finally.”

I knew that we were traveling from Iraq to Jordan.
Our family was saying bye to us as we were riding in the taxi that was taking us.
They all were sad, all crying from inside but not all crying from outside.
I was fine.
I didn’t get why they were crying, even though I knew we would not see them anymore I was strong, but why? I don’t know.

My family said, “Take care of your mom.”

We traveled in the car all the way to Jordan.
Both my brothers and I were sitting in the back and my mom was between us and my father was in the front next to the driver.
I didn’t feel hungry; I didn’t feel tired. I ate only a little piece of cake. It was a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong road.
There were some funny and nice stories happening along the road and on the border.
One lady saw a small nice Quran (Moslem’s holy book). She liked the size and how it looked. So my mom just gave it to her because she kept talking about it.

FROM IRAQ TO JORDAN/STORY
When we were stepping into Jordan, one Iraqi guy asked my father to give him all the money he had. I was surprised about what was going on. And then the guy said with a big smile, “You’ll go to Jordan and the Iraqi money won’t work there. So instead of throwing them out, give them to me.” Even he knew that we could exchange them for Jordanian money in some bank. My dad laughed and said, “No, I’ll keep them as a memory from my country,” and we all laughed!

In Jordan
At first we stayed in some family’s house for one week. I don’t have any idea how we got there, or how we knew this family. Then we had to move to our house so we wouldn’t bother them with their everyday living. We lived around Palestinian refugee camps. Then we moved to a bigger house. It was a building that a big family of seven families owned. Over time, the rent became too much for us. We couldn’t pay for the rent, so we had to move to another house.

We moved to another house. That house was small. It had two rooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen. It had two small half windows, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom. It had a low roof; when you entered you found the kitchen at the right hand, the bathroom at the left hand and you would be facing the living room that we used to sleep in. Next to the living room, we had the refrigerator and my parents’ room. You could view the whole house if you just rotated your eyes a little bit around. We had no key for that house. We used to lock it with a rod iron from inside, which was really hard to open. We used to open it from the door’s screen. The house was owned by a family living in the same building on the second and third floors. The extended family was not too big, they were three small families.

We stayed about five years in that house. We made some friends. A lot of things happened in that house.

My dad worked with a person who put in water pipes and electric wires. My dad was very good at that job because he had a master’s degree in electrical engineering. My mom did the job that she is good at but she hates the most: sewing. My dad lost his job with that man because there was no work. It was hard to get a job, Many Iraqi people got jobs and when it was pay day they were told to wait until the next month so they would not get paid for two months. They couldn’t do anything about it because it was illegal for us to work in Jordan. After two or three months, the manager said, “I don’t even know you. How come you want money from me?” In any kind of problem, if police came and found that the Iraqi’s papers were expired, they would transport him back to Iraq.

Eventually, my mom found a good job at an Iraqi newspaper that was against Saddam. Then my dad got a job in a supermarket with some Palestinian man.

The Hood
First day in our small house, some of the neighborhood kids came knocking on our door, asking us if we wanted to play soccer with them. We were glad that they were friendly. We went outside. We had some fun; they kind of liked how we played and they seemed like nice friends. We played, we finished playing, and some of the kids were called home by their parents. Ihab (my big brother) and I and another two kids stayed outside talking. One of the kids told the other to beat up my big brother because they got bored. My brother and I were kind of good kids. The kid smiled and walked up to my brother to scare him. The boy hadn’t even raised his hand over his chest when he got knocked down by my brother, which I really can call a knockdown. The boy rotated in the air as he was standing. The one who got scared more than the other kid was me. I couldn’t believe Ihab, as I knew him to be a calm brother. There was a long quiet moment as the boy was lying on the ground. My brother told me, “Let’s go home” so calmly, as if it was no big deal. We went home and acted as though nothing had happened. We didn’t tell our mother anything.

My relationship with my brothers became so strong. We became friends more than brothers.

School
Jordanians speak Arabic, which we should understand, but every Arabic country has a different accent. Jordanian people sound different. It was kind of hard for me to understand at school. The first day my mom came with my and put me in the class and left. I was put next to a big student that used to beat everybody in the class for fun, but he was friendly to me.

First Jordanian word
The teacher yelled, “Zip your mouth.” I zipped my mouth, but I didn’t understand a word of what she said because she was Palestinian. I had never ever heard or said a word other than with an Iraqi accent. I went back home asking my mom what does “Saker Temeak” mean. As soon as the words came from my mouth, my parents started laughing at me. I thought I said it funny, but it was that my middle brother had heard the same thing, and he had asked them right before me. In the beginning, they started helping us, but we ended up helping them with the accent.

Drawing
One day, we were asked to draw something for homework. I went home and I was looking for something to draw, but I didn’t find anything. I went to eat and then my mom gave me 5 cents. I put it in front of me and started drawing it. It happened that I drew really well; the picture came out really good and nice. The teacher knew that my mom and I like to draw. Another day we went to school I showed the teacher what I drew. She got mad more than she got surprised. She started yelling and telling me that my mom was the one who drew it. I never was stubborn before, but at that moment I was – about the fact that I’m the one who drew it. Not because I didn’t want my mom to get the credit, but I’m not a liar and I didn’t lie to her. She said, “Ok” in a mad way. She walked up to the first row of the desks and pulled out a chair. I was surprised and wondered what she was doing. She put me in the chair and went outside the class. She brought three more teachers and paper and pencil. She smacked them on the desk and took 5 cents from her purse and asked me to draw it in front of them. I felt deeply and I felt that I’m as old as the teacher and the teacher had as small a mind as mine. I held the pencil and set up the 5 cents to draw. I drew it and it came out well, too. I drew it bigger so it even came out better than the first one. She had nothing to say and I didn’t ask her to say anything. I got up and walked back to my chair; it was the last one in the back. I pretended that nothing happened. I really didn’t care, as though nothing had happened.

School Fight

In school, there were a lot of Palestinian people. In third grade, there was a Palestinian kid who liked to pick on me. I didn’t have any idea why I let him pick on me. One of the times he really got on my nerves and made me so mad. I stood up so I could see my eyes in his surprised face. I felt like my big brother. I tried to calm myself by remembering what happened when I had a fight on the first day of school in Iraq, but that got me angrier. I punched the kid in the face, pushing him down to the side. It was PE class. Everybody stopped jumping and looked at me. I didn’t know why the teacher did not say anything to me, and did not even send me to the office. The kid stayed on the ground. I walked and sat down where we usually sit when we don’t want to do anything in PE. After that, my friends became better friends and those who had not talked to me kept away more and more. I never cared if people talked to me or if I had friends. I always felt I had a different world that made me not care about the way I was living in Jordan.

In Jordan, things really changed. In Iraq, I never heard about Shiia and Sunni people. Then one day, in Jordan, my Islamic teacher asked me if I’m Shiia. I asked what he meant! And what does that mean? He told me that Islam has two parts, one is Shiia and one is Sunni. I did not know what to answer, because I did not know what I am. I went back home and I asked my mother about the Islamic parts. My mom told me that there are no parts. “We all are Islamic and all Moslem people have the same holy book. Whoever asked you, tell him or her that you are Moslem.” But that question kept going around all the time. I heard it a lot, and I asked my mom a lot until she explained to me. I really didn’t see the difference.
We never cared about it or thought about it till we were in Jordan because in Iraq we had a lot of Shiite and Sunni people, but in Jordan there are Sunni only.

In 2nd grade I knew that I was the only Iraqi, which really makes it different between people. Friends are not friends.

Waste Friends
I only could believe how people are when I couldn’t believe my friends that I respected. They were my “best friends.”
We played soccer, we went to the same school, we hung out a lot after school, and one of them was in my classes.
The owners of our house were grandparents already. When the grandfather was at work, the grandmother used to call me to buy her something because she couldn’t walk too far. Even her sons and their wives used to ask me to buy them things. I was used to them. Even if I was busy, I did not tell them no because I felt that it’s really disrespectful to not help when people are unable to go somewhere. The two friends stayed my best friends until the day that one of them was absent from school. My mom asked him to go buy her something from the store because she couldn’t leave the food on the oven by itself. That was the first time my mom asked anyone to buy her something. “Where are your sons,” the boy replied. My mom told him, “They’re at school.” “Then wait for them till they come, or you go buy it,” replied the boy, even though he was going to the store to buy something for his aunt. I don’t know why I couldn’t believe that there are people like this.

Going to the U.S.
We were supposed to come to the U.S around 2001. We started getting ready, and bought some clothes and stuff that we might need in the U.S. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we spent most of the money we had. My mom stopped working because we all thought that we would travel on the date appointed for us. In last few days of waiting, we got a phone call that they rescheduled us for a little bit later because of September 11th. My mom had to find a job again because we didn’t know when they would tell us to be ready. We kept what we bought in the bags. They stayed four years; we stayed four years unknowing when we would be called to be told, “Get ready.”

People knew that we were going to the U.S. The owner of the house and both of his sons said they really didn’t like America. They would never go there. “It’s the infidels’ country,” they said. Most of the people were disagreeing about the U.S. Most of them said, “We will never go there, even if they pay us.” I didn’t know why they were so mad and not liking America like that. One day the father of two friends I had got an opportunity to go to America with the military for two years. They couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t believe how happy they got. People changed so much about going to the U.S. Everybody said they didn’t like to, but when they had an opportunity, they would run for it.

Last two years
In the last two years of being in Jordan, we moved to another house. Our neighbors asked us to stay. The owner of the house said he would lower the price of the rent if that’s why we were leaving. But my parents wanted to move to another house. I know that my mom wanted to move, because one day she took me to the doctor because my breathing was not good. The doctor asked us about our house, and then he told her that was because the house was not healthy.

Amman, Jordan is a hilly place. When they build a building with more than one floor, most of the first floor is underground and not that important. They mostly make it to put stuff in it and to have the real first floor at the top of it. That’s where we lived about five years. We found a house much bigger; it was two rooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen. The rooms and the kitchen were bigger and the bathroom was a little bit smaller. We had a backyard; we had our own hallway and a space in front of the house. We liked that house because it was bigger and much better. My mom did the yard really nice, full of greenery. We had two sofas and one chair, and one fold-up bed. My mom stopped working at the newspaper after Saddam was gone. The time was really bad. My dad was the only one who worked. We stopped going to school because Ihab could not graduate from high school because he was Iraqi. And we stopped going to school because it was a really bad time for us. My mom had to sell some of her gold bracelets so we can buy food. My dad used to work 6 days a week from 6:00 in the morning to 10 and sometimes to 11 at night.

Our sofas and the chair were really old. My mom said, “Let’s try to renew the fabric.” My mom had fabric from her old job. We opened the sofas all the way to the wood and we renewed the fabric with basic tools, a hammer and nails. We made them really beautiful; they looked brand-new. We used to go walk outside at sunset time; it was really a nice time and nice weather. We found some clean, fine pieces of wood. We joked, “Let’s make a chair of them,” but we really did pick them up and went home. We tried and we made a good chair after adding fabric and all the designs that my mom made. It filled our living room and looked really nice. We used some other wood that we didn’t need to make a table. My brothers, mom and I worked together and made a nice corner table. We had two kinds of fabric that made it nice and matched. People always said, “WOW” about my mom and what she has. But she never liked that. People thought we bought new house stuff because they looked new and nice.

At the airport
We traveled from Jordan to Germany, then we came to the U.S. In Germany, we got lost after the agent left us in front of the train stop. The guy didn’t tell us anything but he left. We could tell that he went fast as leaving us and he would be back. He took a long time to come back. We decided to do something, but we didn’t have cell phones or anything to contact each other. My mom and Ihab, my big brother, rode the train that he rode, and went looking for him in the other train stops. We stayed in case the guy came back, but we were worried that my mom and Ihab took a long time to come back. It was bad a time; I got mad because I was tired of traveling and because that guy made my parents worry like that. We thought we got lost. It was hard because we didn’t know too much English to ask about the central office or anything. My mom and Ihab came, back but they hadn’t found anything. We waited till the guy came back finally. “You should have followed me,” he said. My mom was mad. Ihab said, You didn’t tell us anything. You sounded like you would be right back.” The guy just tried to ignore what we were saying and he said, “Ok, Ok, let’s go now… let us go” trying to make it clearer than clear to us because we didn’t speak English. “Ok,” we all said at the same time, and then we followed him to the airport.

First year in the U.S
We came to the U.S. in 2005. It was really nice here; it looked like Jordan, but not clean as it is, and not as where we lived. It was hot as Iraq, but not without water, pool, electricity or air conditioning. We liked it when we came here. People were friendly, and we had our papers. We felt much better because we were able to have a job, able to buy a car, able to buy a house and able to walk down the street. We were not amazed about the place or about how it looked, but I was amazed by how the people say “Hi” every time they see us in the street, even when they don’t know us. Even though in our country and all Muslim countries people are supposed to say “Al-Salam alykum” to people, even when they don’t know each other a lot of people have forgotten that. If you say hi to them, they will ask themselves if they know you or you know them. We used to go out and walk around the streets when we first arrived here.

In the U.S., things were different, living was different too. In the beginning, it was hard because of the language and the transformation. Some Arab people came and helped us with the bus and one Egyptian man helped my father with getting a good job. He also helped us with translating. Some other Iraqi Arabian families helped us with stuff we didn’t know and with places we didn’t know. It was really nice; I knew why people liked to travel. When I was In Jordan, I thought, why do people like to travel and have a life like this? But here I liked knowing the new stuff and new ways of stuff and different places. After a few months, we bought a car. It was our first car that I remember my dad owning. My dad had cars when he was in Iraq. He used to buy one and sell it, then buy another one and sell it. But we never had a car when I was born. They had their last car when my big brother was born.

Here, I liked school for the first time in my life because I didn’t have anything to do at home. I didn’t know anybody so I liked going to school, even though I didn’t know a lot of English. The students were from different cultures, and some of them had almost the same cultures as mine. Some of them had the same religion.

I always thought about what people hate, or why people hate a place or something. I mostly find people wrong; maybe because I put myself inside of that place or that something and then I start thinking. I look at the problem from two points of view. I am happy here, even though many people complain about it. Even some of my American friends complain about life here, but when they hear how life is out there, they start thinking and thanking about the opportunities and the great stuff they have in life. In my opinion, starting with hardship is better than starting with ease then going to hard. That’s how I lived it and how I live it.