My husband and I got married and seven days later we landed in Sydney. Neither of us knew a soul and it was such an adventure. He fell in love with Australia as soon as we arrived and wanted to stay here forever. But I was thinking to myself, ‘What have I done?’ In...
I have a lot of precious memories from Syria, especially from my first year at university, which was wonderful and eye opening. I was following my passion in Environmental Science in Damascus, and my life was going well. But that year, the war broke out. At first, my...
Of about 70 people in our family, nearly everyone was killed by the Khmer Rouge. They targeted anyone who could be a threat, who didn’t conform to their ideals, who wasn’t full blooded Cambodian, or who had any education beyond high school, as they believed everyone...
I come from a fairly privileged background in Pakistan, as both my parents had white collar jobs. We weren’t really rich though. Whenever we asked for something luxurious, the answer was ‘no’. But they were always prepared to invest whatever it took in our education,...
When the second civil war broke out in Sudan, my father decided to send my brothers and I to Ethiopia, both for protection from abduction, but also because the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) had said we would receive an education there in refugee camps. At...
