I’ve had polio in my left leg from when I was a child but we never had any qualified doctor to diagnose my condition. Then, when I was 6 years old, we had to flee our little village because of the attacks on Karen people in our area. It was really hard for my dad...
When I was 7, my family left Czechoslovakia because things had became progressively worse in the 20 years since it was occupied by the Russians – there was no freedom of speech, and they had slowly obliterated the Czech way of life. Fleeing was very risky at that time...
Every summer holiday, we would leave Damascus to go to visit my grandparents in Aleppo. When we went to visit them in 2012, the war had started but it was still far away from us, so we didn’t worry about it. But after two weeks, just as we were about to book the...
Between the ages of 8 and 13, I was sexually abused by a family member. It happened many times and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I had all this guilt. As a result, when I was 11, I got into metal music, and my parents didn’t like that at all. They were...
When I was 10, my dad died, which was very upsetting for me as we had been very close. A few years later, my sister married an Anglo Australian, and about 5 years later she sponsored Mum and I to come to leave Malaysia for Australia, as all my other siblings were by...
