Tag Sydney
By the age of 25, I had a great job, my own import business which I was running on the side, my own apartment, a very good car, and a good group of friends. Life was treating me very well. But then all that changed. In 2009, our president was re-elected, but as most Iranians
My name is George, but everybody calls me Ginger George! I was born in Syria and my background is Armenian, but in both communities ginger hair is extremely rare. Even in my entire family, there is no one who has ginger hair and sometimes I ask my mum, ‘Are you sure nothing naughty happened?’ But
I am from the Sayed denomination in the Hazara group in Afghanistan – a minority within a minority. We are actually one of the most persecuted minority groups in the world. In our tribe, my family were very well respected, and that was both our strength and our weakness, as unfortunately my parents were even
The war came to Damascus when I was 14 years old. At first, it didn’t really affect our lives too much, but after a couple of years, it became very dangerous and scary. A lot of students lost their hands or feet in bomb attacks on our school, and some of them died. Sometimes my
My father died 7 years ago. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan, when a woman loses her husband, she has no rights. And as they are not allowed to be educated, they cannot take care of their children by themselves. Instead the brother of the husband will automatically take over in taking care of her and her family.
The first time we tried to leave Iran was not a success. We paid people smugglers to take us to Turkey. They divided us into two groups and said they would be moving us three days apart. In the first group was my mum, 3 sisters, my uncle and a friend. In the second group
The area where I grew up in Perth wasn’t very multicultural, and when we arrived from Singapore in the mid-70s, I think it was the Asians’ turn to get bullied. Within the first few weeks we got a letter in the letterbox saying, ‘You dirty Asians, why don’t you fuck off.’ I remember my parents
When I was 19, I had a boyfriend who rode a motorcycle and through him I fell in love with riding. And then I had one of those terrible weeks where I lost the house, the dog, and the boyfriend in a break up and I was in this moment of absolute devastation. One day,
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 family was anxious, but we were still
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, as they prioritised that above all else. So after I