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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
