As a child, I witnessed all the chaos that came with the war in Iraq – civil unrest, people going missing, people dying. Also, as Christian Assyrians, we experienced religious persecution, where the militia would come to your door and tell you either to convert, leave, or die. In the end, my family was forced to flee to Syria. I was only 11 at that time, but I still remember being really upset to have to leave my grandparents and my friends.
My dad was a civil engineer, and he risked his life to go back to Iraq . . .