I was 8 years old when I left Iraq during the American invasion. I want to make a thread of my experience in detail, from the beginning of the invasion, to my father’s kidnapping which forced us to leave:

For many years before the invasion there was a rapid increase in criminal gangs (later known to be terrorists). There were certain areas you shouldn’t enter because they’re known to be dangerous. The whole situation in the country was getting very desperate.

The first memory I have from the invasion is waking up to American tanks everywhere. We carried on with life as normal for as long as we possibly could. I remember walking to school and shaking with fear from what was going on around us.

As the weeks went on, fewer and fewer kids were coming to school. Not surprising when by this point terrorists had set up checkpoints all over Baghdad. I was instructed every single day not to make any eye contact with ANYONE. It was getting scarier by the day.

After we heard about people we know being killed/kidnapped my parents stopped sending me to school. We stopped speaking even to our neighbours. By this point it was difficult to trust even your closest neighbour. You didn’t know who was with who.

My extended family had already left the country. It was just me and my parents. Our home was raided and fired at on several occasions for no real reason. I still remember to this day seeing people being gunned down in the streets and people just walking past like it’s normal.

This is the day I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. It’s carved into my memory forever. We never had anything to do with anyone. My dad never had anything to do with anyone. A group of armed men came to our house and started searching around like crazy.

I remember my dad arguing with them and they started asking “are you Christians?” No one responded because we were so scared to say something wrong. Then one of them came out from one of the other rooms saying “they’re Christians” and laughing as though it’s an insult.

I didn’t even know what was going on it happened so fast I was so confused. As soon as that happened they took my dad and blindfolded him and started to make their way out of the house. We started crying, begging them to stop and they just shouted at us to shut up.

My mum was hysterically crying and I could tell she knew exactly what was going to happen but I was just confused and scared the whole time. For the rest of that day she kept telling me he would be coming back but I knew it wasn’t true.

Days passed and we heard nothing. We were scared to stay in the same house but had nowhere else to go. I remember sitting at the window waiting for hours on end, hoping my dad would come back. After about a week we started getting phone calls threatening us to leave the area.

That wasn’t the worst of it though. The phone calls that followed they would make us listen to my dad’s screams while they were torturing him. Every time we would pick up the phone with the hope it would be some good news but we were also so scared at the same time.

We knew we had to leave but we didn’t know where to go. We didn’t want to leave in case he came back but the situation was so scary we had to leave as soon as possible. Every single Christian family who lived near us had left the area. My mum was seriously panicking badly.

I was so innocently thinking it would all be over pretty soon. I was so wrong. The phone calls only got worse and worse. The day we finally decided to leave our house we left every thing behind and hardly took anything with us. We were walking aimlessly for the longest time.

I remember people trying to approach us and my mum would squeeze my hand so tightly and literally drag me away from them and run. She’d keep telling me “walk, don’t look at them just keep waking.”

We got to our friends house which was in a Shia neighbourhood and there were gunmen EVERYWHERE but for some reason I wasn’t scared because I was used to it by that point. We didn’t even intend to pass through there but it’s as though God had sent us for a reason.

When we got to the door my mum was so mentally drained she ended up collapsing right there. They took us inside and kept asking me “where’s your dad? What’s happened?”. I was just crying and scared to tell them anything. Because I was warned many times before not to trust anyone.

The following morning I remember waking up on the floor confused why I wasn’t in my own house. My mum for some unknown reason wanted to go back to the house to get our things. She wasn’t thinking straight everything was so messed up. But our friends had convinced her not to.

Instead they said wait a few more days and we’ll take you. I was so scared to be left alone so I made my mum take me with them. Now I’m not trying to be sectarian or anything but this next part is important so just read it and don’t comment dumb shit.

There was a big problem. We were leaving from a majority Shia neighbourhood and it wasn’t so difficult to tell which checkpoints belonged to who (sunni Or Shia). Also the fact everyone knew everyone made it worse. The checkpoints around our house were set up by Sunnis.

I’m not sure who was more scared, me and my mum or our friends who were with us in the car. They took every weapon that you can imagine with them. You never knew what was going to happen so had to be prepared all the time.

We didn’t go from the usual way and instead took a longer route. We were (naively) hoping it wouldn’t be as crowded with checkpoints and terrorists. Everyone had to carry ID with them so there’s no way of hiding who you are or more importantly, what you are.

We reached one checkpoint where the armed men there were telling everyone to get out of the car. But our friend who was driving told us to stay put. They were asking for ID, which obviously we didn’t give them because I’m 100% sure they would have killed us then and there.

We are Shia and Christians I don’t think we would have lasted even for 5 minutes. Anyway, after our friends threatened them with the weapons they were carrying in the car they let us pass without saying another word. Idk how we survived so many situations like that.

Before we could even get too close to the house we could tell what had happened. Everything was as good as gone and destroyed. The windows were smashed and door broken down. When we entered we saw that everything was taken. And I mean EVERYTHING. There was nothing left.

We went back to our friends house with them and the next few days were so exhausting. The situation outside was bad. Every day you’d hear of someone being killed. The gunshots and bombs were going off non-stop.

Car bombs were happening almost every day in the neighbourhood. Despite all of this, nothing seemed to matter because my dad was still the only thing in our minds. We could have stayed and waited for him but we knew that our country as we previously knew it was gone.

You can only rely on other people’s generosity for so long and pretty soon you start to feel like a heavy burden on them. We had no family left in the country, our neighbours were all gone and we couldn’t do anything but leave.

We desperately needed to be somewhere safe and no matter where you went in Iraq nowhere was truly safe. We arranged to leave and got on a heavily packed bus which drove us all the way from Baghdad to the Jordanian border.

I don’t even have the energy to go into all the problems we faced along the way or how tiring the whole journey was. It was long and we were surrounded by strangers. No one spoke to anyone else. I think everyone just hated everything and everyone at that point.

So many details I couldn’t mention because the memories are too horrible to talk about. But I talked about what I could.

As a child I would get so upset when I’d see other kids with their dads and kept asking my mum “why does everyone have their dad and I don’t?” It still hurts today and I still pray even now that one day we can see him again.

This isn’t only my story. This is the story of millions of other Iraqis.

It’s difficult when you don’t know if someone is dead or alive. You don’t know where they are, if they’re ok, what they’re doing. I don’t know if I should say Allah yer7amo when talking about him. Sometimes when people tell me that I get offended by it.

Many people survived after being tortured. I can only hope and pray that he was one of those. But at the same time it’s 16 years later now, if it was going to happen it would have happened already. We would have heard something by now.

Sometimes I feel guilty that we left Iraq and didn’t wait for him. I feel so bad that we’ve moved on with our lives. I feel horrible every time I avoid the conversation about him and try to pretend he never existed.

For the longest time I hated everything to do with Iraq. I hated talking about it. I hated associating myself with that country. I was so angry about everything that happened.