“Where is my daughter, where is she? Where are my husband, and father?” She was left alone among the dead bodies and the heavy sand storms. Witnessing her two older children boomed in front of her eyes. Her tears forming a river down her pale face. Her hands shaking at the speed of her heart beat. Her hopes drained away along the Euphrates River. The sand storm left her blind, unable to see what is in front of her. The bursting of bombs left her deaf. She has officially lost all hope. She is my mother.
Was it Iraq during the 1980’s or was it America during the 1800’s? Beaten, enslaved, imprisoned, threatened, and taken as hostage were just of the few things that happened to my father, leaving my mother, Amy all alone at the time of escape. This, however, was all as a result of my parent’s rebellion of Saddam’s Baath’ist party, Saddam being the dictator of Iraq until 2003. My mother 8 months pregnant with me and eldest sisters and brothers had to get on a boat and travel from the Deep South side of Iraq across to the north, making sure that Saddam Hussein was unable to capture them. They were later brought to Rafha, a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, which provided them with a home made out of clay and straw and a meal a day. It was if my mother and sister—my mother especially—were slaves in Colonial America, escaping by boat instead of an underground railroad. With all the trauma my family had to go through, the last thing my mother had to hear was a phone call from her older brother in America that her mother was suffering with stage 4 cancer and was given her last weeks of living.
Fast forwarding twenty years later my mother still considers herself “born a slave,” even though she now lives here in the United States. Born to a family that came to America not long ago was, and continues to be, a struggle for my siblings and me in terms of finance and education. My