Anonymous

Born in Rwanda

Age: 18

September 10, 2021

I was fifteen years old when I left. I had a normal life, I was a regular person, a student. I used to live with my seven siblings (I am the youngest) and my parents. We lived in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. 

Rwanda has a lot of economical issues. There is no freedom of speech like in the US. My parents made me leave the country so I could continue my education without any problems because there were a lot of political things going on. I actually wasn’t involved in the process that much because I was young and they didn’t want me to have to worry about it. My parents didn’t make me leave just for myself, if they would have had the chance to leave they would have but visas for them were harder. It was easier for me because I was younger and I could come here to study on the I-20 visa. 

I kind of knew I was going to leave but it was like a dream. No one can really tell you. They came to take me from school in August of 2018 to get my passport. I thought this is a dream, maybe I’m going to Uganda. In December of that year, they started my visa process. That’s when I went to an interview and got photos taken. It just felt not real, you know? My parents are just going to tell me to go alone to America? No.

I came by myself to the US in January of 2019. When I was still in Rwanda I actually did not feel anything. Even at the airport too, I didn't even cry. I started feeling it on the plane when I was alone. It took three days to travel here. 

They found a private school for me in Utah that funded the visa. I first went to Utah and I was only there for one day. I was supposed to go to a really expensive private school. Since my parents don’t live in the US, and Rwandan money is not US dollars, the cost was so expensive. My parents were like, we are not going to be able to pay that. They were ready to pay for everything but didn’t realize how much the fees would be. They were like, oh my god, we thought it was easy, but we don’t have this kind of money. So when I got to Utah, they called everybody they knew in the US and my aunt said yes I will take her. That’s when I came to Austin, Texas. 

When I got to Austin my aunt and I didn’t know each other. She knew my parents, but she didn’t know me as a person. We had to learn about each other. She helped me with getting into public school, she took me everywhere that I needed to go, she bought me clothes, helped me to start a new life. 

I got a lawyer to help with my immigration case because I didn’t know anything. I just recently turned 18 and became an adult last month. He helped me apply for asylum when I got here in 2019. That process is still happening, I’m just waiting for my interview.

I haven’t seen anybody since I left. Most of my direct family is still there now. My parents are still in Rwanda. I miss them, you know. I don’t see them. I wish I could go back and see them, to say hi. 

It was really hard to leave at fifteen. I started feeling it when I got here when I didn't see anybody that I knew. It was really hard to miss my siblings and learn a new language - to start with new friends, new community, new everything. It was really hard. I can’t even - I would cry every night before I went to sleep. I would pray because I’m Christian. 

Even if it was hard then, and even if I’m struggling right now since I have to cover a lot of things by myself, my safety and my future are more important than anything I’m feeling. Leaving wouldn’t have been the decision I would have made at that age because I would have missed them, but it was a good decision. 

I started high school a week or two after arriving. I went to school in person for 2019 and then in the spring semester of 2020 everything happened. I finished high school in a pandemic and graduated this past spring. I wanted to experience regular high school but I didn't really get that. 

I really wanted so much to fit in, I still do. For me, it wasn’t that hard because I’m a really flexible person. I’m really good at learning new things. The thing that was really hard was English. We used to learn English in school in Rwanda, but when you are making friends, and there are American accents and a lot of weird slang, it was hard. I had to be really strong. I think it was really helpful and hard at the same time that I was not with my parents and my siblings because I knew I was in charge of my learning and growth on my own. I came alone and I needed to learn this on my own. No one was going to learn it for me. I had to learn and I had to be patient. 

I was driven in school and really wanted to be successful. But English and my citizenship were big barriers. There are a lot of things that when you apply for them you need to be a citizen. It took me a year to get social security so I could get a job and live a regular life. I need to pay for things. Sometimes English would be my barrier, but most of the time my immigration status is still the barrier. It’s not even my immigration status, it’s more the immigration system in the US. School is my future right now and the immigration process is really a big issue for college.

I got into UT Austin but I didn't go because I didn't have money to pay. I really wanted to go to UT. The new financial aid program they have that covers tuition for low-income students doesn’t include me because I am not a citizen. I’m attending community college now and I didn’t want to go to community college. For my three current classes, I pay more than $4000 as an international student. Other students that live in the district pay nothing. I don’t get to have that. I don’t get financial aid. There’s a lot of scholarships I didn't get because I am not a citizen. I can’t move anywhere, I can't travel. Because of my status, I need to work to be able to pay for my school so I am going to try to do both work and school part-time. I wish the immigration process went faster, I’m praying to get my papers. When I have them I’ll be able to go to school full time and actually study. 

If I had everything available to me I would go to UT. Medical school is my dream. I would study hard trying to go to Stanford University. I want to go to medical school because my mom has a back problem and in Rwanda, the technology isn’t great and they can’t help her well, and that doesn’t feel good. I have to study hard but I think I can do it.

 I want to go to medical school and I want to be a congresswoman. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but that’s my dream. I also want to be an author. My goal in life is to do something that, even if I'm not going to be here in the world, even if I’m dead, my name is still here. Esther helped people, Esther was here. 

There are a lot of differences between cultures. I miss everything, especially the food. In Rwanda, we cook food that we actually grow in our homes. At my house, we had a big backyard with our crops and I didn’t see us buy most of our food. We worked for it. I miss the music, I miss my family and friends that I grew up with. Everything. To feel like you have family members everywhere in the country, I feel like I don't have that. People who know each other, where everyone around you loves you and wants good for you. In Rwanda, you know everybody in the neighborhood. We’re a close community, like friendship. Here it’s not like that. 

I am fully Rwandan. When I am with American people I feel like an American. I am in between. The cool thing is that I know both cultures. I know Rwandan things, I know American things. I can tell people about Rwanda and about Africa, and that’s cool. Even in America, I don’t know a lot, but I have some experience so I don't feel lost. The struggle is that you aren’t fitting in in either culture. It’s like Rwandan people don't take you as Rwandan. And in the US, they don’t see me as an American. When I'm working, people ask me where I’m from when I haven't even talked to them. I ask someone if I can carry their bags and they ask me where I am from. They clearly see I am not from here. You don’t fit in anywhere 100% and sometimes that is good but it’s bad because you don’t feel like you actually belong anywhere. 

There’s understanding the immigration experience and then there is doing something to help people. People need to give others the space to be themselves. There are things that I would do in Rwanda that I can't do here because if I do I feel ashamed. It’s not the same thing as Americans. People need to not judge people because they are different. It should be a pleasure to get to know someone different because that's how you are going to learn new things and be able to exchange what you have with what they have. People need to try to help people. Imagine if you go to the bank and instead of the banker helping you to do things they tell you to do it on your phone. Well, I came here because I don't know how to do it on my phone. That’s an example of how to help people do things. America is very high in technology and not everyone knows how to do everything. Be open to helping the people you interact with.

Afterword from anonymous:

Being in between is not an easy lifestyle. Being in between is to always be ready to change dispositions. Being in between is to be able to act to like or dislike things according to who or where you are. Being in between preferences does not matter sometimes, being in between is accepting a flowing life with no permanent or determinable friends or favorites. The miracle of living in between is to end a day without embarrassment. Being in between is living without practicing a culture and traditions. In between life becomes school and when you are a student, school becomes a war you have to win.

Living in between is being an immigrant or living in a different place from your original place. People from where you are from do not consider you as their own anymore, and where you live they also think of you as an outsider. You do not feel like you belong anywhere. Missing the things that you should have for a long time or friends who you actually understand each other it's the permanent feeling. When you are an extrovert you should automatically be okay with people laughing at you and repeat more once you are talking. Even if you don't feel like it, you have to show a happy face to at least have peace with others. You can not live by showing your emotions or following your heart because you can't make it far. 

Always worried about the next day’s interactions and outfits to be able to fit in. Feeling alone can even be your shadow. This life makes you  distance yourself from actions or relations that make you feel happy, because a lot of problems or things that make you get hurt are from relationships, and you care about others, but you don't want to add that with your life, which is already not easy. You have a lot of restrictions and things that you are not able to get because of your immigration status and systems. In having fun you have to bring a journal to take notes. 

In this life there is no other option, you have to be strong and tackle this lifestyle. You have to have a mindset that says that my challenges are a source of opportunities and growth. My difference from others is that it is a weapon to success. My experiences are my strength. At the end of each day you have to be proud in order to be ready and get motivated for the next day. You have to remember that even if life is tough, you have to keep moving because if you don't it's going to be the same situation over and over. This can make you get far because in life you are always open minded to get where you want. Knowledge like language can make you walk to places many can’t. The shining differences are signs of bravery.

Say Mu

Born in Thailand

Age: 20

September 16, 2021

I was born in a Thai refugee camp. It was hard to survive living in a refugee camp because you don't have a job and cannot even go out. If you want to go out you have to have a Thai ID. If you don't have a Thai ID they don't let you go out of the camp. So it’s hard to survive. We weren’t able to leave at all. I was born in Thailand, but we don't have the papers or the identifications like a citizen would. I lived there until I was about 15 years old. My parents are from Myanmar, they were born there and then fled to the Thai refugee camp because of the war. My parents met in Thailand. They lived in the camp for around two years. Over those two years there, they met each other, and then they had me. I have two younger sisters who were also born in the camp. 

We have some people that are related to us that were in the US and they told us to come - that if we come we will get a good education and live a good life. We were able to apply and then we had to wait about four years to be able to come here. It's taken us so long to be able to come to the US. 

I was probably around 11 when that process started and it finally ended when I was 15. It’s a big process. Once we applied, they had to check everything and they asked a lot of questions. I don't remember those questions because they only asked my parents. Then we had to go to this other place where they checked if we were healthy or not. If not, we would not have been able to come.

As someone growing up in a refugee camp it was hard because you aren’t able to live your purpose there - like we didn’t have money, so my parents had to go outside of the camp to find jobs so they could pay for us to go to school and to pay for us to be able to eat. Before they were able to leave the camp to work they had to go to the Thai army to ask if they could go out. It was hard to be able to go to school because it costs money - it wasn’t much, but for us, it was a lot because we didn’t have any money - and school was not really a normal school. 

Me, my siblings, my parents, my grandparents, and my cousins were all in the camp together. My cousin’s family found out that they could come to the US first. They came about two years earlier than us. My grandma really wanted to come to the US but was not able to make it because she had heart problems and she passed away. Later, my grandpa, my aunt, and my family were able to come at the same time.

When we found out we had to leave in 2016, it was exciting but at the same time, I had to leave my country and my friends so it was sad. It also made me feel happy because I would be able to go to school, live in a good place, and be able to live with my cousins who had come here before me. When my cousins had arrived they came to Austin and I think my family knew that and came here for that reason. 

I didn’t know where we were going. I think we took three airplanes, I remember three airplanes. The first one took hours, and the second one took two days. The food on the airplane we didn’t like, it was really bad. We flew to Houston first and then to Austin. The journey was scary because everything was new to us. It was crazy because we didn't know anything. Everything was new to us, like everything. 

After we got to Austin our cousins came to get us at the airport. We were so happy to see each other again. I was so happy. We arrived at night time. In the morning, after I woke up, I missed my country and I wanted to go back again. 

Now I’ve been here five years, almost six years. After my grandpa got here he passed away because he had cancer. I miss my friends and my family. Some of my relatives stayed there because they are still waiting to be able to come to the US. Right now there isn’t enough food for them and they might close the UN camp and they don’t know where to go. They just want to come to the US but the US isn’t accepting anyone right now. Some of my friends are in the US, some went back to Myanmar, some stayed in Thailand. I miss my old school, too. 

The first day when I came here I didn't speak any English at all, so it's hard for me to communicate with others because I cannot understand what they say and I want to talk but I cannot speak English. When I arrived they put me in ninth grade. School was so hard. I noticed that I didn’t know what they were saying. I’m kind of a shy person and it’s hard for me to make friends. I didn’t speak to anyone besides people who could speak the same language as me, Burmese. Those friends helped me a lot. They showed me where to go, how to put my ID number in during lunchtime. I’ve stayed friends with them. I graduated high school in 2019. 

Here in the US you have freedom so I don’t have to change my culture, I feel like I have the freedom to choose who I want to be. In my culture, if we are not married we cannot stay together, right? Where it's like here a girlfriend and boyfriend can live together even if they don't marry, even if they don’t have kids. In my culture, we cannot do that at all. I want to hold on to my culture - but the things here are okay if you have an open mind. 

Here in the US, most people don't believe in anything when it comes to religion but in our culture, we have a religion. My religion is Buddhism. In Thailand we go to the temples all the time, but here we don’t get to go to temples a lot because the temple is so far away from us. People here are so busy. Over there it’s like we were able to go to temple almost every day. The house we have is a big thing that is better than how I grew up. I remember the house when I first arrived - it was big and clean. Everything about it was good. The food, too. Back in our country, we didn’t have a lot of money so we didn’t get to eat a lot but here you get to eat a lot. My mom always cooks rice and our traditional curry. When I first came here I didn't like pizza. But now I am obsessed with pizza.

I understand my own culture and the culture here. I would say I am in between two cultures. It’s hard to be an immigrant in the US. We can’t always understand words so when we talk we have an accent. I can’t always be with people who speak English very well. It's so hard for us because my parents cannot speak English and since I’m the oldest I'm the one who had to do it. I'm not really good at English yet so it's hard for me. Everything is on me because I am the oldest. Sometimes I have stress because my parents want me to translate something that I don't know how to say in English and I want to help but I don't know how to say it. 

I just applied for citizenship. I’m waiting, you have to wait at least five years. I applied about three months ago. I have a green card. I am now going to community college part-time. I also work full-time at a preschool. I love to work with kids, so right now I am going to school to be an elementary or preschool teacher. When I was little my dream was to be a teacher. I love to teach. When I went to school and saw my teacher teaching, I wanted to be like them one day.

My hopes are to buy a house for my family and I want to visit my country. I want to take my whole family back to visit my country. I want to make that happen for them. If you have citizenship it’s safe to go back. Especially my dad, because he has to work and he can’t even communicate with others so he’s often tired and stressed. It’s a lot on me, I’m supporting my parents and my siblings a lot. But when I’m done with school I definitely want to stay in Texas. I love Texas.

Dhelal and Noor Alnoman

Born in Iraq

Age: 24, 20

September 22, 2021

Noor: We left Iraq when I was in third grade. I mainly remember kindergarten and elementary school. I remember that it was fun for me because I used to have a lot of friends but at the same time I do have this one memory always that at some point before we left they started kidnapping kids that were going to school. They even put bombs close to schools just because that’s where a lot of people gathered and that's what they tried to target. I remember at some point I told my mom, “What is the point of going to school if I'm going to die anyway?” That was a huge part of my mom deciding that we needed to move somewhere else because it wasn't safe anymore.

Dhelal: I was in seventh grade when we left. It's hard to explain. My first year in elementary school was when the war started. It was completely different, people were scared and worried. My mom would drive us to school and she would wait until we went inside and sometimes in the middle of the school day she would come and check that everything was okay. It was a lot of stress and pressure. 

Noor: My mom was the one that decided to leave. She was like, it's over. Enough. That's enough. There is no safety for my kids, there's no future. 

Dhelal: My mom left with my brother and they went to Syria. After two months, when we finished school exams, my dad took me and Noor to Syria to be with her and our brother. 

Noor: My mom didn't want to destroy our life just to get up and go somewhere, she made sure that we continued with the school because if we just moved they wouldn’t have counted that year for us. So she made sure that, even though it was hard for her to leave us because we're so close to each other, she went with my brother to start a whole life there for us so when we got there it would already be prepared. When we went to Syria that was our first time traveling. Our first move was to Syria and we were there for a year and a half. At first, it was really fun, we were adjusting. I'm the type of person that can blend in really quickly and if you put me anywhere I'll just talk and make friends. It's a little bit harder for Dhelal, but for me, I just went with it. My brother and I started going to school together because in the Middle East elementary and middle school are together. I would wake him up, get ready, make breakfast, I was kind of in charge of him school wise and we got so much closer there. Whenever the war started, which is what I actually always tell the people that asked me, I remember the Syrian war more than the Iraq war because I was older so I knew what was going on. The fighting, the bullets, the soldiers in the streets, the bombs. They started going into buildings and shooting from buildings. One time, we had our table and then had a big window out to the street. I was cooking food and then walking towards the table and at the end of the street, out of nowhere, a bomb just exploded. I was frozen for a whole minute and I was just screaming. I had no idea what to do. 

Dhelal: Before we left Syria, we tried so hard to move to Jordan because it's really close. We did the paperwork but we were declined because we were residents of Syria. They didn’t want to accept anyone from Syria or anyone who had lived in Syria, so we had no other choice than to go back to Iraq.

Noor: It was getting worse and worse, so that made us feel like we had to figure out what was next. We already ran from something and we got into something else. Things like bread started getting expensive and we couldn't get any food. It was really hard and we couldn’t do it anymore. Whenever we left, I remember the driver that took us to the place with the cars to go back to Iraq, he was like I can't go near your area because there is shooting and they just shoot any car. He was like, I have kids, I don't want to, you know, basically get killed. So we waited for a while until the shooting came down and we just left, and I remember you could hear the bullets. The streets and the buildings - it was a war. We just didn’t have any time. It was getting worse and worse by night. I remember my brother was sleeping one night and we could hear shooting off in the distance with different types of ammunition, sometimes strong and sometimes soft, and my brother woke up and named the ammunition - he was a child. It was not right. 

Dhelal: The war just started to get worse and worse. When we left, we left the house full of stuff. All our clothes, full of everything. We just took wherever we could take that was small, our paperwork, and we left for Iraq. We went back for four months and that was like the worst four months of my life. We tried again to go to Jordan, but we weren’t getting approved so we had to find a plan b. That’s when we decided to go to Turkey, so we went to the embassy to do the interview to get the visa and they said maybe we would be accepted and maybe not. Each passport cost money, so we paid and we were just waiting, hoping we would get that visa. Then they called us, said we received the visa, and that we could come and pick up the passports. 

Noor: In this whole process, even whenever we got approved, we were scared of where we were going because we didn’t know where we were going. 

Dhelal: We didn’t know anything about Turkey, what language they spoke, what religions they had, what they did, we had no idea. At that time the internet wasn't a big thing, so it’s not like people have that idea of if you want to go somewhere you search about this country or city. We just were going, whatever was going to be in Turkey was not going to be as bad as what was in Iraq at that time. This was all my mom's decision. 

Noor: That was the worst four months of my life and especially my mom’s life because she was struggling, she got super sick, she didn’t want to be in Iraq, that’s why she left. She wasn’t comfortable being there. She had to figure out everything. We moved to Turkey on December 17th, 2012. We went in a car that travels from one country to another. We didn't have money for airplanes so that was the cheapest way to go. My mom didn't know anything about Turkish culture so she actually had hijabs in her purse for us because we don't know where we're going, and it was better to have them just in case. When we started driving and we got into Turkey, as we went from one city to another she noticed that there were a lot of mosques, where we go pray as Muslim people. Turkey is actually known for its mosques. She realized that it was a Muslim country and that gave her a lot of relief. We first went to Ankara and then we signed up with the UN. 

Dhelal: The immigration program with the IOM (International Organization for Migration). 

Noor: We went there for our appointment, and because we already had our case in Syria with them, we transferred our case from Syria to Turkey. You can't stay in Syria or Turkey unless you are a business person or you're under the coverage of a refugee. The only way we’re able to stay in Turkey was if we got accepted by the UN. My mom, this was all my mom, she did the interviews. It wasn't like a guarantee of being able to leave Turkey at all, it just gave us the ability to stay and not get kicked out, and that’s all we wanted. The interviews were hard, they asked so many details and they wanted to make sure that you have the same answers over and over from your old case to your new case. After all that struggle they let us choose a city to stay in. They give you a list of cities with openings and you have to choose one. My mom had no idea about the country, so she randomly chose Eskisehir. I’m really grateful that she chose it because there are some cities over there that are really old, some don’t have power. 

Dhelal: We started life there. 

Noor: The hard thing was that we didn't speak Turkish. We just had a booklet that had translations between one language to another, we don't have phones with Google. We had to find a place to rent and had to start school. It was a really tough time in the beginning for my mom and Dhelal to manage all of it. My brother and I went to school but Dhelal wasn't able to go to school because of the age limit. As a refugee you're not allowed to go to high school, they accept you for elementary school and middle school and that's it. I started going to school and it was a good part of my life. I always say I want to go to Turkey because it was a good part of my life, even with the struggle and everything. 

Dhelal: It was a hard situation but at the same time it was helpful because I was helping my mom with a lot of paperwork. After they assigned us to a city, we needed to go twice a week to the police station to sign, proving we were still in the city, making sure that we lived there. I was like helping her with many things, like bills, building a new life, learning the language, helping each other understand what was going on around us. 

Noor: It was a recovery time for my mom. I remember she used to pray a lot. She needed time off. 

Dhelal: She was tired from what she had been through between Iraq to Syria, Syria to Iraq, Iraq to Turkey. There was a lot of pressure on her. Turkey was like a recovery for everyone. We were there from December 2012 until July 2014. When they approve your status as a refugee they open an online account for you where you can check to see if any country has picked you to go there. We were always checking but there was nothing showing. I remember one day we woke up in the morning and my mom was in her room crying. I went there and I opened the door and I was like what's going on? She was like we just got accepted to go to the US. We felt like there was a new light so we were excited, but again it’s a big change. We started the interview process with the US this time where they could either approve us or decline us. 

Noor: There were three interviews my mom had to go by herself because we were younger than 18. She was saying that it was over and over the same questions from different people just to make sure that you're saying the truth. It was like a lot of stress because you have to relive the moment again and again just so you can explain to people what happened. Then they did bloodwork, x-rays, everything. I have never had that many medical tests in my life. Then they approved us and gave us our flights. During the whole process, we tried to pack to make sure that we were ready. It took around a year, but it was worth it. 

Dhelal: We got to choose what state we wanted to go to. The state they picked for us was New York, but the choice we picked was Texas because my uncle is here. My uncle had been here a while before us, so we were planning to move here, stay a little bit, see how we like the vibe of the state. If we didn't like it, we could move to a different state because it was our choice, we could go anywhere. But after we came here we just fell in love with Texas and Austin. Now it’d be really hard if you asked me to go to a different state. I was 17 when we got here and Noor was 13.

Noor: To get here was a long, long flight. We were scared because we didn't know what was going on, we didn't know where the steps were. We had never been to an airport before. My mom was the only one responsible for us. Our first official moment was getting to the Florida airport, that was our first actual stepping into America. 

Dhelal: Then immigration officials took my mom into an interrogation room for five hours and left all of us, under 18, alone. We were really stressed out and scared because we didn’t know what was going on. She doesn’t know what’s going on because they didn’t tell her anything. They didn’t even talk to her. 

Noor: After all of that they figured out that it was a name mistake, that one letter in her name on the documents was accidentally spelled wrong. So that was our great experience at the airport. When we arrived in Austin they had an apartment for us, but we had to pay it back. We had to pay back the plane tickets, too. It’s like a loan without interest. That's a good part of it, you already have a place whenever you get here, but it starts all over again - paperwork, setting up school, getting to know the environment, blending in, learning public transportation. 

Dhelal: We had one month before school started so they wanted us to finish all the paperwork before school started. All of July and August were running, running, running. It was crazy and you don't speak the language. Our case manager was really helpful with stuff. I remember one time my mom and I went shopping at HEB and we were waiting for the bus home and the bus wasn’t coming. That day we bought butter and it started to melt. The summer was so hot over here that first year we came. It was like a big transition from Turkey.

Noor: It was tough at the beginning, to be honest. I didn't know anything, even with school. At first, it was hard to understand. What is a schedule? What is a GPA? How do you choose a schedule? What is this class? You know, like, what's going on?

Dhelal: I started high school from the beginning. For my age, I should have been a senior that year because I was 17, but they put me back as a freshman. When they decided that I was so mad and I started to cry. But after that, I just went with it. I was like, okay, let me just live the high school experience again. Which is nice. I already finished it when we were in Syria but I got lucky to be in high school. If I had come here at 18 they wouldn’t have put me in high school they would have told me just to go take the GED exam. I didn't graduate high school until I was 21 and that was fine. I got to feel that experience of high school. Eventually, we both went to the same school so we started to go together and come back together. We started to forget about the age difference between us. I’m the type of person that I’m usually more friends with teachers than students. I think differently. I was like, I'm gonna talk with my teacher. She's more like me, you know? We're lucky we got a lot of good people along our way. Like with teachers and with many other people we know. Our case manager brought us a volunteer who spoke Arabic who was a high school teacher and she helped us figure out a lot of things. Even after she finished volunteering there we are still in touch with her, we see each other. She helped us move apartments. 

Noor: I feel like here in the US life is like 1,2,3,4. It’s like wake up, work, do this, do that, then sleep, and do it all over again. In the Middle East and in Turkey we don't have that. Yes, we have school. Yes, we have work. But there are always things that make your day different. Over here there's nothing that makes your day different, you'll have the same day over and over again. There's a little bit of being bored with the over and over lifestyle and there is not much change going on. If you stop, if we were to say let me take off work or let me take off school, people are going to keep going to you’re just going to be staying in the back. You can't really take a break over here. That's the thing in America, life is like you can't take a break. I also was surprised whenever we moved here to see the number of homeless people and how dirty the city can be. Turkey is so clean. Teachers go to school in suits. Moving here, walking around the streets, I was so surprised. I was like, this is not the America that we see on TV, you know. 

Dhelal: We know we need to be successful, that we need to graduate, but there’s also so much healing and living. I graduated high school in 2018 and I started a Pharmacy Technician program at community college. I’m still in that program working on my associate degree. My plan after that is to transfer to a university and go to pharmacy school. I’m kind of taking it step by step because I'm working while doing school so sometimes I can't take full-time classes. I love what I'm doing and it's something I chose because I want it. I’m also the head of the house, so I have a lot of responsibility for keeping up with the bills, renewing things, doing the shopping. You need a lot of time to do that, plus I’m working and taking care of my mom. After that journey, she's really tired, so I help her take care of her health by taking her to doctor's appointments. I'm starting to teach Noor some stuff about -

Noor: how to be responsible! I graduated high school in 2019. I actually had a trip right after that to Jordan. It was a school trip. I applied to community college, I took my prerequisites for the dental hygiene program, and I was able to get my dental assistant certificate. Right now I am applying to dental hygiene programs so I should have two more years of school and I'll be a dental hygienist. I do help out, I do help! I mainly help out with my brother because we're so connected. I do training at a dental office and that experience has added so much to my confidence. I was kind of nervous in the beginning but now I can keep the conversation going without being scared about it. We went back to Iraq this summer, it was fun. We each had different experiences - Dhelal definitely liked it more. 

Dhelal: I went first before the rest of the family. I went in April and stayed for a month and twenty days. I was planning to go just for one month and come back, but then when I was there I was calling Noor saying, “It’s so much fun over here, it’s like the whole family and cousins and there's a lot to do. Do you want to come?” 

Noor: She convinced me to go and so I went with my mom and my brother, who is 17. Then when we got there I stayed a little bit longer than her and I was like, oh, I’ve had enough of it. It’s good, it's fun, I like it, but I probably won’t visit again for the next five or seven years. I took the semester off from college and ended up being there for three months.

Dhelal: It’s all different since we left because it's almost like 11 years ago that we were there. A lot of stuff is not even there anymore, places we used to go. The house we used to live in - when I went it was still the same. Everything is exactly the same, but the feeling is different. 

Noor: Whenever I went to visit the house we used to live in, that's the only thing that kind of triggered me through the whole trip because it's exactly the same as how we left it. Just like seeing our old furniture, full of dust, it’s sad and it's just empty. You remember so much of sitting and having birthdays there, gathering there, but it's just like quiet. That was the only place that kind of made me tear up.

Dhelal: Our mom went with us, too. For her a different story because of all the stuff she went through with people and during the war - all those memories. Sometimes she was like having the pressure of just wanting to go back to her home (the US) and not wanting to be there. Other times she was enjoying her time with her sisters and brother over there. She stayed in between - she didn't enjoy it 100% and she was depressed sometimes.

Noor: Memories she mentioned that are painful for her are just looking at some streets that make her remember her siblings because both of them already passed away. That triggered some emotions for her. The most fun she had was with her siblings, her sisters, but everything else just wasn't something fun for her. 

Dhelal: Our brother was a different story. For him, it was his first time going there because when we left he was like in pre-k, so he doesn’t remember anything. nothing. He enjoyed everything, it was funny. 

Noor: He did so many new things that he had never tried before. Like culture-wise and things that people do that we just don't do here, you know? At first, it was a little bit hard for him to blend in, but he actually really liked it. To be honest, whenever Dhelal went, I was so scared for her. I was so nervous. I didn't even sleep for a while at night because of the time difference, so whenever they have morning we have night. Whenever she had the morning I knew she was doing something so I was worried about where she was at and what she was doing. We couldn’t say that we were coming from America just because of everything that is going on over there, and we didn’t know if someone else would say we were from America and then something would happen, so that was kind of a scary thing. Even when we went out, even if we were with family, we tried to stick together because you just never know what could happen. One time she didn't have service and she didn’t text me back and I was worried that she got kidnapped or something. I was so grateful when I came back safety-wise. 

Dhelal: Safety-wise though it was okay. It's not 100% safe but it was fine. Now even the people that live there say it's way better than let's say like 2007 or 2009. It was so hard because you couldn’t say that you're coming from the US but at the same time, you don't know a lot of stuff over there. They can tell, you know, that you aren’t living there. Family told me before I went that if anyone asked me to just say I'm coming from Turkey because a lot of people are going there from Turkey and it's somewhere close. 

Noor: I got asked about it and I said, “Oh, I used to live in Turkey.” or “I am living in Turkey. I'm just visiting here.” Because you just don’t know who to trust. Since we haven't been there in so long people change and we just don't know what's going on. But in Iraq families are huge, and the gatherings were my favorite part.

Dhelal: It was different for me. When the plane was landing at the airport in Iraq? Oh, God, I can't even say what I was feeling, it was just like everything was mixing together. I was happy, scared, I wanted to cry. I wanted to see what it was like out the window. 

Noor: I was excited to go and I love that I had fun but the feeling of coming back - I was happier.

Dhelal: Yeah, when the plane landed in Houston -

Noor: When I saw the flag, I was like, I made it. 

Dhelal: Even with a three-hour drive from Houston to Austin I was like, it's okay, I know where I am.

Noor: We've been through so much, now we are at the point - I always tell my mom, she got us here. Now she can relax. Now it's our job to do everything else: work, school, making a better life. Working for that is our job now. I am grateful for what I have right now in America, for what I have, because going back to Iraq I saw what my life would have been if my mom didn't make that decision. It made me realize that's the best thing that my mom could have ever done.

Dhelal: We're here and we're so lucky. Number one we're so lucky we have my mom. She did a lot for us. It’s all my mom.

Anonymous

Born in Myanmar

Age: 18

October 18, 2021

I was born in the city but I moved to the village when I was two or three years old. I mostly grew up with my grandma in the village. I had a pretty happy childhood because all I remember is playing with friends and having fun. 

We left because of my mom. She had to go to another country because it was very difficult for her to get a job in the village and in my country in general. She had a hard time finding work because she didn't go to college. She went to elementary school and that's it. She also has a lot of siblings and she had to help her mom. If you don't have an education it's really hard for people to get a good job in my country, it's really super hard. 

So she left for Malaysia. After a few years of living in Malaysia, she called me and my sister to come with her, basically. That's why we left the country and moved. My grandma stayed in Myanmar with my mom's sisters and my cousins.

I was eight when we left. I was very excited because I hadn’t seen my mom for a really long time. She left when I was three or four, so I was very excited to meet my mom and be with her. We lived there for five years. 

We were living illegally there, which is why we decided to leave. We didn't have any passports or legal documents. It was hard for us to live in Malaysia because we weren't citizens and we couldn't really go back to our country because we didn't have a house. Even if we went it would have been very difficult for us to live. That's why we decided to go to the United States. 

It was actually hard to get to the US. We came with the UN. I don't really know much about that organization, but it was a hard process because we had to do a lot of tasks. We had to go to a lot of interviews. My parents had to learn English. We had to take lessons about how to live in the United States. We had to wait a couple years to come to the United States through the refugee resettlement program, so some of the years we were in Malaysia we were waiting.

When we found out we were able to come we were very happy, all of us, all of my whole family. We were very happy to come here because we knew that there were a lot of opportunities ahead of us in the US. We were so thrilled and excited. 

I was 12 or 13 when we left Malaysia for the US. The journey was pretty easy because we came on airplanes. There weren’t any problems at all. It was me, my sister, my mom, and my dad. We knew that we were coming to Texas. The UN asked where we wanted to go, and my mom told them that she wanted to go to Austin, Texas because her friend was living here. 

When we first got here it was pretty lonely. We lived in this apartment. It was pretty. There was a pool and it was big. But I remember I couldn't sleep because in Malaysia the time was very different. In the middle of the night I would look out the window, and I wouldn’t see any people, no one. I asked myself, is this the United States? Why is there no one? We didn't go anywhere for months because we didn’t have anything and we didn’t know how to get to places. It was pretty boring at the beginning, but my mom's friend would come to our house and talk. Sometimes she would take us to some places. 

I started school two months after living in the United States, I believe. I started in seventh grade. That was pretty difficult at first because I understood English, but I didn't know how to speak English. It was difficult for me to make friends and talk to people. I had to learn a lot of new words. At times I felt lonely. I really missed the food, everything about the food. Everything that my grandma makes. 

I've moved to a lot of places, right? I lived in a village and left when I was like 8 and I moved to Malaysia. I don't think I miss my friends, but I do miss my grandma and my cousins. I want to go and visit them sometime in the future.

It was hard for me to adapt to the language and the culture because everything was different. The way people talk, the school was different. It’s a big country. We had to learn how to fit into American culture. We had to learn how to ride buses because we didn't have a car at first. It was hard. Religion wise it wasn’t hard because we are Buddhist, so we can pray at home. We don’t have to go to temple. 

There’s a lot of things about US culture that I’m excited about. The first thing would be the opportunities. There are a lot of opportunities, you can do a lot of things, which I don't think I could have done if I was in my country. Education is mostly free, which is super good. The freedom to do whatever you like. You can practice whatever religion you want. There is freedom in opportunities. 

I definitely feel in-between cultures a lot. My mom always tells me - don't ever forget your culture, you’re not American. But sometimes it's hard for me to switch from one to the other. 

In America people just kind of go with the flow. Young people, It's not like they don't respect adults, but they talk informally. I learned that because of school. Sometimes I like American culture more just because I have more freedom to do whatever I want. 

There are certain things I don't believe in from my own culture. When my mom says that I have to be educated, that I have to go to college, that's how I’m going to get a good job. She always says that - that’s our culture, if I don't go to college I’m not going to be successful. I don’t believe that. I feel like in America, a lot of young people don't think that way. There's a lot of opportunities that you can do and you can be successful. The way my family thinks and the way that young people think is different. 

I’m going to UT Austin right now, I just started my first semester as a full-time student. I don't like it. I do, actually, but I've just been wanting to go somewhere that was not Austin. Somewhere I've never lived. I don't feel like I'm in college. I don't know. I just feel like this is normal, almost like I'm in high school still. I’m studying environmental science, but I'm thinking of switching my major. To be honest I don't really know what I want to do. That’s the main problem. I'm in college, because, I don't know? That's what I'm supposed to do after high school. I just feel lost sometimes because I don't know what I'm doing. 

I feel lost with everything. I don’t know what I should do with my life. I don't even know what I want to be. Some of my friends know where they want to be, what they want to study, what they don't like. But I don't know what major I should choose. I haven’t really met many people because most of my classes are online. I've been just hanging out with friends that I know from high school. I thought college would be way fun and interesting but it’s not so far.

If I could do anything I would travel. I would travel to Asian countries first. I would love to go to my country and I would like to travel to Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia. I think I could go to Myanmar with a green card because we do have green cards, but it's better to have citizenship before going back just for safety, in case something happens. I haven’t applied for citizenship yet but my sister did. I went to Hawaii this summer, it was fun. It was like the best moment ever. I loved it. I was there for a week.

Just in case there are people like me who read this:

No one expected to live here, right? At first, it'll be challenging. Like my parents, they had a lot of hardship and it was difficult at the beginning for them because they didn’t know any English and even now they still don't know English, but they sacrificed for us. It's okay to have some difficult situations, but you can go through them. You can overcome it.

Raghad Alzzaeim

Born in Syria

Age: 20

October 20, 2021

I left Syria when I was only ten. The only thing I remember is my childhood - being with all my cousins and relatives because we all used to live next to each other in the neighborhood. I remember elementary school. I remember just being with my family, my friends, not worrying about anything. Just a normal, beautiful, happy life back then in 2010.

We were happy in Syria. Syria is a beautiful country. We didn't worry about anything. My dad was working and my mom was a housewife taking care of all of us, me and my other four siblings. Until things started to happen in Syria. People were angry. People were protesting. People were going crazy. Police were everywhere, taking people and putting them in jail. 2011 is when the war started. It actually started where I was born. Everything was going crazy. I was ten at that time, so I wasn’t aware of everything that was going on. The only thing I remember is my mom telling us not to go outside and play because it was dangerous. 

From there everything started getting worse. No electricity, no water. The prices started to go up, even food was expensive. There were no more jobs. Everyone was scared to go out. Late 2012 is when they started to hit us. You would just be home and then the bombs and rockets started. Sometimes from helicopters. Some people have shelters under our houses and my house didn't, so we had to go to the neighbor's house. We had to run without shoes to get there. At the end of that year is when my family and I decided to go to another city in Syria where it was less dangerous. There was a camp there where we could stay. We were running away but we were in our own country. We stayed there for a few months. It was a military camp but they let us stay there. We stayed in one room, all seven of us. It was horrible. We couldn't go out. 

Then we decided to go back to my village. Every night after 1am the rockets started, sometimes close to our house. We would wake up, freak out, and run. We didn't have phones, no electricity, no water. We had barely enough food to eat. We were all young. I mean, the oldest of us was me and I was only 10 at the time. Once they hit us with helicopters - rockets from helicopters. It was very close to my house. It was literally above my house. My parents were out to get us food from a different village and I was alone with my siblings. I was 11 at the time. One of the rockets hit next to my house and my house was shaking. The earth, everything was moving, it was like an earthquake. I woke up crying. I had to take my siblings at 3am in the morning, running without shoes, to a neighbor’s shelter. We made it there. I had to do it. I’m the oldest of five. 

The next day when my parents came back they were so proud of me because I was so brave. The rockets actually hit our neighbor's house. Even the windows went down because of how hard it hit. All the glass was broken, the door was down. It was horrible. It was the hardest thing that I've ever been through. It's also the thing that makes me a stronger person, a brave person. I’m not scared of anything. I had to save myself and my siblings since my parents were not there. After all, that happened everything else was getting crazy, too. You wanted to get a piece of bread? That was like $5 at the time and $5 was a lot of money. You needed to work at least twenty days to get that money. Twenty days for $5 to get one piece of bread. 

While all that was happening when we went back to the village, my dad stayed in the other city to work. He got kidnapped for a whole month. He went out to work and he got kidnapped for a whole month. We didn't know what he was at. We were all freaking out, we didn't know anything - if he was alive if he wasn’t alive. If he was in Syria if he’s in another city. We didn't know anything about him until my aunt called. They had to pay a million Syrian at the time, it was a lot of money to get him out. The same day he got out my mom said, that's enough for us. We had to leave the country.

We left everything in the house and we only took a few pieces of clothing. We took the bus. We went to Jordan because we lived only a few hours away. We went to another village first on the bus and there were a lot of people there. We had to wait until the middle of the night so no one would see us. We waited until 3am and we had to walk three hours to get there. There were almost a thousand of us, a thousand people. We were surrounded by military people who kept saying no kids crying, no lights, try to be quiet as much as you can. Imagine how horrible that is with a thousand people, we all had to walk at the same time. 

We were in the mountains, it was cold, freezing. It was February of 2013. We didn't have many clothes, they told us not to bring anything. In Jordan, they don't let you in easily. They take every family's information and all that. We weren’t even in Jordan yet, but we had to wait in the mountains for hours until they got to us. So my dad had only brought one suitcase, so when we got close to Jordan he opened the suitcase and he put all of us in it and put the clothes above us so we stayed warm. But all seven of us from my family made it safely into Jordan.

When we got there they took all our paperwork and they put us on a bus to the Zaatari refugee camp. We had to live in a large tent with a lot of people, all of us in one place. We had to sleep where we were sitting until the next day when they gave us a tent to live in. They built it for us and we lived in a tent with seven people for four months.

The camp was new and they didn't have schools yet. It was horrible living there. The public restrooms were far away. We didn’t have a kitchen, nothing at all. There was a public kitchen that you had to go and wait for if you wanted to cook something. The Jordanian people who ran the camp treated us badly, too, they would always call us refugees. The food and everything, that support was from all over the world. It wasn't even from Jordan. I think everything was from Europe.

You can’t get into Jordan unless you get a citizen to cover for you. Like if anything happens. It would be their mistake. If we did anything wrong, that person would be the one who they blame. Of course, we didn't find anybody, even though we knew Syrian people there. Everyone just cared for their own, so we had to run away. We had to run from the refugee camp, rent a car, and sneak out between the trees without them seeing us go into Jordan. That's the only way it could work. That's how a lot of people did it too because living in the camp wasn't for us. Basically, you're slowly dying because it was just horrible. It was freezing, it was cold, there was no school, it was dirty, we slept on the floor. I wish I could just explain it to you. It was horrible, especially for my young siblings. 

So after four months, we went to Jordan and my dad finally found a friend there who's also from Syria. He lived one or two hours away from the camp, so we stayed at his house. But we still couldn’t be out without having an ID and stuff, so we needed to find somebody from Jordan who could cover us. So my dad’s friend found us an old Jordanian man who was able to do that for us. He went with us to do the paperwork and they told him that signing those papers meant that if any of us made any mistake, if we yelled at any Jordanian, cussed at any Jordanian, if we didn’t find work, he would have to pay $5,000 for each one of us. 

We did that and because we did that he told us that we had to stay in his apartment. They had a  little apartment complex and he gave us the first floor. It had two rooms and a restroom. They weren't even combined together, they were outside. You had to go outside to go to the other room. His oldest son lived above us with his family and they were also Jordanian. They were always cussing at us and throwing trash at us. We lived there for three and a half years in Jordan in the same house because we could not move out since he was the person covering us. He told us not to turn any lights on so he wouldn’t have to pay for electricity. We didn’t even have a kitchen. They were fighting with us because they knew we couldn’t do anything about it. Even if we wanted to go visit relatives who lived in another city we would have to tell him so he knew. He would threaten us saying if we went anywhere without him knowing that he would stop covering for us. My dad was the only person working. It was horrible. That was three and a half years of our life. 

We wished we would have just stayed in Syria because they treated us so badly. They would call us refugees everywhere we went. They would say that we took their bread, that we took their jobs - even though we all speak the same language, have the same religion, and have similar cultures. None of the schools accepted us - principles used to tell my mom that they couldn’t accept us because we were refugees. I had to stay home for a whole year. I missed sixth grade. My younger sister missed two years. Even at school, we were treated differently than everybody else. Jordan is a poor country and they barely have anything to eat so people felt like we were stealing everything from them. My mom worked at a preschool just to get my brother into it. She would clean the rooms, make the teachers food and tea - just so my brother could go to school. 

In 2016, in either February or March, my dad got a call from the UN and they asked if we had the chance to go to the USA would we want it. My dad said of course, what else would I be asking for? That was when we knew our life was going to change. At that time I was in middle school, I was in eighth grade. We hadn’t even filed with the UN, but that was when Obama was President. He was asking to get Syrian refugees from around the world and he asked for a phone number. They basically just choose people from that,  and we were one of the chosen ones. We had never even thought of getting to the US because we didn’t even know how to do that, but you know, God is God.

It happened very quickly. For most people, it usually takes a year to a year and a half but for us, it happened in three and a half months and then we were here in the US. They called us first and told us that we had an interview in a week, so we drove to the capital for it. They took our paperwork. In the second interview, we met with an American lady. There were a lot of interviews and questions. After two months they called us and they said that our plane would leave in 22 days. That was the happiest news that we ever could get. Not only that, we were coming to the USA but also because we were going to be done with Jordan. Our plane left on June 8, 2016. I had just turned 15 on June 1. 

We didn’t know anybody in the US. They asked us where we wanted to go, we told them we would go wherever they wanted, and they said it was going to be Austin, Texas. It took us 22 hours to get here. The Houston airport is huge. We basically didn't speak English and we came with three other Syrian families, so it was four of us. We did have somebody to help at every airport, but they weren’t Arab so they didn't really speak, they were just trying to help us get where we were supposed to go. Whenever we had to take another plane from Houston to Austin, and people were getting on the plane, we lost my little brother for 30 minutes. We looked everywhere. We were crying, freaking out. We didn't speak English. No one helped us, not even the Syrian people who were with us. Imagine - everyone just cared for their own - until a white old American man came to us. He was trying to talk to me, he was very nice. I didn't understand him so he was using his translator, and I tried to tell him that we lost my little brother. He helped us, he left everything. Then my brother was under a chair sleeping so we found him. So we went on the plane but then something was wrong, so we waited a whole hour and then we had to get on a new plane. Whenever we got to Austin, that American man came to us and he gave me his phone number on a piece of paper. He wrote a message to me through the translator in Arabic saying that whenever we get settled we should message him, that he would love to help us out with anything we needed. He’s from Austin, we’re super good friends now. He helped us with a lot of stuff.  It's awesome because he chose us. He came to us. Everything was new, and he helped us. 

We got here and people were waiting for us with signs that said welcome in Arabic. They took us in the car to our first apartment. We were all crying because we just couldn’t believe we were here. It’s just a weird feeling. Getting out of there, was a new life and a new journey for us. 

It was hard to start over but we did have help from the refugee organization in Austin. They rented the apartment and covered it for 4-6 months until my dad started working. They helped to get us beds to sleep in, food, and to get our social security cards. It was crazy, we didn't understand anything, you know, we didn't speak the language. It's a new country, a new culture. It was very hard at the beginning. I was crying because it's really up to me to figure a lot of things out. It took us a few years to get used to it. 

We got here in June and we started school in August. I am Muslim and I had to wear my scarf. As a teenager, I was terrified by that. I kept wondering if they were going to say something about my hijab because that's how they know I’m Muslim. I was worried that Americans would not like us and that they would make fun of us. Right at the beginning, a teacher would ask me my name and I would respond with yes because that's the only word I knew. I got made fun of a few times but that was fine. It was very hard at the beginning. Everyone was different, the school system was different. I would get home at five or something which is not what I’m used to. Classes are long. We would usually just have one class in our country that you would stay in and the teacher would come to you. I would always just be sitting by myself thinking everyone's looking at me because I'm Muslim. The first person I met was Fatima. She also didn't speak that much English because she was also new. 

I went to school with no English. Before I even got to school I was practicing English at my house. Just the little stuff like how are you? What's your name? Where are you from? All that. As I spoke a little more I was a little more confident talking to other people. It was especially hard for me because my family didn't speak English at all and then the refugee organization only helped us for four months. After that, they didn't care, so I had to understand everything at 15. We don't have any of these things like paperwork, taxes, utilities, bills in my country. So I had to learn all that. I had to be the translator for my house. I learned English very quickly though, which was cool. In about two months I started speaking. I used to go home and go online and practice Arabic into English. I love the language. 

That was basically the first year of me being here. Whenever we would go to public places, like a doctor's appointment or something,  I would think people were staring at me but it's just how people are. I would think people are actually staring at me and my mom and I would be terrified. Until I started actually talking to people who are not Muslim, like friends at school. It made me more confident, actually talking about where I came from and about my religion. Everyone's from a different culture. So that's what made me start to talk about it. It's not that big of a thing. That's where I gained all my confidence. I was happy at the time, but it takes time because for us all we know, back in our country, is that Americans don't like us because we're Muslims. 

Now I don’t feel that at all. I've been in Austin for five and a half years. I've never had anybody be rude to me. I love Texas. Even right now, I wish like right now, I'm telling you. Even if somebody comes and talks to me about it, I would be happy because I want to give them answers. Like, tell me. What do you have inside you? I'm ready to talk. I'm ready for it. I understand, I don’t blame anybody because they don’t know, they just hear things from the internet. Like if I had seen an American person in my country I would have been terrified too because all the ideas we have about them are based around us being Muslim. I didn’t know anything. People have probably never even met a Muslim person before. That’s the thing. The internet is always fake. The news is always fake. They just say whatever they want to say. The first thing I would do would be like, let's go out together. Let's do something. I wish somebody would have come and talked to me like that. 

I’m way more confident right now. Whenever I moved here, everything has changed because I've seen people around the world. I have met people from everywhere.  I know how everyone just has their country, their religion, their culture, everyone is different. Everyone is different. I should love where I came from and I should be proud of where I came from and the way I look. I should be a person who stands up for my people. As a Hijabi girl, I want to be a model for everyone. I want to be an idol. I want people to look at me and I want people to think of all the other Hiajbi girls, or all the other Arab people, or all the other Muslim people who are just like me. I want to give a better picture of who we are, you know? 

Of course, there are two different cultures. America is a whole different culture, but America it's a very cool culture. I feel like I am in both, I try to fit in both. I would never leave my culture behind. No, I'm actually proud of my culture. But I also like to belong in American culture. I'm actually proud to be here. I just applied for my citizenship. I'm just so proud that I got this opportunity. When I moved here it was hard for me and I worried about how people were going to accept me. My dad would tell me all the time to not be friends with American people because they were just going to make me take my hijab off. We didn't have any idea. But actually, the thing is that America is such an awesome country because you actually get to tell people about your culture. Like you get to be whatever you want. You have freedom of choice. You can say whatever you want to say, you have freedom of religion, so you're just being yourself. There are immigrants from everywhere here. People have their own culture, everyone is learning, it’s just awesome. 

One of the things I love about my culture is how families are close to each other and how they stay together. How they stay in touch all the time. Here, whenever kids are 18 they move out, they don't see each other for years. For us we stay very close with each other, we help each other. We have very close family members, we’re always in touch, and we do stuff together. Back in Syria, we saw family every other week. We would have lunch or dinner together or go out to the bar. That's one thing I like about my culture, that families are super close. It’s different here.  I would never want to stay away from my family even though I'm older. I would always stay in touch with them. I would call them every day, I would see them whenever I get the chance to because I feel like family always comes first. I know that's how it is here, too, but it's a little different because everyone lives in different states and is far away. They only see people whenever they have a chance to. 

Another thing that I love about my culture is my religion. I'm proud to be a Hijabi Muslim girl. We have so many things that people don't know about us. Not just being Muslim and that's it you know? There’s a lot of dynamic in that. How we actually also respect other people, how we respect other countries and other cultures and other traditions and other religions. People think we don't and I don't know why, but we actually do. We have our own traditions like cooking, clothing. 

In terms of American culture, I love all the holidays. That's a thing. They're just awesome. They give kids happiness. There's a lot of stuff to do. I love that. I love how everyone has their own freedom. They can talk the way they want, you know, freedom of speech. They can have their own religion, they can do whatever they want. I love that everyone is following the law too, and if you don't, there are consequences for it. It’s not like that in other countries. In most countries, nobody listens. I feel like that's how a country stays stronger and stable. I love how American people love to learn about other countries. People are curious. 

People don't know that immigrants who come to the US don't just come here to be in the US. We all have goals, we want to do something, it's a great opportunity for us to come here. It's not easy for us because we have to start from zero because we have to move from a different country, we have to learn a new language, we have to fit in within a new culture, we have to fit in with all the new laws and new rules, we have to learn all that. Immigrants are people who actually work very hard - very, very hard. Why? Because we came here to be better, to make ourselves better, to get all the opportunities we can. The US is all about opportunities to grow, to study, to get educated. We don't come here just to be in the US or to just sit and do nothing. We're actually very hard workers, all of us. It's a big thing for us moving here, for everyone as an immigrant, because we all know it's a great country. It’s hard for us because everything is different. Everything. You come from a country with no rules, no laws, where everyone just does whatever they want. Government is very weak. There's literally just nothing, you never grow. You're just there. But here, you can always start from zero. We work on ourselves, we go to school, we study, we learn the language, we start jobs, we get certificates. 

If I wasn't here at this time, if I was still in Jordan, I know that after finishing high school I wasn't going to be able to do anything else. I wasn't going to be able to go to college because there were fewer opportunities. We would have had to spend a lot of money to go to college and they might not even have accepted me as a Syrian. 

There was no future for me there. I knew I was just going to be at home until I got married. I never had any dreams in Jordan because I knew what was coming up for me if I stayed there. But since I was seven years old, the first movie I watched was Home Alone, and when I saw that movie my only dream was to come to the US and finish my education. When I was seven I had that dream. I graduated from high school in 2020. 

Now all the time I keep reminding myself of how it used to be back then. That’s why I'm here today to make a change. I'm not here just to make money and drive a car. Hopefully, I'm going to be a citizen very soon. I want to go to college, hopefully starting in January. I want to be a nurse because that's what I always wanted to be. I want to improve my English and I would love to get involved with organizations that help refugees. I want to help my family as much as I can. Hopefully, we can have our own business one day and buy our own house. It's all getting better. Bit by bit, you know, things happen.

Fatima and Zarmina Mirzakhail

Born in Afghanistan

Age: 20, 18

October 26, 2021

Fatima: Life in Afghanistan is really indescribable, it was really hard for me especially being a girl. I always felt that my life had no meaning, that I had no future there. I knew that I might finish high school, get married, have children, and then just be a woman at home. That's all. That's how I felt there, like I was in a box. I couldn't dream further. I felt like my wishes and everything had a limit. It was very difficult. You were under a lot of people's control. Your father, brothers, uncle, mom, aunts. All of them were controlling you because you were a girl. Even the neighbors. Everyone just had control over you. It felt really hopeless and useless. My dreams were small and limited. 

Zarmina: Even though I was young I felt like I didn't have power. I couldn't do anything without asking someone older. They never listened to our ideas. They were just saying, oh, we're older. You're younger. You can’t do anything. Even though maybe I am younger, I had something good in my mind. Our ideas were not important. I felt like a person without a voice. Everyone always had power over you. Girls couldn't even think. That's what I remember, but I came really young.

Fatima: I had just turned 15 when we left. 

Zarmina: I was almost nine. 

Fatima: My dad was working with the American people which put our lives at risk so we had to leave Afghanistan. The terrorist groups gave us warnings to my dad that if he didn’t stop working that we would be their target. My dad was worried about our life, so that's why we had to move. He worked with a company that was demining bombs that were planted by the Soviets. He worked with that company for 26 years. He went to all the provinces of Afghanistan to help remove the bombs that they planted in the ground. That job was dangerous. The company he worked for had contracts with outsiders, like the Americans and the British. All of his friends, some of them, died. Some of them lost their hands, their feet, their eyes - but God saved my dad. Then he worked with the American army for almost three and a half years. That was when things got worse and we had to leave.

Zarmina: The security was really bad for us living there. People would threaten us that they would kill us. We also came here to get a better education because my dad, he's a very open-minded person. He wants girls to study, so he was like, we have to take you somewhere that will be good for you to get an education. All my uncles were getting mad at my dad because he was letting us go to school there. He didn’t think that was fair because education is a good thing, it’s not a bad thing. He wanted us to get an education. My sister and I were the first children in our whole entire family to go to school. Our oldest sister was the first one out of all of our cousins on both sides. She was the first child and the first girl that graduated from high school. A lot of other people in our family wanted us to just stay at home, but our dad kept telling us to go. My dad was fighting for it, my mom was as well. Even though they never had the taste of education, they still wanted us to get to very high positions and be successful in our life. They tried so hard to make our future easier even though it was really hard for them. 

Fatima: Even though my parents were not educated they wanted to be educated. They only went to school for two years and then after that, the Russians came, there was war in my country and that's why they couldn't continue to go to school anymore. The Russians were there for almost approximately 30 years.  

Zarmina: I hated school there because I was getting bullied a lot, really badly. Even though I loved education. It was my dream to study, but people didn't love me. They would keep bullying me. I was trying to be a good student. And they were just not letting me.

Fatima: I didn’t get bullied, I was a fighter. I had to be, that was the environment. I had to be mean to fight for my rights. I knew I was not happy in that environment. I always felt and dreamed of going somewhere where I could continue my education. My dad's work history provided us the opportunity to be able to come to the US because of the dangers posed to us. That was the process, we went through the US embassy and it took around a year and a half. 

Zarmina: While our case was ongoing my dad wasn't working. He couldn't because he had to stay home. We weren't going anywhere that had a lot of people. We were hiding in the house, we had to stay in the house. At that time, we even went through a lot of financial problems. It was really hard for us. I have three sisters and three brothers. Seven children, mom, and dad. My oldest sister is married and lives in Afghanistan, so we couldn’t bring her. She has kids, a family. When we left, it was our parents, the two of us, and our little brother. Our second older sister was already here with our brother-in-law. They got here seven months before us because he had a completely different case. He was working as a translator with the American embassy. They were in Virginia. 

Fatima: I knew we were coming to the US because of the process that we were going through but I didn't know the exact day of when it would happen. They told us two days before. I was living my normal life, going to school. I was shocked. I couldn't even say goodbye to all of my friends, I couldn't get their contact information. It was super hard to suddenly leave everything behind and go somewhere I did not know a lot about. I expected it to take longer than that. 

Zarmina: I was really young and I wasn't really thinking about many things. When my mom came and told me we were going to America I was like, oh hell no. We weren't going to school for almost a week before we left because people found out that we were leaving in a few days and they were literally trying to kidnap us. We just stayed in the house. When I came on the airplane for the first time it was terrifying but it was fun. When I came to America, it just felt like it was a completely different world. It wasn't even the same planet. I just felt so happy. I felt like my dreams would come true and I would have freedom. I wasn’t going to have anyone have power over me. I would have a voice now. It was very amazing. It was just a crazy experience. Unbelievable.

Fatima: When I was on the plane I could imagine finally getting out of this box. I was upset about leaving my other families and my friends, the country, but still, I was like, this is it. Now you're going to the United States and you will finish your education, you will become someone that you never imagined. You will dream further. Your wishes will become bigger. You will be able to help a lot of people and become the person that you wanted since you were little. I was so happy. It wasn't really strange for me, the new culture, the people. I felt like I was made to be in an environment where I could become successful. I was born for this, to be a fighter. 

Zarmina: We were going to go to Virginia but then my brother-in-law recommended we come to Austin Texas. Our sister and our brother-in-law moved here after we came here. I think that's the best decision we've ever made, to choose Texas, because I love Austin. We got here on November 6, 2015. Almost six years ago. The first few months were very difficult, to be honest. I know America is a very great place for education, I was so happy, but especially when I started school in January the people and everything was just different. I started in seventh grade and I didn't speak English at all. I was struggling really badly. I didn't know how to spell my name. The teachers, I didn’t know what they were doing. They're asking me how to write my name and I was so lost. No one was helping me, I was getting bullied. I went to the principal and they didn't help me, they were kind of racist, to be honest. I went and was crying to them because these girls were mean to me because I didn’t speak English and they didn't do anything. In class, the teacher saw me getting bullied and he blamed me, which was upsetting because I didn’t know how to voice myself and I couldn't stand up for myself. When all of those things happened, I kind of lost my hope again. I felt like I couldn’t achieve my dreams, that it was too hard and I couldn’t do it. After that, I met some amazing people and I worked really hard. That bullying kind of helped me work harder. 

Fatima: I started high school in the second semester of freshman year. It was really hard. I didn't speak any English at all. The only few words I knew were umbrella and hello. I couldn't even ask someone how are you. Just umbrella, that was the first word, but I couldn't even say it the right way.

Zarmina: The first word I learned was shut up. 

Fatima: It was so hard and I was so mad for the first few months. I finished ninth grade with really bad grades. I started my sophomore year. That was also very difficult, learning was hard and there weren't any people in my school that spoke my language to help translate. The dictionary wasn't helping enough. I didn't even know how to check my grades, I didn’t know what a GPA was, what a grade was, and what passing and failing meant. I was going to school and coming back home crying. At the end of my sophomore year, someone came to talk about a summer camp program meant to help us learn English. It's called GirlForward which helps all refugee girls learn English and get used to living in the US. At first, I was like, hell no, I'm not going to another six weeks of not learning anything, but my friends encouraged me to go with them. That program actually helped me a lot. It made me stronger, helped my confidence a lot, it made me ready for all the things that I wanted to do. It made me braver and stronger. I got the best grades in my junior year because of that. I started speaking English, and I knew how to check my grades. I started learning about college. Pretty much I studied only two years of high school, junior and senior year. Those are the two years that I worked so hard to get all my grades. I didn't have documents that showed I finished school grades from Afghanistan to get credits here, I had nothing. 

Zarmina: I felt like I had to try to fit in all the time. I wear a scarf, a hijab. I'm completely different from what people normally are in society here, so it was hard to get accepted. I felt left out all the time. People were mean to me because I looked different. There was a time I just didn't want to go out, I didn't want people to see me because I had already been through much in my country getting bullied. I was so happy that it was going to be different here, but even here it was kind of worse at the beginning. It just hurt me so badly. Even a time came that I hated my life and I just wanted to disappear. It was really painful. I still experience it sometimes, but I have become more confident. I stand up for myself, I advocate for myself. It's funny because that kind of helped me be who I am right now. It taught me people will say whatever the hell they're gonna say no matter what. You just have to not give up. No one will help you except yourself. I had to stand up and that made me stronger. 

Fatima: I think communication is the biggest key for all these problems because when I first started high school I didn't speak English, so the students were bullying us because we were wearing scarves, we were Muslim and we were girls. We couldn't tell the teachers what exactly was going on. We got in fights - they were pulling our scarves off, pushing us, cursing at us, recording and posting YouTube videos without our scarves even though they knew we weren't allowed. We couldn't speak so no one understood what we were going through. I talked to the school principal a few times and sometimes he would even laugh at us, just smile, as if it was a joke. That was the most painful part of it.  My friends didn’t have the confidence to fight back and I wasn't confident either, but I had to make myself stronger just because of the environment. To be ready to fight for my rights. I learned that this is a free country where each person has their own rights, I have to fight back. We didn't have any support to learn English faster, we had to learn it on our own. When we started speaking, we communicated with the teachers, we talked to all the students who were bullying us, and they understood us. We told them, the way how we are respecting y'all you guys need to share the same respect for us. It is every human being's job to respect each other, no matter what race you are, it doesn’t matter. Humanity is really important. When we were able to communicate then they started loving us, we were just too interesting for them. They wanted to learn more about Islam, about our countries, about who we are. 

Zarmina: A few times people pushed me or pulled my scarf as well. I was so scared, I didn't speak English so I couldn't fight back. But now everyone is my best friend. 

Fatima: Even her high school principal is her bestie. 

Zarmina: I always felt like I didn't fit in this society. I love my culture, I think it's beautiful, but because there was too much pressure not fitting in, people always looking at me, I just wanted to be normal and fit in. I kinda changed because I wanted to be American so badly. It's really hard because outside I always try to wear Western clothes so I can fit in society, but then at home, it's so hard because my parents want me to remember my culture but it's really hard to wear that outside. It's really hard for me to fit in one culture or the other, so I feel in-between. It's really a struggle. My culture has beautiful clothes, good food, but I feel like I just wouldn't wear them daily. I would choose American culture because I feel like American people give more rights to women. Men and women are equal here. Afghani culture, even though of course my dad is different, but in general with Afghani culture, I don't feel comfortable because women don't have a voice. I love how hospitable the Afghani people are, how nice we are to people no matter where they're from. The thing that I just don't like is that they are thinking of women as inferior to them. And that’s a cultural thing. It's not a religious thing. The thing I love about American people is that they don't care. They don't give a damn what the hell you're doing, what you're wearing, they don't judge you. Some  Afghani people are really judgmental towards women/girls. Even though they're really nice, they can find tiny mistakes in you. Which I think is because of their ignorance and unproductivity. 

Fatima: Judgmental? I wouldn't say all Afghani people are judgmental but in general. Even the US has those kinds of people, they often live rural, far from the city. 

Zarmina: I understand what you're saying girl, of course, no one is perfect, every culture or religion has something. 

Fatima: I definitely feel in-between. When I first came I was wearing long Afghani dresses to school, and I'm not saying it's bad, I love my culture. I love and respect both cultures. But the Afghani dresses are mostly uncomfortable, so I started wearing simple American stuff. Shirts and jeans. Because I do what I want to do. I want to just be active a lot and I don't think I could do that in Afghani clothes. When I started wearing different clothes my family didn't agree. My uncles in Afghanistan found out that I was wearing jeans and they were like, you forgot your culture, you're not our daughter anymore, you're not respecting us. I was like, I don't care. I was like, I'm not doing something that would be really bad for me, my culture, or my religion. I know what I'm doing. I think I'm old enough. So I started wearing these kinds of clothes but I faced a lot of problems. I would say I'm living in two different worlds right now. When I'm at home, when I'm with my people, I have to be in a different world, which is with them. If I'm outside, I'm more comfortable with the clothes I wear. 

Zarmina: Different mindsets. We have to have different mindsets for both cultures, we have to change it. 

Fatima: I said outside I’m in my real world but both of them are my real worlds, right? The American world is where I belong and the Afghani world is also where I belong. I look at it from both ways. I'm not really changing myself, but it can be very confusing.

Zarmina: Yeah, I feel like I don't know who I am sometimes like I’m kind of lost in-between. 

Fatima: I like whatever I am right now. I call myself Aghani-American. 

Zarmina: There’s a lot that’s happened recently with the US leaving Afghanistan. My mom and older sister were stuck there and we couldn't do anything about it. It's painful to talk about, I felt useless. I couldn't do anything. All the people getting hurt. She just finally got back last week (this interview took place on October 26th, 2021 - nearly two months after the officially declared withdrawal date of August 30, 2021). 

Fatima: I would like to tell this story on behalf of both of us because it’s really meaningful. In June, my sister, two of her sons, and my mom went to visit my country. They went for the first time after six years, they spent two months there. They were shopping, they were happy, they saw everyone. Then the Taliban attacked the whole country on August 16. I want to be sure to mention every single thing. 

My second sister was staying with her in-laws and my older sister was staying with my mom in my uncle's house. So my mom had to go and bring my second sister to see my older sister. On her way to get my second sister, that was the moment when the Taliban entered Kabul. My mom said every single person there was yelling. The taxi drivers, the shopkeepers, the college students. All the people were running and screaming. When the Taliban first came 25 years ago, my mom was little. She said that at that moment she saw the same fear in her eyes again. All the cars got stuck, so my mom had to walk for six hours back to my uncle's house. Her feet were hurting for days and days. She couldn't talk, she was just screaming. She went home and just started crying. Everyone at my uncle’s house was scared because all of them were working with American people. She said that even if she died, she needed to see her brothers. 

She went to the airport gates and all of them were closed, which is why there were a lot of people there and it was really, really disorganized. They didn’t have control over people because everyone had fear, everyone just wanted to run. Even though my mom had documents, she has a green card and the kids have passports, they went to the airport a few times. They spent 14 hours waiting in front of the door of the airport, and they didn't open it for them because if they opened it, a lot of other people without documents would go inside. There was a lot of stuff going on - outside there was Taliban, inside there was like the military, Afghan military was stuck there. In front of the airport, there were gunshots. The kids had to hear it, my nephews were crying, my mom was crying. There was tear gas going off and smoke bombs, they couldn't see anything. They were trying to separate and organize the crowd so they could take people inside that had documents and whoever had worked with the American people. None of them got through and they had to go six times to the airport in two weeks. Each time they were going they were getting dirty, getting scared because of the gunshots and the tear gas. They literally lost hope and thought that they would never come out of there again. 

We were calling them the whole day, all night. We were asking if someone knew a secret door to the airport so they could get in because they had documents and they would let them leave, but where they were going, the Afghan soldiers and the Taliban wouldn't let them go to get to the American soldiers. If they could have gotten to the American soldiers and shown them their documents, they would have literally taken them inside. The checkpoints were the hardest thing for them to do. Here we had a friend who worked with the American army in Afghanistan, she was our first volunteer who gave us a ride from the airport when we originally came here. She speaks Pashto and some of her friends were inside the airport, so she contacted those friends. Those friends said there was a secret door in one part of the airport and they wanted our family to get there. We were in contact with them, texting, sending the location of them to the soldiers. Out of all this, only my mom got through, my sister didn’t. 

Zarmina: It was the day that the bomb exploded. They were at another door, my mom and sister. They got separated because there were a lot of people, a lot of American residents that had green cards, even at the secret door. My mom got inside by pushing, but my sister and her kids had to go back. That was the last day that the US military was there. 

Fatima: We went through a lot. My mom, my sister, went through a lot. My mom went to Germany and was in a camp for a month and a half. She just got here last Friday. That was the hardest part for us. My sister was in a safe place there and she, hopefully, will get here soon because they are just starting more flights trying to get people out who are stuck. But my mom, when she got to Germany, at the very beginning, there were a lot of people. She called me from someone's phone and she was crying to me. She was like, my dear daughter, take me out of here. Please take me out of here. It's really cold. I'm dying from pain and it's really cold. There is not good food, they only give us food twice a day. That was the very beginning - even American soldiers didn't have a lot of resources to give them. That was the hardest thing for me as a daughter, hearing my mom needing help and I couldn't do anything, I just died alive that day. 

Zarmina: That's what I meant that we were so hopeless. We felt useless. We couldn't do anything. 

Fatima: Our sister is still there, staying with her in-laws, trying to get out. Waiting for flights to get out of Afghanistan. They're still hiding. Hopefully, they will come soon. We're just hoping for the best. But these last two months were like a nightmare for us.

Zarmina: We were in hell. We couldn't sleep. We couldn't stop thinking for a second. And we had to go to school! We have to continue our normal life here and it was so freaking hard because my dad was in New York. He was stuck doing business and Fatima was basically an adult. She was my mom and dad for us. We were just young, in the house, and we had to go to school every day.

Fatima: I had to go to college. I had to go to work. I had to take care of my siblings. I had to clean the home, cook, take them to school, and pick them back up. All the things that a father and mother do - at the same time. I had to pay bills, everything was on me. And then I had to help my mom and sister to get out, trying to contact different people, finding contacts inside. Staying on the phone. There were days that I didn't sleep for 24 hours. I didn't get a minute of sleep. I didn't even eat for like, I don't know, it was like, three days. All I did was just drink some water. Everything we did was cry. During the night, I would stay up contacting people and asking them how they're doing because it’s daytime there. During the day here I had to work because I had to pay bills. I had to take care of my siblings, their education, my education. My dad got back days after my mom, both got back in the last few weeks. We are really grateful for the help we got from a few close friends, we cannot thank them enough. I’m especially grateful for my friend Wajiha. 

Zarmina: My current principal helped me so much at school because it was so bad, I was struggling. I’m really grateful for her. Right now I'm a senior in high school. I'm going to graduate in 2022. I’m hoping to get accepted into UT and become a journalist so I can fight for women who don’t have a voice. I want to be a voice for them so I can stand up and show the world what is happening in other places where people don't really see how it's so hard for women to get an education even though it’s 2021. There are some countries where women still struggle to have their rights, so I want to be an advocate. I want to be a very successful person, to help my parents and the people that helped me. I want to appreciate them and thank them. I want to be a fashion designer as well. 

Fatima: I am taking some classes at community college studying psychology and am trying to transfer to UT. I'm working part-time to help my family financially. I just signed up to help volunteer with Afghan people coming to the US, to help with translating and stuff. Since I'm not taking a lot of classes and I feel like I have enough time to do what I like to do, I want to work more with girls. I want to be a psychologist. I want to finish this degree because a lot of people need help right now. Especially if you've been through the same things you know exactly how they feel, so you'll be able to help a lot of people just like you. After that, I’m going to study journalism. I’m going for it. I don't want to study journalism right now because I'm not ready, somehow I don't feel ready for it. Wait, I want to have a good ending - I just want to be someone that can help many people who really need it. It doesn't matter who they are. I'm not just trying to help Muslim women, I would like to even help men. That's why I would like to be a counselor. I'm willing to help anyone. This is my hobby, helping people. Actually, I'm trying to write more. I want to be a good example. I want to help - women first, of course - let the men die! (joking)

Zarmina: That’s rude! 

Fatima: That’s not rude! I just would like to help women first, men second. As British people say, ladies first. 

Zarmina: I want to be a voice for women. Whoever is reading this, I want them to know that you should never give up on your dreams. Never let anyone else tell you you can’t do something because you’re a certain race, or your this or this. Never let anyone - do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it. 

Fatima: Okay add this, I’m giving you a good quote here - be grateful for the difficult days and things today because you're going to - yeah, it's my quote and I forgot it...wait! Be grateful for the difficulty today because it’s going to make you ready for tomorrow.