Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 55 Image from Wikimedia Commons (public domain) I sometimes came home from school crying because my teacher hit my palms with a ruler. The Muslim teachers were always harder on the Christian students – at least that’s how it seemed to those of us in the Christian commu- nity. I’ll never forget the day my mother came home angry that I was ranked second in my class while first place was given to a Muslim girl who scored a point higher in only one subject – physical education. It wasn’t long after that episode that I started hearing my parents talk about how we had “no future in this country.” By the time I started coming home from school singing Ba’ath party propaganda songs, they had made up their minds. Leaving Iraq My dad sold his Fiat, and we packed our suitcases and said we were going on vacation to Greece. Once we arrived in Athens, my father began the long process of seeking asylum. After applying to many countries for permanent immigration and getting turned down, we heard that an Armenian family in Los Angeles had offered to sponsor us. I didn’t want to move again; I wanted to stay in Greece or go back to Iraq. I missed my grandparents. My mom tried to cheer me up by promising to buy bananas and oranges for me when we arrived in our new home. Our plane touched down in Los Angeles on December 13, 1978. The shock of migrating from an Eastern civilization and worldview to the West was like a collision in my very being. We settled in Fullerton, California, where there were no Iraqis or Arabs at the time, at least none we knew of. Every weekend, we would make the thirty-mile drive to Los Angeles to visit the only other Iraqis we knew, the Armenian family who had sponsored us. Between weekends, however, it was hard to communicate with my classmates, teachers, and other members of our community. I knew four English words: yes, no, please, and thank you. The first month we were in America, we went to an evangelical church in Fullerton. My parents left me in Sunday school; that’s what was supposed to be done, they were told. When snack time came, I was given a banana and two pieces of brown bread with brown filling inside. I had never tasted peanut butter before, but I was starving. I bit into the sandwich and my mouth filled with the dry, sticky stuff. My lips felt like they’d been glued together. I wanted