(1/11) “When I was a baby I came very close to dying. I’m not...

(1/11) “When I was a baby I came very close to dying. I’m not sure how to say the name of the disease in English, but all the water in my body started to dry. I couldn’t gain weight and I became very weak. This was during Saddam’s time, and the hospital staff told my mother that in two days they would euthanize me. But my mother refused to accept this. She called everywhere and found a clinic in Jordan that said they could give me treatment. There was an American doctor there who saved my life. We stayed in Jordan until I was seven, and then we moved back to Baghdad. One day I was playing in our garden and I heard very loud noises and the sky was really red and everyone was screaming. It’s very hard to describe. It was like there was blood in the sky.”

(Gaziantep, Turkey)