After my father was discharged, he knew that’s when he had to leave the country. Since one of his brothers (who was a little older than my father) was enrolled in college, he was not drafted. That night my father and his older brother, Peter, decided that they were going to start their journey to America.
It wasn’t as easy as just buying a plane ticket to New York. It was much more difficult. Since Saddam Hussein was in power, he did not want people leaving his country for good. To even get out of the country, you had to prove to Saddam and his people that you would come back. That meant not taking a significant amount of money or belongings as well as purchasing a round trip plane ticket.
This is how they kept the Iraqi people coming back, because without money it’s that much harder.
Coming to America was a big step for my father and his brother. Not only were they poor but they were the first ones from their family to journey out here. That means that if they did get here that they would have to start from the ground up.
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