On July 4, I proudly became an American citizen. The journey has not been easy. I was 23 years old when I left the country of my birth, Iraq. A blacked-out sedan had followed me from my place of work in Baghdad to my home. Armed men bolted out and pointed AKs at me as I ran toward the house.
Come here! We know you. We know what you do. What did I do? I went to dangerous places, I visited locations contaminated with nuclear waste, I even pretended that I was an arms smuggler just to get a story.
However, amid the year of violence that ravaged Iraq following the U. Those Iraqis who did β there were hundreds of us β were considered by extremists to be CIA or Israeli Mossad agents conspiring against our own. After several interrogations by Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence, I was finally allowed to fly to the U.
Just kidding. I knew how to differentiate the propaganda fed to us by Saddam Hussein and reality β for the most part. But there were still a lot of things that were new and strange and a little scary to me. My entire life had been designed to worship a god named Saddam Hussein who famously hated Israel. Nor had I ever spoken to a gay person. What do I do if I were introduced to such people? Should I shake hands? In fact, many people who offered me support and guidance at the beginning of this amazing experience were Jewish.
Why are they helping me? Do they want me to turn against my own kind? What should I do? As the days and weeks went by, however, I started to understand what makes this country a great one. Its people look at you as a fellow human being, regardless of skin color, beliefs, religion and sexual orientation. It is as if there was a filter that kept out anything that would prejudice their judgment of you. But they were rare, and I knew that it was the American way to stand up for myself. Before I arrived in the U.
