A young Heba Khalid, pictured in her old house in Iraq
I was born in Baghdad, Iraq. In the same hospital as my sister, who’d been born a year before me. I spent my early childhood in the same house that my grandfather had been raised in. I went to the same school that my father had walked the halls of. I was surrounded by family and a close-knit community that knew one another by name and story.
Considering how young I was, I didn’t know what war was. I’m not sure politicians or those who toy with the idea today really do, either.
All I knew was that I had to walk straight home after school, there would be some days where we would have to play inside rather than out, and that sometimes, the electricity would turn off and water would be scarce. But as far as I was concerned, this was normal. Everyone on my street, my town, my country, was going through the same thing. And it was normal, just as rifles kept hidden in closets and bullets found in the garden were normal.
Sometimes my grandmother would huddle us all together and tell us to be good and pray for the peace of our country. I didn’t know what that meant either, only that I had to do it because my grandmother told me so.
The turning point, when things stopped seeming so normal, was at school. Of all places. I must have been around seven years old, maybe younger, or maybe a little older. A small explosion, an attack; rebel fighters, or a terrorist group. That was never really clarified. I remember my teacher crying in the hallway; she was a large woman who commanded an entire room with her voice, her headscarf was always wrapped tight around her head, and she’d yelled at me once because I scored too low on a spelling test. It’s strange seeing adults crying as a child, I’m not sure why, but, at the time, I thought that was something reserved for children.
When the lock-down ceased and we went back in our classroom, the windows were completely smashed, and there was glass everywhere. We were crowded into a corner that had been left untouched by the attack. Only, there were still children crying, and we finished early that day and carried on the next as if nothing had happened. This has remained the spirit of the country, even after all these years. Sweep despair under the carpet, and live on. Or die. Nothing was, or is, ever certain.
We left Iraq soon after the kidnapping started. Big black vans with sliding doors would park close to schools and snatch unsuspecting children. Sometimes ransoms would be paid, sometimes we never heard of classmates again.
I have always thought myself lucky. Lucky to have such wonderful parents, who never made my sister and I feel, not for one moment, that were missing out on a normal childhood. Lucky that I was never afraid of the dark, and that I always thought the drones and planes flying overheard were just really loud bees. Most of all, I know I’m lucky that I didn’t face the dire circumstances of friends, neighbours and family who perished in the war. Although, fatalities of war are not always physical.
The process of leaving had been long. Filled with endless interviews set up with people from the UN, talk of green cards, and lots of nervous chatter about a future where things would be okay and there would be no distant sounds of bombs. Arriving in Manchester, I took note of everything. People’s light skin, the trees, the birds. Things that I’d probably come across before, but now, had just seemed so much brighter and filled with optimism.
We lived in a council house and received benefits, initially. My father studied to re-qualify the medical degree that had been sitting in the dust since the 90s, because doctors were targets in a lawless war; and my father had survived three. I didn’t realise being a refugee was a status until people told me it didn’t belong in this country, ‘their’ country, that would apparently never be mine.
My father got a job, worked his way up, cut off reliance on benefits and moved into a home that was ours. My mother was racially targeted by people in the streets. My sister and I worked hard in school, we always felt like we had something to prove. We were strolling through the park once, and a boy our age told us to go back to our country. In high school, I made friends, lost them, opened up about where I came from. There was a period of time where people would ask if I had a bomb in my bag, if I would behead them. Integration and gratitude became blackened pages in my dictionary, words that I didn’t understand, mis-interpreted. People would say that refugees and immigrants were coming into ‘their’ country, stealing jobs and money. I would shrivel up inside and ignite like the cars set alight in Baghdad after sectarian clashes. I realised I was in a new warzone, now. A war that I was acutely aware of, where people fought with adamant words that I did not belong. I told myself, every day, that I did. I did, I do.
My maroon passport told me so, my parents told me so. Although sometimes my foreign name shrugged and mumbled and said otherwise. I would always be that girl from Baghdad, but I could be the girl from Manchester too. I could drink tea and complain about rain, but secretly love it, and talk about British values, couldn’t I?
I could, I can.
Despite the political differences, accusations from some that I betrayed my own for another, I will never take for granted the opportunities I have been given. The life I live, I was able to live. I would never forget the origins of my name.
The war of words may rage on, but I won’t ever despair. I will belong. I will, I will, I will. I won’t forget where I come from, my roots, my heritage. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.
