How Saddam Hussein Taught Me Anything is Possible

Five months after I was born in 1989, my parents were taken to a prison somewhere in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and sentenced to death by Saddam Hussein, because of my father’s political activity.

My father was a judge, but he was secretly working for the opposition against the Kurdish. He got caught. He was unlucky.

For Hussein, any political activity meant execution, at least most of the time. Both my father and mother were tortured. By some miracle, my father wasn’t executed. Four hours before his execution, he was given personal amnesty after an Iraqi minister spoke to Hussein. There was one condition: My father was forbidden to be involved in politics again. But when my father was released from prison, he immediately started getting involved with politics in secret. There are media stories in Kurdistan about it.

When the uprising happened in 1990 — when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the war in the Gulf started — I was two years old. That year, my family escaped to the Iranian border. We fled a second time during the Kurdish civil war in the 1990s. We were displaced from our home. Well, we were actually already displaced from our original home, so this was the second time. We were living in constant fear until the downfall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

I do not consider myself a refugee. I feel more like an immigrant because I have lived in the United States, on and off, since 2011. Ultimately, I am a journalist and New York is now my home.

Being a foreign journalist in the U.S. is better than most other countries that have foreign journalists because it’s easier here. In general, when you do journalism in an open society that guarantees freedom of expression, your work is much easier than someone that does the same job somewhere else.

After I relocated to the U.S. in 2015, the first challenge was finding out how I can get story ideas. Figuring out who should I talk to. Getting interviews, contacts, and networking – that was the challenge. The reason why was because I was working for a foreign organization. I opened the very first New York office for a digital news and broadcast network based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq called Rudaw. It was the first-ever Kurdish-Iraqi organization to do so. But I didn’t have the right infrastructure. If I was working for an already established American media organization, it would’ve been much easier. Political leaders, diplomats, and businessmen in New York have more incentive to talk to the American media than foreign journalists, let alone some Kurdish guy.

Back then, Kurds were not as discussed as now. Most people didn’t know who the Kurds were. I would approach someone and say, “Can I have an hour of your time to talk about complicated foreign policies stuff for Kurds?” They wouldn’t have much incentive to talk. It’s still really hard getting interviews and media opportunities.

I’ve been rejected many, many times for an interview. I still send all these requests. In the beginning, about half of my interview requests would not get an answer. When nobody knew me, it was frustrating. One good thing about me, however, is that I kept asking. I spend very little time thinking about the interviews where I was rejected. When I first tried to get access to a press conference of the U.S. President Barack Obama, my colleague would tell me, “Are you crazy? You will never get an opportunity to ask a question to the President of the United States.” But I never put a limit on myself. I don’t care how difficult it’s perceived, I will take the chance.

I’ve failed hundreds of times, but I’ve also succeeded many times. I think as a foreign journalist you should take every press opportunity you can. There’s no way to say, “Oh, it will not happen.” You’ll never know.

Some journalists just look at this as a job. I look at it as a mission.