peter
“I left Kurdistan with my brother when I was 13. I lost all my friends, and I couldn’t see my mother for a long time. We lived in the Netherlands first which was great, and we got the passport after 10 years, but I always had a longing to go back. I missed my mother and going home every two or three years for a few weeks didn’t feel enough… Being a single mother made me work very hard, and I almost couldn’t see my children, so when they were a bit older I decided to move home. We rented out a nice apartment, not too far from my mother, and the first few weeks were great. But after a while, the kids started to complain about school, that they couldn’t understand the language, and they started watching the news and got worried about what could happen tomorrow. They were scared. They were even too scared to go to school. They kept saying they’re not happy, they miss their friends and they want to go back home to Ireland. I was thinking, it was the same for me when I left Kurdistan. I didn’t want the same for my kids. So here we are.”