The bottom picture is my house and the neighbourhood I grew up in Iraq. The top picture is where I’m now in beautiful New Zealand.

The bottom picture is my house and the Neighbourhood I grew up in Iraq. Top picture is where I’m now in beautiful New Zealand.

I was born in Iraq in Sept 1988, right after the 8 year Iraq/Iran war. I survived the 1st and 2nd gulf war in the 90’s.

Life was good but then the first Gulf War happened. When war came to Iraq, that’s when our lives changed very suddenly.

I remember telling my friends at school to see you all after the “war” I was just a child and didn’t even understand or know what war meant, it wasn’t safe so we moved to my grandfathers house. It was still in Baghdad but it had a basement.

I remember the sirens in the middle of the night where the whole country can hear it as a warning alarm that the country is under attack just before the bombs dropped, when the bombs dropped that’s when I understood what war was.....it was horrible.

One of my friends (my next door Neighbor)lost the right-hand side of his face, he lost his mother, he lost all his siblings in a bomb. He was only 6.

We were the lucky ones that survived.

After the war we were a family of two my elder sister and I., my father received a salary of 5000 Dinars, while my mother, a full-time school teacher, was paid 3000 Dinars. The combined monthly income of the family, i.e. 8000 Dinars, was the equivalent of ~$4USD a month, You do the maths.

From power cuts to unemployment, poverty and no safety. Each day, we will get just couple hours of power. No clean water or no water at all. Each month we would receive a bag of food which contains Rice, Sugar, Flour and oil that’s it. Some days we had one meal a day and some days none...I swear every night I prayed to God that one day I would wake up and life would be normal.

Those were by far the worst years of my life, and I've lived through some serious crap, trust me.

No one was allowed to flee Iraq, we were one of the lucky ones that fled and managed to leave Iraq. We left everything behind except for literally one backpack. We fled to Malaysia and then in 2003 we were blessed when New Zealand opened its doors to us.

We had another chance at life, another chance to start over, a new beginning. I was 15 years old, no proper English BUT I had a vision, although we had nothing one thing we had was a hard work ethic.

I grinded day and night to help support my family my first job was in Foodtown in the butchery department where I used to walk after school to start my shift I was on $7.16 an hour I was so happy and not one day I gave up.

I then went to study to be an Engineer to make my parents proud. At first I couldn’t get into university because of my grades/English but I never stopped, I tried and tried and finally made it into the university of Auckland to study Civil Engineering. I studied full time during the day then went straight from university to work each night, digging test pit holes on the pavement as a labourer to get experience in the construction industry and to support my family. I even worked for free in the uni holidays just to get my foot in the door for some experience. I graduated with Bachelor of Civil Engineering with honours and went on a journey to pursue my dream.

It’s been 17 years since I last saw my family, my grandmother or aunties,uncles, cousins. I haven’t seen my father in years. I lost my 17 year old cousin who’s they shot 3 times in the chest, lost my uncle.

I am now the Surfacing Manager for one of the biggest construction companies in NZ, I have a fitness business, I own my own home and I have a beautiful Fiancé.

No hand outs, no assistance just a kid with A dream...

Thank you Aotearoa ???? ??