y family arrived in America from Iraq in December of 1978. Less than a year later, on November 4, 1979 Islamic revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, along with the Americans inside. It felt like we had just barely escaped the Middle East only to be pulled back in. My father strictly warned us not to say we were from Iraq—back then the majority of Americans knew little about the Middle East and he was afraid we would be perceived as somehow connected to Khomeini’s Islamist ideology.
Then in 1980 the Iran-Iraq war began; a war that devastated my family. In Iraq, the Christians had not previously been allowed to serve in the military, but Saddam needed bodies for the war, and that included the Christians. My paternal uncle—the youngest and last of my father’s brothers remaining in Iraq—was conscripted. My grandparents mourned that the last of their sons was sent off to war. Only my aunt remained with them in Baghdad; she took care of them until their deaths, while my uncle was on the front lines.
Read the full article at Providence Magazine.