Haya

AGE 16

Hello. My name is Haya. I am sixteen years old. I went through everything with no one except my mum – no dad, no cousins. It has really opened my eyes to the world.

My dad passed away when I was four years old, and my brother and sister were almost two and one. My mum fought hard to raise the three of us without any support from anyone, and with so much bullying from the surrounding society and so many fights with Dad’s family. Society always judged her for being a very young single mum with no family. It was very hard for me growing up and seeing how my mum was treated, but she never made us think about any of this – she was always smiling. She had to work all day and leave me at home with my two younger siblings. I was acting older than my age so that I was able to cope. I was feeding them, making milk and changing nappies. But one day my mum got the chance to be a teacher in UAE, so we went there.

The people we met in UAE understood our situation and they supported us a lot; they were like family to us.

Then we went to Thailand, so that we could try to come to Australia by boat. Because we were very young, the man who was going to get us on the boat got very sad and didn’t let us through. He told my mum to think once again before taking this risk of travelling to Australia by boat and think about what might happen to us. We could either live or die. My mum went back to Jordan again, then UAE, then Bahrain, Saudia Arabia. We weren’t ever settled in one place. The good people we met were always supporting us and asking if we needed any help, and I feel so much gratitude to them.

We had a year and a half in Jordan before we came to Australia. All of us were growing up, supporting my mother during this time. We built very good relationships with friends, but we had to leave them to come to Australia. I was always first in my classes, even though we moved so much to different schools and left so many friends. I always maintained my education level. Because I was Iraqi the people at school thought I belonged to the religion group ‘Shia’, and they didn’t like me at all because they thought I had different beliefs from them. The school tried to put my marks down but they couldn’t because my mum always used to come to the school and prove my full marks in exams. In UAE, they didn’t want a refugee student to be smarter than their own citizens. I wasn’t allowed in public schools, so my mum had to work so hard to earn the money to put me in a private school.

But here I am today in Australia, in a much safer place. I go to school without being bullied for what I believe in. My mum is back to her life as a housewife without having to worry about getting a job. I have a bed now for the first time, and a room to myself, which is so much better than when I used to live in one room with the whole family.

I have a country. I can say this is my home out loud and no one can kick me out of it.

This year I will get Australian citizenship. I will graduate from Year 12 and hopefully get into uni. I want to give every degree I ever get to my brave mother who got me to Australia to get a better education and future – my mother who is always smiling, no matter what we go through, and who says there is God who will never give up on us and He is planning our life so we don’t need to worry about tomorrow.