Prologue

This is not a story about politics, or war. Instead, this is a story about what it was like to grow up as a child of immigrants who fled a country due to political instability. Yasmeen brings in a selection of voices from the Iraqi diaspora to help even out the global narrative: from Iraqis who experienced the war first hand, to other hyphenated Iraqi Americans who experienced it from afar. She talks openly about her own experience of growing up as a first generation Iraqi-American during the 1st and 2nd gulf wars, and how much these wars shaped her experience during her formative years. Many Iraqis are still deeply traumatized from living in the war, and many are paranoid about publicly sharing their narratives with the world, so we ask that you treat their stories kindly.