My name is Sinan and I am an Iraqi journalist.
I worked as a journalist for 5 years in my home country. I worked for magazines, newspapers and television. I was a reporter for the Iraqi Channel Alsomaria and studied journalism at Degla University in Baghdad.
My life was like any Iraqi youth. My generation grew up during a lot of war. I was born during war, grew up during war and fled during the last war against ISIS. We knew the war. But there was also a life beside that was about love. I met a lot of people in my work and I was their voice to the government.
I loved my job. Journalism is a profession where you tell things to the people. My work, my social life and the time I was a student was a very exciting period in my life. But It was the difficult circumstances that made me leave everything.
The worst feeling in my life was when I left the country I grew up in. There is the family, home, school, work and your friends. It is very difficult to leave one’s home country. But the war, politics, armed groups and insecurity affected my work.
You can be any person, European or Asian: you will always miss your home country. It’s hard to forget the feelings you had or places you remember. I think what made me move on is that I’ve started a new life in a new country, with new friends and a new job. I don’t want to say that you can forget about your memories. Just that you can try to think about the new things that surround you to make it easier and you will feel less sad.
Some days I feel happy, others I feel sad. I’m glad that I’m still working with journalism. I am reporting in Arabic newspapers about different events in Malmö. Sometimes I feel sad, like any migrant. Migration in Sweden takes a long time and the waiting makes me think and I get bored.
It takes a long time to receive a response from the migration agency. I have mixed feelings from day to day, joy and sorrow. But in any case, Sweden is a fine country, democratic and there is freedom of opinion. When I work as a journalist here, I am entitled to my opinions, entitled to what I write and entitled to what I publish.
I miss Baghdad, the living capital. There is always life in a capital. There is love, there is competition, a soul. There is war, violence and armed groups, but at the same time there is life, hope and optimism among the people. I miss meeting my friends in a café. I also miss my colleagues and I miss my family very much. Refugees sense of loneliness is the hardest bit. It’s a deep sorrow, because you are lonely without your family and friends
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Dublin Core: Language: swe Subject: asylum, refugees, A Million Stories, Sweden