Lailya’s story

12 June 2007, 02:20PM

My name is Lailya, I'm from Iraq. I was a primary school teacher in Baghdad.

Do you think it's easy and fun to leave home, family, friends, neighbours and lots and lots of memories, beautiful memories? Do you think it's easy and fun to put your life and children's lives in the hands of smugglers? And to cross the huge ocean by old leaky boat?

But we had to at that time. We had two options: either just surrender to death 100 per cent or surrender to death 50 per cent and the other 50 per cent could be a bright, safe future for the children.

I've never imagined one day that Australia will be the safe part of my life, but here I am now, standing here, part of myself happy, secure and grateful and part of me is scared and suffers. I've been on a temporary protection visa with my children for three years and I still don't know my future, and I'm still asking this same question: When will our struggle and suffering come to an end?

Lailya's photo story

Click on one of the images below to start Lailya's photo story. Use your keyboard arrow keys to move between images.

Now I'm a student at RMIT, doing a Bachelor of Education, but I am not allowed to study full time because of my visa, and instead of being a teacher within four years I will finish within eight years.

Now I don't know what to think or who to cry for: for me and my family who may still be forced to leave Australia because of their Temporary Protection Visa, or for my people in Iraq who continue to struggle from nightmare to nightmare.

I watch my children go to school every day, wearing their uniform, hope and happiness rising in their eyes, and I ask myself, what kind of future is waiting for them?

I left Iraq running from a horrible end. But the smuggler we found was working an Australian route, my sister's smuggler took her to Sweden where she got permanency straight away. We are still temporary after years and years.

The last thing I want to say is the warmth and kindness of the Australian people, and my beliefs that always tomorrow will be better, inshallah, are what make me survive so far without losing my passion about life. And every time I feel that this is too much and I can't keep going like this one day more, I look at my children's eyes and I say it doesn't matter how I feel, my children are the aim of my life. They are my life, and for them I have to keep telling people my story.

"When my feet touched this land I thought I had been reborn, that all the pain of the past will slowly heal in this big land."

Lailya

Find out more

• Download Lailya's story (pdf size: 236kb)
• Read other refugees' stories
• Find out more about the Unfair Shores Campaign Kit

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