Snippets: Driven into Exile

Ibrahim Mahmoud lives in a refugee camp in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. Ibrahim has known a life of exile. In 1948 he had to flee Haifa, among the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes.

“We fled our homes in Palestine in 1948 to Jordan on the back of a truck,” Mahmoud said. His family went to Basra, a city of that southern tip of Iraq. “Life in Basra was difficult. It was dusty, and the water wasn’t clean where we lived,” he said.

Under Saddam Hussein, Palestinians could work and even hold government jobs but not allowed citizenship.

After the U.S. led invasion, Iraqis viewed the Palestinians as complicit with the former regime, and the refugees fled from discrimination. Mahmoud, his wife, and five children moved to Mosul. To put bread on the table, his children worked.

If Mahmoud thought life would be peaceful after the war, he was wrong. In June of 2014, the Islamic State swept into Mosul. Mahmoud and his family, now included eleven children, packed their belongings and left.

Now his family lives in Baharka refugee camp in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. Mahmoud had an Iraqi government pension but can’t collect it because he has an expired ID card, labeled refugee. He must get it renewed in Bagdad but can’t travel with an inactive ID. So he stays, with his family, a refugee in a camp they don’t call home.

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Randy Tramp

Randy Tramp

Amazon Review:

It's a military thriller with a heart. Commander Mark Steele has an exciting job in Special Forces. Though it's dangerous, he knows his work is critically important. But that job separates him from his wife and child. When an injury brings him home, his wife is glad to have him back. But other issues cause struggles within the family, leading to distrust and hurt. Steele takes dangerous risks in his new work. The thriller plot thickens, as he seeks to save a life. But can he save his family?

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