Shit happens and you get over it

He has never lost his sense of living and of who he is, although he went through so much. He told about his dream. I could defenitely tell he has the talent to be this great comedian. — Lisette Scholtens

His Story

“When the war started, I was 14. My parents decided to move to Iraq. From my 16th on, I’ve always been working. We earned a lot of money and we bought very expensive stuff. We moved to another city, to Erbil, where my dad opened a new company and all was kind of alright. But one day, my dad had a sort of a sunstroke. It changed everything.

The doctors told us that he was only very tired. When he woke up the next day, he didn’t remember anything. He forgot his Arabic speech, how to read the clock and even who we were. We did all kind of medical tests in Iraq and the doctors said he forgot everything because of some kind of psychological shock. However, later, step by step he learned again to speak Arabic, how to read the clock and that we are his family. He also remembered so many things from his childhood. He was actually so shocked that he was 48 years old. We were happy that his personality remained the same. But he had forgotten everything and my mom was crying for a week.

This situation caused that from then on, I was responsible for the whole family. All of a sudden we had to move from a big house with two floors to a very tiny place. We only had my younger brother’s and my salary to pay everything from. We started to sell all our expensive stuff and we bought cheaper things instead. At that time, in 2016, my uncles decided to go to Germany. This seemed like the best thing for all of us. I was 18 and my brother was 14. We didn’t want to work anymore, we wanted to go to school. The responsibility for the family was way too much. Iraq is a very expensive country to live. It was so heavy.

My other uncles who were already in Germany, sent us money to go to Germany too. We had to go illegally. This was very difficult and dangerous, we walked a mountain for about eight hours. After all we reached Turkey where the gendarmerie brought us to a camp. This was a very small place with way too many people and not enough toilets. We had to sleep on our sides in order to all fit in. Sleeping was so hard. They told us that if we would hear bombs, we didn’t have to be afraid. This was because of PKK and the Turkish army. We were in a Turkish army camp.

After six days they brought us to a new place, a school building. We stayed there for four days. Then they brought us to another place again, a basketball court this time. At 11 o’clock they would switch off the lights so that we would sleep, but until three o’clock we couldn’t sleep, because everybody was coughing. I remember that we were hanging out a bit with my cousins and that I saw a very pretty girl. I tried to make myself look as good as possible in the conditions we were in. I didn’t talk with her though. After two more days we came to Istanbul. I had a high fever, I was very sick and wanted to wait a bit before we would continue our trip to Greece. My uncle told us we had to go right away because otherwise we would loose all the money that we’d need for the trip. So we went to wait at the beach for our boat to come. We were supposed to be 100 people, but we were 150. My family was so scared because of all the stories we’d heard. However, we waited for three days, but the boat never showed up.

Then I thought: fuck Germany, fuck Greece. We suffered too much. I talked with a guy from the gendarmerie in Kurdish and said that my family needs help. They brought us to Eskişehir. This was the moment that our large family was torn apart. My uncles, with 35 people, still wanted to go to Germany. My parents, my siblings and I went to Istanbul instead. We have some relatives here and they helped us to find a job. The others arrived in Germany and found themselves everything. Our lives continued here. I love Istanbul. Since I speak English, I have a social life here. My family doesn’t speak English and they have no life here, they don’t like it at all.

Three weeks ago we tried to go to Germany again, but over land this time. All of a sudden we had to leave our house and sell all our stuff. The way to Greece was so hard again. A police car stopped us, we bribed the police, guns were held to our skulls by some robbers and we got hurt a lot. Police followed us, took us and sent us back to Turkey on a boat. They took all our stuff, we had nothing. We arrived in the middle of nowhere on the Turkish coast and walked for like six hours to arrive to a village. The gendarmerie from there brought us back to Istanbul. My dad tried to get to Athens a few times again and right now he is there. The plan is that he goes to the Netherlands, where family reunion is easy, so that we can come soon afterwards. It might not work, I don’t know.

I went back to work and we bought stuff and all that, but we are actually waiting for family reunion. Meanwhile, I try to enjoy life here. Never in my life had I thought that I would want to be on stage, but when I went to a Spoken Word Event in the end of last summer in Taksimin Istanbul, I found out that I really wanted it. I saw a band called Country for Syria and I saw it was possible, they were Syrians, like me. I always had the dream, but I’m a bad singer and a bad actor, so I thought it was unrealistic. The thing that I could do would be: stand up comedy. This was a great discovery for me. Until now I had been at work and at home. I was so up for this fun thing. I talked and people laughed. People liked it, it went very well. I started to do this more and more. I am talking about my story from Iraq to Turkey and Greece, but it is full of jokes.

I was raised with the idea that everyone has his own suffering, I had mine. The reason that I really want to do stand-up comedy, to be on stage and to have fun, is because of what I thought when I thought I was gonna die. When the gun was pointed to my skull I could only think: ‘why didn’t I have more fun?’ And now I am here, I have fun. I am not gonna waste any more fucking time. I am afraid to get 30 years old and not doing anything. But I am only 20, I have the fear of ageing. I am good at talking, because I worked hard for it. The harder I work, the luckier I get. I don’t show people my background with all the harsh stories. The thing is: shit happens and you get over it.”