Hi there
This is Khairi, Abdulateef Hashim, I?d like to talk here about our trip, & what we had faced on it.
After we finished the papers in our University, & all related things, we start the ?happy – sad ? times. As you know, as much as we were happy that we had finished all the paperwork & started to think about our trip and making our travel arrangements, at the same time we had to think about what we are going to lose here. It is not too easy to leave our families behind in Baghdad, especially in bad situations in Iraq & all circumstances that we have there. For me it was a very sad time, because (as some of you know) I am a married man & I have a small family contain my wife & my little daughter there. I have a big family too, which includes my mother, brothers & sisters. It was a too complicated thing, & I have been in a big conflict with myself, because I am too worried about leaving both of them (my two families). So, I was so sad in the time that I was supposed to be very happy for my life opportunity, which will make me safe & away from lots of bad things that I am facing every day.
In that time, it started to be a very sad weather in my home. My wife, my mother, brothers & sisters were crying for any reasons related to my trip, & it was a very sad environment there?
Then, after few day of trying we got the plane tickets (because it was the holidays for Christmas & the Islamic Eid). Getting the airplane tickets was not so easy, but we did finally get them & started to get ready to travel. A night before our travel date, the environment in our home become more sad. A lot of friends & neighbors came to say ?Good Bye? to me, & you know, there was always lots of tears in these times.
I feel so bad because I made lots of my friends & neighbors, in addition to my family, suffering like that, because we have a very strong relationships between our families, neighbors, & friends. But they all said me don?t be so sad, we are very happy for you, & we will be more happy when we know that you are safe there & away from all bad things that happened here. Some of my family told me that we prefer that you?ll be away & safe so we won?t worry about you so much. It was a very sad long night, & the minutes were just like hours & days?
In the next morning the taxi driver came, & we put our bags in the car, and it was more tears & more sadness. We traveled first to Amman in Jordan. We had bought tickets from Amman to Cairo ?Transit? & we stayed in Cairo airport for 13 long hour. Next, we took our plane to NY, & it took us about 11 hours 30 minutes to arrive at JFK Airport. We had tickets reserved in NY (which was already taken care of by the great people here in Simmons College, & that made us more & more grateful for them), & we waited for almost 2-3 hours to take the last plane to Boston.
It was a very tiring trip, & we have suffered a lot in it. But, you know what? When we arrived to Boston airport, & finished some small paper & passport check, & went to the main incoming passenger?s hall, & saw the wonderful Michele Cloonan, Simmons? the Dean and Professor in GSLIS, all the tiredness & the suffering was gone?
And that is the thing that I will talk about it in my 3rd blog, ?Inshallah? as we say.
Here, I?d like to say some thanks, to all the good, kind, & wonderful people at Simmons College, who made our dreams become true, & who have do a lot of things that nobody else has done for us. Thanks so much to Michele Cloonan, & our best friend Harvey Varnet, who were the 1st ones that make the 1st step in all this thing, & to the great team & people here at Simmons College, like Melissa Stevenson, Caryn Anderson, Sheila Murphy, Valerie Foster & Meaghan O’Connor, & for all other people that we may not be aware of for their efforts to make our dreams come true, for all those people I?d like to say:
Thanks, we?ll never forget what you have done for us, & we will be grateful for you forever!
To be continued ?
Yours truly,
Khairi, Abdulateef Hashim