Rooney

My name is Ali Yzdeen (Rooney), and I was born in Kurdistan, Iraq.  My family and people are Yazidi, which is our religion. I was an interpreter with U.S. troops in Iraq. After I started working for the U.S. military my whole family was in great danger. They had no life actually. We were getting phone calls telling my family that they would be killed if I did not stop working for the U.S. military. But I didn’t stop.

I remember growing up in a state that did not allow people to grow and learn with the same freedoms that so many in America take for granted. Living in Iraq is miserable. When I was a kid, and we were under Saddam Hussein’s rule, my dad served in the Iraqi army for 13 years with no pay. During that time we were not able to practice our religion, use our language and there was no freedom of speech. There was no freedom to do anything. In 2003, after the liberation from dictatorship, things changed a little bit but the security situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate. People killed based on the identity and ethnicity of others, especially if you were not Muslim. After killing people, they would take over whatever those who had been murdered owned. Seeing tragedy happen over and over again from the time I was young made me understand that my country’s leaders and government were not looking out for the citizens’ best interests. 

 

With my parents’ support, I decided to become a translator for the American troops at the age of nineteen years. Despite the danger, my parents were proud of me for doing what I felt was right. They also saw my connection to the troops as a way for me to accomplish my dreams to become fluent in English and eventually live in the U.S. My dad was very supportive of me. He always told me that the Americans were going to save us and that we should do anything we could to help with their mission. 

 

In 2005 I was the interpreter with 20 soldiers in a platoon, and we were inside the city of Tallafar and everyone in the city was fighting us. We had to hide in the same house for almost a month and we were completely surrounded. I asked one of my sergeants if we would be able make it out alive and he said, ‘Yes we will make it through, you will go and finish your school and I will go return to my country and everything will be ok.  Not just this, but one day you will come to America and we will drink beer in my house together. Ten years later I went to his house in Oklahoma, we had beer together, and we celebrated our survival and victory.

When the war ended, I was able to focus on coming to the U.S. because I earned a special immigration visa for people who worked with the US military. I have been able continue my education, which will give me the foundation for a good life. Now I would like to serve the country that helped me and gives me opportunities to live a happy life, not the country that can’t protect me or my people because of our religious faith. I will never return to Iraq and I will do everything in my power to pull all of my family out of there. We did everything for our country but our country could not protect our children, our men and women, or our dignity. 

I have so much gratitude for U.S. soldiers I worked with in Iraq. The American people should more appreciate what the soldiers do for them and for their country. Military families deserve more benefits too because they give all that they have to improve the country and sacrifice their lives for the greater good. I am very proud of my time working with the US military.