Hyphenated Journey

Yasmeen returns back to her younger self, this time with a new perspective. Can we change our past to change our future? 

The Bird sang to himself and lamented about his cage. 

He sang so loud his voice startled the wind. 

And threw him so far outside his comfort zone 

That he had no choice but to fly

It was only then that he realized he was not a caged bird after all. 

Yasmeen relives her journey in choosing a road to love and processing emotions and releasing them as a means of survival. We hear from Hamada Zahawi, an Iraqi-American and international lawyer and educator, and analyst,  and again from Sinan Al-Mokhtar, an Iraqi-American medical professional who shares his reflections on growing up in Iraq and assimilating in the United States. 

Yasmeen starts off with a poem that she wrote that was inspired by the film she wrote and co-produced “A Star in the Desert” which follows the life of a young Iraqi boy in Baghdad on the eve of the first Gulf War, as he escapes into a fantastical reality on the search for his missing father. 

For more information about the film, you can watch it here: https://www.astarinthedesert.com/

Have we done everything we could to avoid war? Everything? Is there another possibility that could exist without the need to go to war?

What’s in a name? Can a name change your life trajectory?

Yasmeen speaks with Sinan Al Mokhtar, who was born and raised in Iraq, and came of age in Iraq during the first gulf war. He shares what he and his family had to endure, including the bombing of the hospital that his mother gave birth in to his twin siblings. He later immigrated to the United States, and talks to us about his experience of becoming a hyphenated American. 

Never let another person’s opinion of you change the way you see yourself.

Yasmeen learns how to create a dual reality to cope with the discomfort of feeling misunderstood as a child of Iraqi immigrants.