Let me introduce myself. My name is Ninos Youkhana. I will not enter the history books like Saint Steve Jobs or the modern day Alexander the Great, Mark Zuckerberg, who connected humanity. In a world where no story seems worthy of public mention unless it comes from the lives of famous people like the Holy Mother of Silicon Valley Sheryl Sandberg, this is my story of how I got here.
Army in Iraq, and as a cultural adviser for the U. Embassy in Baghdad. From a nation of kebabs to a nation of cheesecakes, from a nation where honor is tied to a woman to a nation where honor is tied to an income, from a nation where an average American can die from bingeing on fast food rather than dying from a car bomb like in Baghdad, from a nation where casual sex could get you killed to a nation where finding one-night stands is just a matter of swiping right, I have crossed the longest bridge β between the Muslims and Christians.
As many people do each year. But just like each person has a unique thumb print, I believe each person has a story to tell. It is all about the stories of our lives that secure us a place in history. And to remember our past is not just for memories, but a rebirth of our future. There are many ways to write a story. This is my journey from misery to magic, brick by brick. I wrote this book for the American people, the Iraqi people, my Assyrian community around the world, and for my family.
One of my main reasons is to find closure, similar to the closure an American family might seek when trying to understand how β but especially why β their daughter died in Iraq while serving in the U. S Army. Sometimes even, that I committed a crime against my own fate. Just like Americans, I was born in one of the richest countries in the world. Yet the American foreign policy adopted by the elites of Washington DC kept my country at war with Iran for eight devastating years β all to serve American interests β eventually leading to the Kuwait invasion.
That, in turn, was followed by ten years of sanctions that landed me in Jordan, as a refugee, before I migrated to America. Why did the elites of DC do this to Iraq? Was the Iraqi blood cheaper than the American blood? Then came the quagmire of the American invasion. Obviously, I would have had a very different history.
