DRAFT 1

Draft 1



Draft 1

My family was on the brink of starvation when my father, a soldier in the government army, disappeared at the end of the Ethiopian civil war in 1991. Even though I was only nine at the time, as the first son of the house, I started working as a day laborer to support my mother and feed our family of seven. After barely surviving for the next six years, my mother and I decided to leave Ethiopia for Saudi Arabia, hoping to find work.

When we arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, my aunt, who has lived there for ...