Even the escape of travel eludes Iraqis

I grew up abroad and used to take traveling for granted.

From the day I was born, my family traveled several times a year. There were summer and winter vacations to exotic islands in the Far East, road trips in Europe, shopping sprees in Hong Kong and the annual trip back to Iraq to visit with family, getting acquainted with the fatherland, so to speak.

I traveled so much that I got sick of it at one point and just wanted to settle down. My wish came true when my father retired and we moved back to Baghdad in 1993 -- finally, a place to call home.

When the war began in 2003, the whole dynamic shifted. One after another, all of my friends and most of my family left the country. Moreover, I needed a break every now and then, because of the stress of working in Iraq.

Traveling became a necessity to me. But the walls started closing in on Iraqis, because of the security problems and the number of refugees flooding neighboring countries.

My brother, who had settled in the United Arab Emirates and traveled frequently for his work, thought it would be nice to go on holiday in Bangladesh.

“I went to the Bangladeshi Embassy here to apply for a visa, you won’t believe what happened!” he told me the last time we were chatting via instant messaging over the Internet.

“They said that they had to do a background check on me before I could be considered for a visa!” he typed.

Even though I couldn’t hear his voice, I could feel his distress.

“Background check? For Bangladesh? Are you serious?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I just told them to shove it and left,” he said.

I have received occasional invitations from school friends living abroad to visit them. One asked me to spend a couple of weeks in Hawaii. Another told me to come to Tokyo, where I had lived for seven years. But it’s not practical when I have to file a visa application months before the trip, knowing full well that I probably won’t get the visa without a really good reason.

My parents relocated to Jordan, and I’ve always considered it my second home. But the last time I went, it took 45 days to get permission for the visit.

“Liberation.” That’s what they called the invasion of Iraq. At one point, I thought this would mean being treated like a citizen of the world again after years of war and sanctions. I was wrong.

“You know, we are unwanted wherever we go,” I remember telling my brother the day he applied for the visa to Bangladesh. “It’s like we’re a virus.”