Education is the key to success

 

Ziad Yousuf

 

Ziad Yousuf was born in Iraq in 1950. He remembers the simple life in his village Taasheeqa, which is situated in Northern Iraq, and he looks back fondly on the hot summer days followed by the clear nights. Ziad belonged to the Assyrian church, which taught the children religion, the Assyrian language as well as chanting religious hymns.

 

Ziad attended the local school, which was taught in Arabic. The school served two villages and was located between them, which made walking there quite a chore; it took Ziad 25 minutes of brisk walking to reach his destination. In order to continue his high school education, he had to live in Mosul, the capital of Northern Iraq. After graduating from high school, he applied to and was accepted in the Faculty of Pharmacy since he had the highest grades in the entrance exams.

 

In 1972, Ziad graduated as a pharmacist and began thinking of getting married and having a family. However, the area he was working in was mainly Muslim and he wanted to get married to an Assyrian Christian. His sisters in Mosul found him a suitable young girl and when he saw her it was love at first sight. They got married in 1978. Ziad and his wife were active in the local church as well as in other Abbeys throughout the area.

 

After finishing his military service, the government assigned him, as was customary with employees in the public health sector, to work as a pharmacist in a village in Southern Baghdad for four years after which he was relocated to Karabalaa and then to Baghdad. He worked there for two years in the biggest medicine storage warehouse which distributed free medicine to all of Iraq. Ziad was responsible for the injections department. He eventually opened his own private pharmacy and retired from the public health department.

 

After the Iraqi war with Iran and Iraq’s tragic involvement in Kuwait which resulted in the second Gulf War (the first one being the Iraq-Iran War), Ziad began to seriously consider leaving the country since he was concerned about the future of his three young sons. Ziad had relatives in Canada which made him consider immigration here, in addition to the fact that he had a good knowledge of English and his profession was in high demand. He arrived in Canada in 2001 and the first thing that impressed him was the prevalence of law and order, the beautiful and clean nature and how everyone seemed to be treated equally. To Ziad, Canada was, and still is, a vast improvement in comparison with the unstable life in Iraq.

 

Slowly but surely reality set in. As a pharmacist, Ziad did not have the necessary papers to pursue his career, not even as an assistant. He began to rethink his decision of coming here and was planning to go back to Iraq when the American invasion and destruction of the country took place in 2003. After that, Ziad decided to stay in Canada for good.

 

His social life revolves around his extended family, since a large number of them reside here and Ziad does not feel the need to go outside his church community to meet people. He received assistance from the government, but is very proud of his three sons who are all well-educated and have good jobs. In 2004, his family bought a house and now Ziad feels more attached to Canada. He has not been back to Iraq, but he says t hat when things over there settle down, he would like to go and re-visit all the places he lived in – a tour of nostalgia.

 

At home, Ziad eats only Arabic or Iraqi food. He celebrates religious holidays in the same way that he used to in Iraq since the church he goes to is mainly attended by Assyrian Iraqis. They perform their prayers in exactly the same way as their Iraqi counterparts and meet every Sunday to pray and to socialize.

 

Ziad is a devout man. He prays on a daily basis for Canada to stay safe and peaceful. He loves it here because it is a country of so many different communities, languages, religions and yet everybody lives under one equal law. He is very grateful for living in peace and he is very pleased with the accomplishments of his sons.

 

Ziad’s advice to newcomers is to get a Canadian education and experience in the workplace. It is difficult for those professionals who get their degrees from outside Canada to have them accepted here, but if a person has a Canadian education then the sky becomes the limit.

 

Ziad describes himself as a Canadian of Iraqi origin, for although he would never let go of his Iraqi identity, he would also never leave Canada.