In art class at school we learned how to draw tanks and soldiers opening fire at [Iranian leader Ayatollah] Khomeini and his beard. They didn't teach us the names of the flowers that grew around us in the city - wild flowers of all kinds and all colors. The math teacher used to whip the kids with his trouser belt. My father was constantly violent toward my mother for the most trivial reasons.

I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time.

When my stories were translated into other languages and received good reviews in the international press and won prizes, some Arab festivals and newspapers began to take an interest in what I had produced. This sudden Arab interest is a form of hypocrisy and nonsense.

One of the Baathists once told me, "If you're not careful, I'll have you put away," and those words meant death.

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand.

Whenever we went out to film in the street we would end up in the police station and in the offices of some other security agency. They deliberately intimidated us. I moved to Kurdistan and changed my name and made my first feature film in Kurdistan with very basic resources.

The people in Arab countries are now speaking out and asking many questions about human rights, minorities, religion, democracy, "the other," and so on.