I'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I want to continue my work.

I live in a small country in Europe - Finland - and I don't speak English well and I had nothing to do with publishing houses in the West. I lived in complete isolation.

All the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words for "house" or "table" or "lamp" are not the same as the words we use at home, and most of the other words are alien to children at school. Classical Arabic is one of the prisons of the Arab world.

I'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I want to continue my work.

While I was studying film at the Academy, the problems started. I wasn't a political activist directly in the time of Saddam [Hussein], because the dictator was so cruel and brutal that no one could criticize or complain. I felt futile and empty. The only solution in Iraq was to run away.

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.

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films.