The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media.

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.

It's true that we in Iraq are now paying a heavy price as a consequence of senseless violence, but nonetheless there are many positive things happening generally on the part of people in Arab countries who were living in darkness and absolute silence because of dictatorship. The people in Arab countries are now speaking out and asking many questions about human rights, minorities, religion, democracy, "the other," and so on.

The Iran-Iraq war began the same year that I went to primary school, at the age of six.

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.

For seven years I wrote and published my texts on the Internet and no Arab festival invited me and no Arab publishing house wanted to publish my books, and I wasn't known in the Western world because of my political positions.