Editors note: Junior Murtaza Mahmoodi may look like your typical student. He has math and English class like everyone else, but there is something his classmates would not probably know about him from first glance. Mahmoodi embarked on a dangerous, difficult and long journey to flee from his homeland, Afghanistan, to the U.S. when he was just a young boy.

Everyone had a different time in their life. I was four years old when the war started in Afghanistan. No one could go out of their house. Outside was raining bullets and rockets. After one year we emigrated to Iran. On our way we saw a lot of difficulties. We used to walk some part of our journey during the night and daytime. The most hard part was walking at night time because there used to be some holes in the ground. A lot of Afghan people fell on those holes and died and their family in the other country or state would not even know what happened to their son or husband. There were no solid roads. All roads were rough and had a lot of bumps. I still remember when we were traveling at night time. I was sitting in the back of the car seat and there was a bump. I hit my forehead on the flashlight which was on the back of the driver’s seat. My forehead started bleeding and my mother started cleaning blood from my forehead during the night time. In the day time, we were riding on the back of camels. It was hard for a five year-old kid [to ride] four, five hours in the sun with less water. My lips were so dry that they turned white. At last we arrived in Tehran and my aunt was living in Tehran.

My father started working at construction. I remember  when my father used to come from work to home and I took his hand and it was so hard. I had a feeling of how hard he worked to feed his family and survive. After two years we emigrated back to Afghanistan and after one year living in my mother’s land we emigrated to Pakistan. It was a different cultural environment and language. For one year when the people were talking I did not understand a word in school and outside of school. I tried my best to learn their language and about their culture. The only thing that I hated while living in Pakistan is their cops because they used to bother people a lot. Also, I remember when a cop slapped my brother for no reason.

In my opinion, everyone had a bad and difficult day in their life because of some reason and there will always be a crisis ahead of us. We need to be prepared and educated. Without education it will be hard to handle those kinds of difficulties in life.