Fireside Chats, Episode 44: Growing Up Iraqi (Patreon)

Many of us can only imagine what it's like growing up in a warzone, but Mason Mallak didn't have the luxury of imagining it. He lived it. Born in 1995, Mason was only eight when the United States invaded his country of Iraq. Ten years later, in 2013, he moved to the US, and is on the verge of becoming an American citizen. But it was a harrowing and difficult experience getting from Point A to Point B. This is Mason's story about coming of age in a war-torn country, and what it's like living in the nation that helped tear his own land apart, a nation that he nonetheless deeply admired from afar, and now gets to be a part of.