Alaa Salman came to Canada two years ago seeking peace — “a peace which I missed all my life,” he says. Born in Baghdad, the Scarborough Ontario student of Centennial College has seen more than his share of strife.

He was a child in the 1980s when Iraq and Iran went to war. “Eight years and so many thousands dead without any reason. Just because of two crazy leaders, and the Americans and British were laughing like it was a game. They supplied weapons to both sides,” says Salman, thirty-four.

“Every day you could see the coffins of the soldiers. Everything beautiful was killed. We lost how to live peacefully. Our children suffer. They don’t know how to live peacefully. When they grow up, of course they’ll be radical and join people like Osama bin Laden,” he says.

And now with another, perhaps more devastating war between Iraq and the U.S. and its allies, Salman fears every day for the family he left behind in Baghdad. He can’t help but think of his family. He misses his mother, brothers and sisters very much, but fears that if he were to return now, he would be pressed into military service and forbidden to leave.

Losing Loved Ones

But still, Salman is torn. “If you’re here all alone, without your family and all your family is at home in the capital of Iraq, which is now a target, you feel at any time like you’re going to lose your family. I might wake up tomorrow and lose all my family,” he says.

It was his family he was thinking of when, in 1997, he moved to Libya to work as a teacher of civil engineering. He’d already worked five years as a civil engineer in Iraq by then.

“Life is very difficult in Baghdad. I couldn’t find enough money for my family,” he says. In Libya, he made enough to support his mother and two younger brothers who remained at home. His other siblings had by then married and moved out.

It was in Libya that he learned about Canada and the possibilities for immigration. He contacted Canadian authorities, who sent him material on the country and opportunities for work. Salman says the more he learned about Canada, the more eager he was to come.

Mixed Feelings

He was granted landed immigrant status and got a job almost immediately as an optical technician. While he’s grateful for the job, he had hoped that with ten years’ experience as a civil engineer, he might work in his profession.

So when he graduates in April from the English for Academic Purposes program that he’s currently working on, he plans to continue his education so that he can become a certified civil engineer in Canada.

Salman admits it will be hard to keep his mind on his studies. When we spoke before the war began, he hoped more than anything that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would go into exile and avert war. Now he worries about what the U.S. will do when the war is over.

“The U.S. will bring in exiles, without even Iraqi accents, to control the country. That is not acceptable to Iraqi people,” says Salman. His preference is for his country’s religious and scientific communities to come together and create a homegrown government.

“I hope we can live peacefully as human beings. Not as religions or races, just as human beings. Iraqis have suffered a lot and they don’t need to go to war again.”