Baghdad to Brooklyn

An Ordinary Journey Through Extraordinary Times — a memoir by Laith Yousif

I left Baghdad to get away from buildings getting blown up. I moved to New York. My first job was in the World Trade Center. Then 9/11 happened.

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A boy grows up in Al-Dora, in a house his father built by working for free. A young engineer leaves Iraq in 1998 with a borrowed $700 and a passport someone else is holding. A new New Yorker walks into the World Trade Center on March 26, 2001. Baghdad to Brooklyn is the story of what happened next, and the ten years of waiting that followed.

Three cities, one story

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Baghdad 1972–1998 Enter Baghdad → Dubai 1998–2001 Enter Dubai → New York 2001–present Enter New York →

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The FBI Comes to Weehawken New Jersey, 2003

His contract gone, his visa expired, his asylum application sitting in a drawer somewhere in the Department of Homeland Security — and then the phone rings with what sounds like a job.

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