WEBVTT

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My name is Mahmoud Aghiorly

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and I am a volunteer translator with TED.

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I am from Syria,

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and I am from a city called Aleppo,
located in the north.

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This city is an ancient city, actually --

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it's been there for 3,000 years.

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But now, within four years,
everything just vanished.

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Most of my places, memories
and buildings that I love

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are destroyed.

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They're just burned down,
or bombed, just ruined.

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These places are not there right now.

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We will tell Adam so many stories,

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but actually, it's very difficult for us
that he can't live them.

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And it touched me in my heart, actually,
as a woman and as a mother ...

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that my baby will not have
the ability to visit ...

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his father's place or his mother's place.

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So, yeah.

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Me and my brother are both civil engineers

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and we were dreaming of having
an engineering consultant office there

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but the location
of the proposed engineering office

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was in a heated area,

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so it was also mostly destroyed.

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So I think even your imagined future

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is destroyed or burned down.

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I spent around five years in Kuwait,

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then I emigrated
to Australia here by 2015.

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We came here on November 2nd, last year.

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Everything was dark,

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and when the sun rose, it was a new life.

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Everything seems beautiful,

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everything is green, so many flowers.

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Nour AlHaj Yehia: We want Adam to live
in a better world.

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We want him to have a great life.

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And I think that he was the main reason

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why we took that emigration decision.

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It was not an easy decision to take.

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Moving to another country

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that is totally different
than what we're used to

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is not that easy.

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We are so happy right now,

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and we know that we did the right thing

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for us, and for Adam as well.

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Mahmoud Aghiorly: Starting from
February, till August,

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I was searching every day
and sending around 10 or 12 CVs.

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Actually, the main advice
was to change my name,

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because "Mahmoud" sounds so traditional.

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The second advice

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was that they asked me
to hide my place of birth

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and the origin of my certificate.

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They told me, "Don't mention
anything about Syria."

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I didn't choose the country
that I was born in.

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I didn't choose my name.

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So people are judging me
with things that I didn't choose.

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I choose how I'm going to deal
with the problems.

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And having a proper channel of new ideas

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is something very essential
for people who are coming from war zones

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and people who are coming
from a lost past.

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TED will provide you with
the proper channel of so many ideas

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from so many people around the world.

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You can just directly relate to someone
faced with the same problem,

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directly relate to someone
who just emigrated to another country,

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you can directly relate to someone
starting a new family,

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someone facing problems.

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Mahmoud has a great power
of loving and giving.

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And I think volunteering --

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(Baby cries)

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is a way of loving and giving.

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Translating from a language
to another language

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is a great power.

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Mahmoud Aghiorly
Arabic TED Translator

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Since 2009
474 translations