I'll continue in English, and they can translate.
My brother was lucky to leave in 1963 before the Baath regime closed all exit visas to the Jews. So he was a Canadian, and he applied for us to be reunited. I'm very curious to go into the Canadian archives today and find out how this whole transaction happened, because it took three to four years.
Canada did not have representation in Iraq, so the ambassador would be in Lebanon and he would fly to Iraq and they would call us that day. We would go to the passport office and bring all kinds of documents and they would see us for five minutes. As soon as he would leave, our documents were all shoved in a drawer, never to be heard of.
It took Canada three years of trying to get us out. As I mentioned, there were 17 families that already had children here who were Canadian citizens and were part of this effort.
That's how I got out. Even when we left Iraq, we were not allowed to have a Canadian visa on a passport. I was a refugee. I laughed because I had no citizenship whatsoever. We had to go and wait in Europe until they could give us the Canadian visa on a passport, to be able to fly to Canada. That's when I activated my acceptance to McGill University, because I had been accepted before.