A Kurdish refugee's love story
from Melbourne to Korea
Donna Sherwani crossed the Indian Ocean in a fishing boat and arrived
in Australia where she became a lawyer and found her Korean soulmate.
Donna Sherwani was 12 years old when she set out with her family on a dangerous journey from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
She reached Indonesia, together with her parents, brother and sister.
They boarded a small fishing boat with dozens of others, all risking their lives to cross the Indian Ocean to their final destination: Australia.
When she was born in 1987, Donna’s parents named her Dechol.
Her name was unusual.
In Kurdish it means "abandoned village” or "ghost town."
She felt it was too heavy to carry the weight of "Dechol" around, so as soon as she arrived in Perth, she named herself Donna, meaning woman in Italian.
of Kurdish history took place
in the late 1980s when
thousands of Kurdish villages
were bombed and burned to
the ground during the final
stages of the Iran–Iraq War:
Saddam Hussein’s “Anfal”
ethnic-cleansing campaign.
.
HALABJA, REGIONAL GOVERNMENT OFIRAQI KURDISTAN, IRAQ: One of the cemeteries of the city, where the unidentified bodies of the 5,000 victims of the chemical attack of Halabja are buried. (Getty Images/ Reza /Contributor)
During their journey to Australia, Donna turned 13.
She recalls it being a difficult age: “I wasn’t too young and yet not an adult.”
But she doesn’t remember questioning her parents about where they were going or why.
She says, “I don’t think my parents had any answers themselves. We were just going with the flow.”
The boat journey took about seven days.
“It felt so crowded on that boat. I used to say there were 70 to 80 people on board, but my mother says that there were only 35,” she says.
The boat often rocked from side to side vigorously, causing panic among the asylum seekers on board, particularly the children, who screamed thinking it would tip over.
“Later we learnt how to keep it balanced by having equal numbers of people on each side of the boat at all times,” Donna recalls.
“We had little food on board, mostly dry noodles. Some people were better prepared for the journey. Another family had fruit with them, and I remember just watching them eat it and wishing I could have some too.”
Donna and her sister
sent each other text
messages that became
poetry.
with excitement at the sight of buildings.
“We were told people in Australia were all farmers.”
So Donna had imagined a world outside the detention
centre where people farmed and took care of animals.
Today, Donna is a lawyer with a degree from Victoria University and a Master’s in International Relations from the University of Melbourne.
Donna lives in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, where she teaches English to primary-school-aged children and English for business to adults.
She's also an aspiring writer and she's writing children's books.
She decided to move to South Korea after meeting her future husband while studying at university in Melbourne.
“I met Minsik, who was a student from South Korea, and one day I showed him around Melbourne. Then we became friends.”
Soon after Donna moved to South Korea with Minsik, she met his family and the couple got engaged.
“Minsik is a wonderful person. After I met his family, I fell in love with them, too.”
When Donna and Minsik tied the knot almost two years ago, Donna’s family travelled to South Korea to be part of their daughter’s special day.
place for Donna,
who loves writing,
biking and hiking.
In the last two years
her experience overseas
has been the setting
of her writings.
similar Korean culture is
to Kurdish culture –
sometimes I feel like
I’ve moved back to
Kurdistan again,”
Donna says.
They plan to move back
to Melbourne at the
end of 2018.
still affected by her own experience
as a child-refugee.
“To this day, I have a fear of
swimming further out in the ocean,
even though I can swim fine in a pool.
The idea about the depth of the ocean
frightens me.”
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