I was 10 years old when my mother packed our bags and told me and my sister that we were going to Egypt.

We were living in North Sudan at the time and we were so excited to go to a new place that we didn’t ask many questions. It was only when we reached Egypt that she told us that she wasn’t allowed to go back. Both my parents were Christians, but my father had to convert to be a Muslim in order to finish university and get a job. After that, there was a lot of pressure for him to convert his wife, but that was not something my mother wanted. Also, there were some other issues with the government in Sudan. So, we arrived in Egypt in 1998 as I remember – my mother, my grandmother, my sister and me. My mother was looking for a better life there and there were nice things about the country. The people were generally friendly and had open hearts, but when unemployment became a problem, a lot of immigrants were picked on and bullied. In truth, my family struggled there. Finally, after six years, we managed to get visas to come to Australia from my uncle, who came to Australia before us.

We arrived in Melbourne city and moved into Sunshine West when I was 16 years old.

In Egypt and Sudan, things were difficult and I didn’t go to school. Only my mother spoke a bit of English as she had been educated, but the rest of us didn’t know a single word of the language. I attended Western English Language School and I started to have this hunger to communicate with people. I wanted to be able to go into a shop and say “I want this…” or “My shoe size is this…”. I just wanted people to understand me. So, in the classroom, I keep putting up my hand and asking the teacher to repeat things. I don’t know how she understood me, but she did.

Two years later, I got involved with a theatre group at the Footscray Community Arts Centre.

I’m not sure why I did that; I actually didn’t really know what theatre was. When they gave me a script, I looked at it and it was just like a white piece of paper with a lot of dots on it. They told me, “Your name is Jamal” and I struggled and said “Okay” even though my name was not Jamal. They then explained that I was to play the character Jamal in the play called Street Life, Is Hard to Me. I then told them that I could not really read and I wasn’t the right person for this group. But they said no, you’re here for a right reason and we’ll help you. It took a while, but after a few months, I realised that I could recognise some words, just by memorising them from the script. Since then, I’ve been interested in the arts. I’m in a hip-hop group (The Nubian Knight) and we recorded our first EP (CD) at Living Music North Melbourne and released it in 2008. After that, I started making music videos clips, writing theatre and doing shows. From 2007 to 2010, I got involved in community development with The Horn of Africa communities when they did a partnership with Victorian College of the Arts’ Centre for Cultural Partnerships. It was there I did my last theatre performances.

Finding a steady job is still difficult for me.

I would love to be a chef and work in a kitchen somewhere, but it’s challenging to be hired. Right now, cooking is just a hobby. This sometimes makes me feel that even though I’m a citizen here, I’m still isolated within my community. This is ironic because I love the fact that we are multi-cultural in Australia and we share food and culture. Here, I have friends from every part of the world you could think of. This makes me think that although the present is challenging, the future will be better. If right now, everyday people can already accept each other, things will only be better for the next generation.