‘We felt less than human’: Dr Dina Mahmood on her journey from Baghdad refugee to Sydney psychiatrist
After escaping Iraq to Jordan, it would be five years in limbo before the psychiatrist's humanitarian visa was approved.
When Dr Dina Mahmood fled Baghdad with her husband Dr Anmar Al-Witri in 2004, she carried just a suitcase and a pillowcase stuffed with passports and medical qualifications.
The freshly qualified interns had just learnt that Dr Al-Witri’s name was on a list of potential kidnapping targets.
Criminal gangs were abducting professionals, who were tortured and beaten for ransom — and in some cases beheaded — in the social and political collapse which came in the chaos left by the Iraq–US war.
Overnight, the couple packed up what they could, hired a car and driver, and by dawn were underway for a tense 16-hour trip to the Jordanian border.
