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Title
Oral history interview with Dilshad Karim Saatchi [Sound Recording 01]
Date(s)
- 2019-09-27 (Creation)
Extent
WAV; 01:13:09
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Biographical history
Dilshad Karim Saatchi was born in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, in 1981. His family, along with many other Kurds, fled their home when the Iraqi Army attacked and killed hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians in the early 1990s. After a few months in a makeshift refugee camp, the family returned to Sulaymaniyah. Saatchi graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. During the Iraq War in the 2000s, he worked as an English translator for the U.S. military. In 2010, he immigrated to the United States. He joined the U.S. Army, and in 2012 he was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan. After his discharge in 2013, he settled in Portland, Oregon. In 2019, he earned a degree in civil engineering at Portland State University.
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Scope and content
Session 1. This oral history interview with Dilshad Karim Saatchi was conducted by Sankar Raman and Shea Seery on September 27, 2019. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States.
In this interview, Saatchi discusses his family background and early life as a Kurd in Iraq, including his experiences during the Iran-Iraq war, and during the Iraqi genocide of Kurds that began in 1991. He describes his family fleeing their home for the Kurdish countryside and talks about living in hiding from the Iraqi army in a makeshift refugee camp. He briefly talks about his education after returning home. He discusses working as an English translator for the U.S. military at a prison during the Iraq War, describes some of the interrogations that he was part of, and talks about the dangers of the job. He shares his reasons for immigrating to the United States. He talks about joining the U.S. Army, and shares his experiences during his 2012 deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan. He discusses his reasons for settling in Portland, Oregon, and briefly talks about his marriage and his education at Portland State University. He closes the interview by reflecting on the fact that the majority of his life was spent in the midst of war, by sharing his experience with post-traumatic stress disorder, and by discussing his plans for the future.
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Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
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- eng
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- Raman, Sankar (Contributor)
- Seery, Shea (Contributor)