Outside of the United States, Qatar was the first country I lived in. In the fall of 2012, my father had a sabbatical at San Diego State University and a fellowship at Brookings Doha Center, to analyze democratization in Arab countries. My parents were excited to develop their Arabic and to send me to a school where I could learn Arabic.

I started elementary school in an international school in Doha (the capital of Qatar). However, after a short-lived month, the school administration prevented me from continuing my education. My father talked to the Qatari bureaucrats and even the minister of education about my case.

The minister told him of a new policy against immigrants; they were removing non-Qataris from public and private schools to stop immigrants, especially from Syria, where a civil war began. The Qatari message to the immigrants was this: ” no education for immigrant children here”.

Hence, we moved to Ankara, Turkey, where I continued my education for the rest of the academic year. There, I learned how to read and write Turkish.

The two were very different countries, Qatar was a tiny country with 2 million people yet with one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. Turkey, on the other hand, had a population of 75 million people, with a lower GDP (I will delve into Turkey in the future).

I remember very few details about my experience, in Qatar and Turkey. But my interactions with both of the school systems gave me a new perspective to understand diverse cultures.