The one thing my mother instilled in me, well both my parents but specifically my mother - I come from a Muslim country where boys were more wanted than girls so she always made me feel that there is nothing that I couldn't do as well as the boys if not better.
Men can get jobs from one country to another, they can get in. But the people who always fell through the cracks were women and children, especially when you are displaced. I've always said, 'I am the face of a refugee.'
When 9/11 happened, 12 of our neighborhood firemen were killed. I looked around at the country that had adopted me and I became an American.
