Collegiate Times

Barqawi

'OBLIGATED TO RETURN THE FAVOR'

Barqawi is now looking ahead to graduation and beyond, where he will work in the Teach for America Program and become an American citizen. Having spent his entire life as an essentially stateless person, Barqawi says he wants to give back to the country that offered him so much.

"Both my parents were born in Palestine; they were always people without a country," Barqawi said. "I was born and raised in Kuwait, but that didn't make me Kuwaiti -- I was ineligible for public education; I was not eligible for higher education. My parents weren't allowed to buy a house. If you want to open a business, you have to have a Kuwaiti partner who has a 51 percent interest" because of Kuwaiti laws stipulating descent from a Kuwaiti male as a necessary factor for citizenship.

"I chose, and have the privilege, to apply for American citizenship and become a man with a country," Barqawi said. "I wasn't like the majority of foreigners who come here and hang around with people who look and talk like them -- I chose a society that is the heart of American culture and traditions."

Barqawi says those kinds of choices aren't available to everyone in his native Kuwait.

"The leaders in the Middle East are only concerned with one thing -- keeping their seat -- and they do this by controlling the money, by downplaying the importance of knowledge, intellect and education," Barqawi said. "The corps was instrumental in changing me from the worst of the worst to becoming the top cadet -- I wasn't the worst out of arrogance, but ignorance."

Barqawi said Kuwaiti authorities had interfered with his education in several ways during his youth.

"I went to a British private school, and there were pages missing from my textbook -- those were all to do with the Holocaust. I was taught that the Holocaust is an absolute lie," Barqawi said. "I went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and saw for myself the truth of it."

Looking ahead, Barqawi wants to help America in the way it has helped him: by fighting ignorance, mentoring and helping young people achieve their potential.

"What truly appalled me about this whole picturesque image is that looking into the future is that we have 13 million children who live in poverty," Barqawi said of the United States. "What that means is that half of those children won't graduate high school -- those who graduate from high school read at an eighth-grade level, and only 10 percent will make it to college and graduate."

"That's a problem money and books can't solve; that's when another human being has to be there and give them their hand to bring them up to that level," Barqawi said. "In a country that aspires to lofty ideals like, 'Where you're born does not determine your life opportunities,' this is not the case for those kids who are growing in those low-income communities."

Barqawi said that with the corps' mission statement in mind and his enormous gratitude for the opportunities he's been given in America, it's really the least he can do.

"Someone has done that for me, and now I feel obligated to return the favor," Barqawi said.

For the Corps of Cadets, however, perhaps he already has.

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