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Like many of my peers my river begins in a hospital, on a cold autumn night in Slemani, Iraq.

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AUIS Photography by Soran Naqishbandy  2016 (28 of 33)-2

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An event that shaped my personal identity, was a simple school assignment that I was having breakdown after breakdown about, it got to a point where it was affecting my physical health as well, after I handed it in I promised myself that I had to get rid of my habit of overthinking and worrying that much about every little thing and that helped give my river a much straighter and smoother look.

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Visiting The Red Jail museum which used to be a torture prison only a few decades ago, where strong Kurdish rebels against the ba'ath dictatorship were held, tortured, and executed, and seeing their struggle to get the freedom that we now take for granted was one of the most eye opening events for me about how we got here as a nation and all the sacrifices we had to give to be able to practice our culture and language freely. It helped me to be brave in fighting for what I believe in.

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Red Security Museum    Sulaymaniyah  Kurdistan @kurdistanartئه_منه_ سوره_كه_

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An event that shaped my leadership identity would be when we had a bad teacher, the supervisor came and asked about him the students who were always talking about how bad he was were completely silent in fear of him punishing us when I saw that I knew I had to be brave, stand up and make a change not just for myself but also for those who can't or are too afraid of standing up for themselves.

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There used to be a lot of bends but now it's a lot less bendy and it's going towards the right direction, when I started basing my values on myself and not what others thought and believing in myself everything immediately changed for the better.

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The water is rough like all waters, there are small and big obstacles along the way like being bullied, bad friends, toxic relationships... but the biggest one was not accepting myself and constantly thinking I had to change to be accepted but once I came to terms with myself and accepted myself for who I was everything became better the water slowly calmed down and the obstacles melted away.

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My life used to be surrounded by negative and at times toxic people because I wasn't strong enough to choose my surroundings, I think my relationship with my friends have always been the most important relationship to me because they're the ones I go to when I'm facing obstacles and challenges, the person that has most shaped me would be my mom, for a good part of my childhood my relatives were most important because I spent a lot of time with them but once I grew up my friends became more important to me.

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I'm in a very calm part of the river now one where I can see a long, clear path ahead of me I think it will keep going in the right direction because I have more control over it than ever before. The shape of it is definitely different from the rocky, twisty river upstream and the scenery is changing as well, the obstacles are mostly put there by myself to become stronger rather than by others trying to crush me.