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Today, we are featuring Junis Sultan, author of Brothers and Strangers: A German-Iraqi Memoir to share his guest article.

About The Author

Junis Sultan

Junis Sultan studied in Frankfurt am Main, Eichstätt and at California State University Fullerton. He received a Fulbright and a Horizonte Scholarship. For the past six years, he has taught English, politics, and economics as a high school teacher in Frankfurt am Main. He is pursuing a doctorate in Modern Political Theory at the University of Heidelberg.

You can find author Sultan here:
Author Website | Hessenschau | UNO-Fluechtlingshilfe | Kohero Magazin

Follow Your Passion

As fate would have it, I started writing very young, in primary school. I did not only write fictional stories to rediscover my lost Iraqi identity in Germany. Since my father was not very fluent in German and since I was the most successful among my siblings at school in academic terms, he asked me to read and explain our letters from the mailbox and answer them. Soon, I began to translate and write speeches for my father, who worked as the chairman of the Council of Foreigners in our town. I first dreamed of becoming a writer when I started journaling as a 15 year old—in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, a very intense and emotional time. My dream was to live in a warm country close to the ocean, read a lot of books, and write books. Writing has been my way to process things and find meaning ever since. It started as a hobby as I was more serious about becoming a boxer as a teenager. Boxing taught me many life lessons, above all discipline, which includes making sacrifices. So, being ambitious and disciplined has been part of my personality for a long time. It was and still is natural to me. And yes, I made a lot of sacrifices on the way to follow my passion and become a writer. When you work 9 hours a day, commute, do the household, cook, eat, do sports, shower, and sleep 7 hours at night, there is not much time left every day to become something else in addition to your current job—especially if you decide to use your free time watching TV or going out, being social etc. I radically cut back mostly all of those things, except family and health. There always needs to be time for these two things. But if you really want to become something else, you need to invest at least 2 hours every day in yourself, if not more. If you add up those days, months, and years, you will eventually reap the fruits of your work.  

About The Book

Brothers and Strangers: A German-Iraqi Memoir

Born in Mosul, Iraq, to a wealthy intercultural family, Junis Sultan’s happy, privileged childhood is abruptly cut short by the start of the Gulf War in 1991. With their home destroyed, Junis’s family flees to Germany, settling in a small conservative town near Frankfurt. As his family struggles to adapt to their new circumstances, Junis finds himself increasingly torn between two worlds—fighting to carve out an identity for himself between his family’s expectations and a culture that demands his assimilation. After the 9/11 terror attacks, Junis begins to keep a diary, in which he reflects on questions of family, friendship, religion, and politics. These deep insights gradually expand beyond cultural borders, as Junis begins to explore the universal human needs for bonding and freedom.

Brothers and Strangers is a unique, heartfelt memoir of endurance, forgiveness, and self-actualization, offering a timely message about the importance of acting with openness and love in a global reality.

You can find Brothers and Strangers here:
Amazon | Brandylane Publishers Inc. | Facebook

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