I am a man who has befriended misery for a very long time. When I was just a baby, I suffered a deep wound to my face. I don’t remember how it happened, but the scar remained.

At six, I was sent away to a religious school, which was more like a prison for children, a place where we were stripped from our families and forced to memorize the Quran in a language that was not our own. There was no love, no kindness—only obedience. I became a servant to my master, fetching water from the well, collecting firewood, cooking his meals.

Still young kids, my cousin and I decided to flee. We ran with no plan, just the desperate hope that whatever was ahead had to be better than what we were leaving behind. Starving and exhausted, we stumbled upon a lorry filled with sacks of dates, tore open a sack, and ate like we had never eaten before. The driver ended up giving us a ride, and when morning came, we woke up in a city, disoriented and frightened, goats nibbling at the edges of our clothes.

For a year and a half, I was homeless. I didn’t speak the language of the streets, didn’t know the ways of city life. Yet, despite the hunger and danger, it was the happiest time of my childhood. I was free. No master, no rules, no forced prayers.

One day, a familiar voice called my name—my real name, Omad. A man rushed toward me, his face filled with recognition. “I am your uncle,” he said, pulling me into an embrace. I had forgotten what it felt like to be someone’s child. He took me home, let me bathe, rid me of the fleas that clung to me. A week later, he called my mother, who had never stopped searching for me. She sold everything she had, even her donkey, just to afford the journey to retrieve me. When she arrived, she wept and held me.

A few years later, the war began in Darfur. My village was destroyed, uncles murdered. While injustice burned inside me, I was conscripted into the Sudanese army and expected to fight against my own people. Instead, I fled once again.

In 2008, after years apart, I reunited with my mother in a displacement camp. I told her I wanted to join the rebel forces. She and my sister refused. “When we are free,” she said, “we will need leaders. Go study. Become one of them.” She sold her rations from the UN to buy me a train ticket. Before I could reach my father, the Sudanese army massacred my people, my mother among them. She died in my sister’s arms.

I had no home, no safety. I made my way to Egypt, where human traffickers gave me three choices: pay $400 to be smuggled to Europe, $200 to go to Israel, or be handed over to the authorities—certain death. I had been taught Israel was full of devils in a human disguise, but for the first time, I questioned everything. I chose Israel.

Crossing the Sinai, we were packed into trucks like livestock. At the border, our smugglers ordered us to take off our shoes and run. Gunfire erupted—Egyptian soldiers shooting at us as we sprinted barefoot into the unknown. I lost sight of most of my group. Then, suddenly, a bright light illuminated the night sky. Israeli soldiers arrived in jeeps, weapons drawn. I braced for death.

“You are safe,” they said. They gave me water, checked for weapons, and took me in.

From there, I was sent to prison for three days, given a bus ticket to Tel Aviv, and set loose into a city of towering buildings and unfamiliar faces. A stranger from my tribe took me in and helped me find work. I learned English, connected with activists, and tried to build a future. Then, the government sent me to a detention center, offering two choices: deportation or indefinite imprisonment. I chose prison.

Even there, I found a way to learn, to teach. When I was finally released, activists helped me find a home. Through a scholarship, I earned a bachelors in economics. But still, I searched for a place where I could belong.

I found it in the Arava, in a kibbutz. I saw irrigation, infrastructure, opportunity—the kind my village never had. And I knew: my future was here. Not just for myself, but for the people I left behind. If they could not escape, I would find a way to bring change to them. I have befriended misery. But I am not its prisoner. I am its witness, its survivor, and I will not let it define me.