I try to stay positive, even though I carry many struggles inside. People often don’t realise, because I keep it hidden.

I came to Scotland 15 years ago, when I was pregnant. We had to flee Iraq because my husband was a doctor, and doctors were being targeted and killed. Members of our family were murdered. We left that same night.

We were asylum seekers and later granted humanitarian protection. We completed all the paperwork for citizenship, but five years have passed, and the Home Office still says they are “looking into it”. It feels like endless waiting.

I do not understand what I have done wrong. I volunteer, I attend college, I am a good neighbour. Still, I feel trapped. It is not a small cage, but I am stuck inside it. My mother is elderly and lives in Sweden. She is too unwell to travel here, and I am unable to visit her. After everything we have lived through—the war, the loss, the destruction—we cannot even sit together at a table.

My husband’s health has suffered badly under the stress. He cannot work as a doctor here, so he works as an interpreter in a hospital. Some months our income is enough, but other months we struggle, especially as the cost of living, even for food, is so high.

Our housing situation is very difficult. We are overcrowded. My 19 year-old daughter and 13 year-old son share a room. My seven-year-old daughter sleeps with me and my husband. We have been on the housing waiting list for eight years, but there has been no progress.

Every year, at Christmas, my youngest daughter asks for a sleepover with a friend, but we cannot offer that. The children cannot invite friends to our home. My daughters are now at university—I am so proud of them—but it is very hard for them to study in such conditions.

Despite everything, I am proud of myself, my family, and my community. I can now recognise how brave I have been. I have built a community here. Through my volunteering, I try to make others feel welcome and safe, like they are part of a family.