Click to play videoNew Delhi: Eight-year-old Jamal likes the lessons he learns at school and tries to unlearn some that life has taught him. For almost half of his life Jamal has only seen war.
His home in Iraq was bombed, his school shelled, his best friend killed in the violence. He and his family then escaped to India.
Jamal says he fond of Hrithik Roshan and cricket, but wants more in life.
“I want to go to an Indian school and learn English. Children in the Iraqi school do not treat me well. They call me a refugee,” the eight-year-old says.
But his father knows they were always refugees - Palestinians who lived in Iraq until the war landed them in India. Ever since then, they have been living off their savings and there isn't much left, they say.
Ironically Jamal's is one of the most well off families in Delhi. There are more than 160 such refugees living in the capital. They are people who have left behind an all-consuming war and bombed homes, people with no work to do and no country to return to.
Jamal’s father Najah Mahmood was a builder in Iraq. He shows CNN-IBN his identification papers. But even after living for 40 years in Iraq, that government refused to recognise him as an Iraqi or a Palestinian.
Another refugee Khalid Mohammed, who was an English teacher in Baghdad, says he has been looking for a job for almost a year now.
“It is very difficult to work in India because it is another language. And everything here is changed,” he says.
They were affluent people in Iraq. And unfortunately in India, they survive on aid from the United Nations Human Commission for Refugees. But since that is not enough, they take refuge again - in happy memories and prayer.
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