ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Twasin Shafiq, a Bangladeshi student who has lived in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province with her family since she was five years old, received a score of 97 out of 100 in the 12th-grade baccalaureate exams. She graduated on Saturday with her cohort from the International School of Choueifat – Sulaimani.
“Since childhood, my passion has been general medicine so that, with God's help, I can treat and heal people,” she told Rudaw in fluent Kurdish.
In addition to her native Bengali, Twasin speaks Kurdish and English and has a basic understanding of Hindi and Arabic.
Having been raised in the Kurdistan Region since early childhood, she spoke about her experience learning Kurdish.
"It was very difficult for me because my parents did not speak Kurdish,” she said. “I had to learn both Kurdish and English at the same time on my own.”
Students from many countries and diverse cultural backgrounds study at the Choueifat school in Sulaimani.
Twasin dreams of attending the College of Medicine at the University of Sulaimani. However, based on recent years’ admission criteria, she can only enroll in the college by paying tuition fees.
Her family hopes the government will provide financial support to help her pursue her desired degree.
"God willing, she will be accepted into the medical department at the University of Sulaimani and become a doctor, if the government helps us. She worked so hard and put in so much effort,” Nasreen Anwar, Twasin’s mother, said in Kurdish.
The International School of Choueifat – Sulaimani opened in 2009, three years after the launch of its first branch in Erbil.
The private school is operated by SABIS, a global education management organization that runs a network of schools around the world.
Nizar Jaza contributed to this article.
