Greed, Paranoia, and Love Destroying a Real Man

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“Many things can destroy a man, but only three things that can destroy a real man, greed, paranoia and love”. I have no idea why I just wrote that last quote, I just thought it would be nice to start my book with something that sounds halfway smart. Anyway, my name is Ammar Barakat, born on the sixth of July 1980. I am not famous, gifted, smart, good-looking or powerful, as a matter of fact, I am not special in anyway. Nevertheless I have decided to write this book to tell my story to the world (hopefully), because believe it or not, I think I have lead an interesting and unique life. Before I go any further I guess I should start telling u about my first few years of life, or what I can remember from it.
My first memory was when I was three years old; I remember it was me, my brother and my parents sitting in the car and stopping at a mini-market to pick up some chips on our way to the swimming pool. I have no idea why this memory is plastered in my head because there was nothing special about that day; we used to always stop at the mini-market with my brother and parents to pick up some chips on our way to the swimming pool. Although I was born in Syria, I spent the first four years of my life in the United Arab Emirates. My father had a good job, and we lived in a nice house and had a normal life, actually it was ironic since me and my family seemed to be living the American dream in an Arabic country. Since I don’t remember much of the UAE days I cant tell u much about it, all could tell u is that any parent would wish to raise their children in the environment that I was raised in. My father went to work, my mother took care of me and my brother, and all me and my brother had to worry about was the amount of French- fries we were going to eat at the swimming pool that day.
Then, everything changed. The day that I have always feared has come, it was my brothers first day of school. Don’t get me wrong, me and Tareq were never the best of friends, and I wasn’t upset that he was leaving me, oh no, I was jealous of him.

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