I can’t believe no one is talking about this.
[quote]Maybe it was the time the taxi dumped him at the Iraq-Kuwait border, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. Or the moment a Kuwaiti cab driver almost punched him in the face when he balked at the US$100 fare.
But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation. And he didn’t even tell his parents.
Hassan’s dangerous adventure wound down on Wednesday with the 101st Airborne delivering the Florida teen to the US embassy in Baghdad, which has promised to see him back to the US this weekend.
It began with a high school class on “immersion journalism.” As a high-school student at Pine Crest School, a prep academy of about 700 students in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Hassan read The New Journalism, an introduction to immersion journalism featuring the work of journalists like John McPhee, a writer who lives the life of his subject in order to better understand it.
Diving headfirst into an assignment, Hassan, whose parents were born in Iraq but have lived in the US for about 35 years, hung out at a local mosque. The teen, who says he has no religious affiliation, spent an entire night until 6am talking politics with a group of Muslim men.
The next trimester, his class was assigned to choose an international topic and write editorials about it. Hassan said he chose the Iraq war and decided to practice immersion journalism there, too.
Using money his parents had given him at one point, he bought a US$900 plane ticket and left the country on Dec. 11, one week before the start of his school Christmas break. His destination: Baghdad.[/quote]
[quote] It was mid-afternoon Tuesday, after his second night in Baghdad, that he sought out editors at The Associated Press and announced he was in Iraq to do research and humanitarian work.
“I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in,” editor Patrick Quinn said.
The AP quickly called the US embassy.
Embassy officials had been on the lookout for Hassan, at the request of his parents, who still weren’t sure exactly where he was.
Most of Hassan’s wild tale could not be corroborated, but his larger story arc was in line with details provided by friends and family members back home. [/quote]
Now that there kid has balls. :loco: :bravo:
