Sojourn to War Zone Is Over for Florida Teen

Aspiring Journalist Sent Back From Iraq

Shatha Atiya displays photos of her 16-year-old son, Farris Hassan, who traveled secretly from their Fort Lauderdale home to Iraq over Christmas. (By J. Pat Carter -- Associated Press)

BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 -- When the lanky 16-year-old in the white Nikes, unaccompanied and unable to speak Arabic, explained that he had come to downtown Baghdad for the sake of "immersion journalism" and humanitarian work -- all without his parents' permission -- Patrick Quinn's heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

Within minutes, Quinn, the Associated Press's editor in Baghdad, picked up the telephone and called the U.S. Embassy to get the young man from Fort Lauderdale out of what he called "the most dangerous place in the world."

On Friday, the U.S. consul general announced that Farris Hassan's impetuous journey was at an end: After making it to Baghdad despite the odds of being turned back, kidnapped or killed, Farris was on a plane home.

"This was a thoroughly stupid thing to do," a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said in an interview Friday. "This is an extraordinarily dangerous environment. It's not only his life, but the life of service members responsible for securing him."

"If he wanted a free trip to Iraq, all he had to do was enlist," said an enlisted soldier who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Farris, who was en route back to the United States on Friday, could not be reached for comment, but the Associated Press published a story Thursday night chronicling his adventure. The tale began on Dec. 11, when Farris disappeared from home and flew to Kuwait City, paying for his $900 round-trip ticket with money his mother had given him. From there, the AP reported, he planned to take taxis to the Iraqi border and on to Baghdad, where he would do humanitarian work.

He told the AP that he had been inspired by a class at Pine Crest School, a prep school in Fort Lauderdale, in which he had studied immersion journalism, a style of reporting in which the writer lives the life of his subject.

Immersion in Iraq's environment can have fatal consequences. Farris, whose parents were born in Iraq but have lived in the United States for 35 years, has inherited his family's olive complexion, and is growing the beginnings of a beard. But his inability to speak Arabic would have instantly blown his cover in a country where foreigners face constant threats to their safety.

"I know going to Iraq will be incredibly risky," Farris wrote in a school essay, the AP said. "There are thousands of people there that desperately want my head. Nevertheless, I will go there to love and help my neighbor in distress, if that endangers my life, so be it."

His plan to reach Baghdad via one of the most dangerous highways in the country was foiled Dec. 13, when security along the Iraq-Kuwait border was unusually tight because of elections two days later, the AP said. He was forced to return to Kuwait City, nearly getting into a fistfight with his taxi driver over the fare.

Undaunted by rejection, and by pleas from his parents to return, he flew to Beirut, staying with friends of his family for 10 days before flying into Baghdad on Christmas.

He made it into the city, checking into the Palestine Hotel at 7 p.m. Reception put him in Room 1026, where the bill ran to $100 a night for his three-night stay.