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Sojourn to War Zone Is Over for Florida Teen
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)
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Mouadh Anwar, the duty manager at the hotel, said in an interview Friday that the management does not usually accept unescorted people under 16 but is prepared to make exceptions for the sake of business.
"This is a five-star hotel," Anwar said. "Anybody comes, especially a foreigner, he gets a room."
Farris did not leave the hotel often, only stepping out once to get something to eat, the AP reported. At a nearby shop, he flipped through an Arabic phrasebook looking for the word "menu" while Iraqis customers stared at him in amazement.
"And I'm like, 'Well, I should probably be going.' It was not a safe place. The way they were looking at me kind of freaked me out," Farris told the AP.
After his second night at the hotel, he visited the AP office.
"Hi, my name is Farris. I'm a 16-year-old high school student from Florida," Quinn recalled his young visitor saying.
"I was shocked, to say the least," said Quinn, who at first couldn't believe Farris's story. "I don't have to tell anyone in our community what a crazy thing this was."
Hassan agreed to go along with soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division, who set him on his way home. On Friday afternoon, the U.S. consul general in Iraq, Richard C. Hermann, said in a statement that he was "very pleased" to announce that Farris was returning to his family.
Hermann did not take questions, and an embassy spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the incident.
"We have no intention of facilitating for him, turning him into some sort of pseudo-celebrity," said Johnson, the military spokesman.
On Friday evening, Farris's family, reached by telephone, was still waiting anxiously for him.
His brother Mehdi, a student at Georgetown University, said he was angry with Farris: "We've all been upset. . . . But he had good intentions. He's naive, a good kid."
Mehdi described the first thing he'd say to Farris: " 'What the hell were you thinking? How could this happen?' I'll slap him. I'm glad to get him back, though."
Correspondent Jonathan Finer contributed to this report.
