Aspiring Journalist Sent Back From Iraq
By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 31, 2005
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.
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.
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