Farris Hassan’s not-so-excellent adventure

Elections at the right time
It could have been worse — the border could have been open.

As luck would have it, the teenager found himself at the Iraq-Kuwait line sometime on Dec. 13, and the border security was extra tight because of Iraq’s Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. The timing saved him from a dangerous trip.

“If they’d let me in from Kuwait, I probably would have died,” he acknowledged. “That would have been a bad idea.”

He again called his father, who told him to come home. But the teen insisted on going to Baghdad. His father advised him to stay with family friends in Beirut, Lebanon, so he flew there, spending 10 days before flying to Baghdad on Christmas.

His ride at Baghdad International Airport, arranged by the family friends in Lebanon, dropped him off at an international hotel where Americans were staying.

‘I should probably be going’
He says he only strayed far from that hotel once, in search of food. He walked into a nearby shop and asked for a menu. When no menu appeared, he pulled out his Arabic phrase book, and after fumbling around found the word “menu.” The stand didn’t have one. Then a worker tried to read some of the English phrases.

“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,” he said.

It was mid-afternoon on Tuesday, after his second night in Baghdad, that he sought out editors at AP and announced he was in Iraq to do research and humanitarian work. AP staffers had never seen an unaccompanied teenage American walk into their war zone office. (“I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in,” said editor Patrick Quinn.)

Wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt in addition to his jeans and sneakers, Hassan appeared eager and outgoing but slightly sheepish about his situation.

The AP quickly called the U.S. Embassy. Officials there had been on the lookout for Hassan, at the request of his parents, who still weren’t sure exactly where he was. One U.S. military officer said he was shocked the teen was still alive. The 101st Airborne lieutenant who picked him up from the hotel said it was the wildest story he’d ever heard.

Hassan accepted being turned over to authorities as the safest thing to do, but seemed to accept the idea more readily over time.

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.

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