Farris Hassan’s not-so-excellent adventure

Tea in the desert
Dangerous and dramatic, Hassan’s trip has also been educational. He had tea with Kuwaitis under a tent in the middle of a desert. He says he interviewed Christians in south Lebanon. And he said he spoke with U.S. soldiers guarding his Baghdad hotel who told him they are treated better by Sunni Arabs — the minority population that enjoyed a high standing under Saddam Hussein and are now thought to fuel the insurgency — than by the majority Shiites.

His father, Redha Hassan, a doctor, said his son is an idealist, principled and moral. Aside from the research he wanted to accomplish, he also wrote in an essay saying he wanted to volunteer in Iraq.

He said he wrote half the essay while in the United States, half in Kuwait, and e-mailed it to his teachers Dec. 15 while in the Kuwait City airport.

“There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction,” he wrote.

“Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice’s call for help. Unfortunately, altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will.”

“I want to experience during my Christmas the same hardships ordinary Iraqis experience everyday, so that I may better empathize with their distress,” he wrote.

Gained: ‘A new appreciation’
Farris Hassan thinks a trip to the Middle East is a healthy vacation compared with a trip to Colorado for holiday skiing.

“You go to, like, the worst place in the world and things are terrible,” he said. “When you go back home you have such a new appreciation for all the blessing you have there, and I’m just going to be, like, ecstatic for life.”

His mother, however, sees things differently. “I don’t think I will ever leave him in the house alone again,” she said. “He showed a lack of judgment.”

Hassan may not mind, at least for a while. He now understands how dangerous his trip was, that he was only a whisker away from death.

His plans on his return to Florida: “Kiss the ground and hug everyone.”

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