that's some homework assignment

[jenk]

News item from the New York Times:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 30 - A Florida teenager secretly made his way to Iraq this month for firsthand impressions of the war, and was returning home on Friday to family members who said they were galled by his recklessness but thankful he was safe.

The teenager, Farris Hassan, 16, financed the three-week journey with his own savings from investing in the stock market, said his mother, Shatha Atiya of Fort Lauderdale. He left South Florida on Dec. 11, flying to Kuwait City and reaching Iraq on Christmas Day, said his older brother, Hayder Hassan. He said American officials questioned Farris before allowing him to return here.

The family learned of Farris's adventure in e-mail messages he sent after arriving in Kuwait City, telling them not to worry or to expect him home soon. He even reminded another brother, Mehdi Hassan, to feed the cat in his absence.

"I'm going to give him a hug, a spanking," Hayder Hassan, 23, said in an interview, "and say, 'Welcome home, glad to see you. What were you thinking?' "

A junior at a rigorous private school here, Farris, whose parents emigrated from Iraq several decades ago, wrote in an essay recently that he felt guilty "living in a big house, driving a nice car and going to a great school." He wrote that he wanted to experience the hardships of Iraqis and volunteer with the Red Cross during his travels, helping the people of Iraq "rebuild their lives," even if it meant risking his own.

Hayder Hassan said that Farris had first taken a taxi from Kuwait City to the Iraqi border, getting dropped off in the desert, but that tight security thwarted his efforts to get across. Farris then called his father in Fort Lauderdale, who arranged for him to visit family friends in Beirut for a week and then to fly into Baghdad, Hayder Hassan said.

Farris's Iraqi heritage helped him get a visa to enter the country, where foreigners are routinely kidnapped and sometimes killed.

"I felt it would leave a scar, disappointing him in his young life," the father, Redha Hassan, told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, explaining why he did not order his son home immediately. "I learned long ago that if you say no, they stick to the point and insist on doing it. Nothing fazed him."

Richard B. Hermann, United States consul general, told the Associated Press on Friday that Farris "safely departed Baghdad." Mr. Hermann reiterated warnings by the State Department against traveling to Iraq.

Redha Hassan, an anesthesiologist who is divorced from Farris's mother, told The Associated Press that he had planned to take his youngest son to Iraq next summer. He could not be reached for comment Friday.

After two nights at a Baghdad hotel, Farris sought out the Associated Press bureau there, telling astonished reporters and editors in the office that he had come to do research and humanitarian work. The Associated Press, which reported Farris's story on Thursday, called the American Embassy in Baghdad, which sent soldiers to pick him up. The embassy had already heard from the boy's anxious parents, who were not sure of his exact whereabouts and wanted help locating him.

"I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in," said Patrick Quinn, an editor for The Associated Press in Baghdad, of the six-feet-tall, Nike-wearing teenager's arrival in his office.

Farris told The Associated Press that he had tried to order a meal from a Baghdad food stand using an Arabic phrase book, had drank tea with Kuwaitis in a desert tent and had interviewed Christians in Lebanon. He embarked on the journey, he said, after being assigned to write editorials on Iraq for an "immersion journalism" class at Pine Crest School, where he is a junior.

"You go to, like, the worst place in the world and things are terrible," Farris told The Associated Press. "When you go back home you have such a new appreciation for all the blessings you have there, and I'm just going to be, like, ecstatic for life."

Hayder Hassan said his younger brother was an idealist who obsessed over history and politics and hoped to attend Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said Farris had mentioned at Thanksgiving that he wanted to visit Baghdad, but nobody took him seriously.

"I admire that he was able to survive, but I absolutely don't admire that he did this," Hayder Hassan said. "My worst fear was that I'd turn on the TV and see my brother and hear someone was killed - a U.S. kid."

Ms. Atiya, their mother, said Farris had e-mailed the essay he had written about his trip - which he started here and finished in Kuwait - to Pine Crest School, but that the school was angry about the trip and had not accepted it. She said she had lost weight after her son's disappearance and wanted nothing more than to see him again.

"He's quite a kid," she said before getting into a limousine outside her home here on Friday. " I'm extremely exhausted and anxious to see him and hug him."

Farris, though, told The Associated Press he knew exactly what he would do upon his return: "Kiss the ground and hug everyone."

[sarcasm] Guess this is more proof that sealing borders is easy, right? [/sarcasm]

(And no, the student was not assigned to GO TO Iraq. In fact, the article says the school refused to accept his essay...presumably to show its disapproval of the little jaunt...)