+
	An Iraqi Driver (2004) +++++page 1 +++++page 2 +++++page 3 +++++page 4 +++++page 5 +++++page 6 +++++about	He said then he was put in prison for seven years. I asked him where, he said "somewhere in the desert." I pressed him further. He said a desert in the Middle East. I said those years must have been really hard for him. He sort of disagreed. He said he was put into prison because of the war, not because of crimes and it was different. "We learned that war from the textbook when I was in China." "Textbook?" "Yeah, they taught Gulf War at school because it was a very important modern war. A lot of new technologies." "Yeah, new technologies." "At first, there weren't a lot of people involved..." When I went to college in Shanghai in 1992, at one point, all of us were required to study the Gulf War. Maybe the authorities thought that the Gulf War was important enough for every college student to know. "Then they asked me where I wanted to go. I said: 'I want to go to America.' They asked me to choose from 50 states..." "Really?" "Yeah, I don't know why I picked Akron." He said he didn't know anything about America. Now I think maybe those towns are listed alphabetically, and "Akron" is on the top of the list. But I didn't get a chance to ask him back then. "So I came to Akron in 1998." "Where did you learn English? When you were in the desert?" "No. When I first came here, people say Hi and I didn't know what that meant..." "You are good at picking up English."			+
		<< previous		+	next >>