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Iraqi Roadtrip U.S.A.

Fouad and Ahmed are Iraqis. They’ve spent the last few years living as refugees in Syria after being forced to flee Baghdad by militia threats. Now they are coming to America as part of the Iraqi Student Project, an organization that helps promising young Iraqi refugees to get scholarships in American universities. Before they start their studies, they will go on a journey across the States visiting people whose lives have been touched in various ways by the war in Iraq.

They’ll catch up with students from the same project who they saw leave Damascus a year ago and visit recession-stricken Detroit, where Iraqi refugee families continue to be resettled in droves. They will stay with army veterans who have seen Iraq through soldier’s eyes, and with families in a small town next to a major military base, where the local economy is almost entirely dependent on the US military.

As young Iraqis, Fouad and Ahmed have grown up knowing the US principally as the occupier of their homeland. But their lives have also been shaped by American culture; like many young Iraqis they have a keen appetite for American movies, music and TV series. This will be the first time that they interact with US society in all its diversity and complexity. The journey will take a look at America through Iraqi eyes, and explore the complications and contradictions of being Iraqi in America.

They'll be posting photos from their travels here. For more information, and updates from the journey, visit www.iraqistories.com/roadtrip.