I live in a apartment spacious enough to host anyone who needs help to stay here for a while. My roomates and I agree that we can host a friend who just moved to Seattle and needs a place for three or five days until he finds his own apartment. That is our deal.
During this year, we have hosted many guests, most of them we don't know personally. How can we host them while we don't know them? Usually, a friend of ours contact us that his friend needs help or someone posted in Muslim Student Association's mailing list that he need help. We just trust people, basically, and we all don't have things to worry about.
This year we already host friends from Mali to Singapore (so many that even I cannot recall them one by one). I remember we have one from Mali, one from Singapore, one from Saudi Arabia, other two from Saudi Arabia, one from Palestine, one from Arizona, one from Uzbekistan, and another one a Fulbrighter from Palestine. You can guess, surely, they are all Muslims.
It has been two days we host a guest from Iraq. On the first night, I had a long conversation about what is happening in Iraq. Not all the guests we have hosted like to talk about their countries. Some are more open and some are not. I can tell, that this Iraqi guest even tell me more about his country than my Lebanese roommate (he is kinda apolitical guy!)
So, it was really long political conversation. He is mixed, Arab and Kurdish, and a Sunni. During Saddam administration, he was a democrat activist, struggling for a democratic Iraq (so, we can understand why he is very political and love to talk about politics). But, he doesn't agree with Bush's project to impose democracy in Iraq by force (no democrat do). He leaved Baghdad 15 years ago, moving to Kurdistan; but he still has relative there, his sister and father live in a mix Sunni-Shii neighborhood but now have to leave their homes for safety. His brother in law left the country for Syria.
Well, it was really long and nice talk. Sorry that I cannot write longer. I have a due paper to work on.
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