A report from the streets of Baghdad

After dinner, one of our young translators stopped by. "What's up, man?" he said in the most natural English slang I've heard from an Iraqi. I was convinced he'd lived in the States, but to my surprise he's spent his whole life in Iraq. He's a Palestinian Iraqi who learned English in school and took in plenty of American movies and music as a kid. When the United States invaded Baghdad, they swept through his neighborhood while he was hanging out with his friends.