My name is Brian J. Roan, and this is how it begins...

The phone started rattling against my nightstand, an epileptic fit that rocked plastic against wood and created a sound akin to a small animal gargling marbles.

I opened one eye and felt my head pounding as the whiskey from the night before continued to party on in my soggy blob of a brain. It was two hours before I needed to be awake for my internship, and I had no intention of answering any calls before it became a dire necessity. 

I went back to sleep.

Over the summer I had agreed to help my friend Dan McGregor with a project. He was interning for the State Department and was asked to help film a documentary in Massachusetts. I had never had any real experience filming anything. I was an amateur photographer - which is to say I owned a camera and could shoot something beyond a group of friends smiling while discreetly hiding their drinks from the lens - and a student of journalism. I had an internship with a senator.

I got two days off of my internship so I could go for an extended weekend just to show him the ropes, which was a funny idea because at this point I'd never seen the ropes either.

In Fairhaven I met three Israeli and three Palestinian teens who were brought to the States so they could live on a tall ship (a large sailing vessel). They were to be taught conflict resolution and team work both on land and on sea so they might foster a kind of understanding.

Long story short, on my way driving home from my four days of pretending to know what I was doing I got a call. I was driving through the Bronx in the rain. They wanted me back. Now. 

By the end of the week they'd talked the senator's office into letting me go, and I was back on the road.

Two weeks later the teens were gone and Dan and I were back in Maryland.

Fast forward.

Middle of fall semester. Hung over and tired, I dragged myself from my bed and showered, a long hot soak. After I dressed and slugged down some orange juice I climbed into my car and drove while listening to my messages. 

Bob from the State Department. Would I be interested in going to Jerusalem to film a reunion between the Fairhaven teens?

I called him back. My mother would need convincing, my father probably not so much, and I would need to know some particulars. It was all within the realm of his understanding.

I hung up the phone and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

I had murders to cover for the paper I was interning at, papers to write for class, orders to take at my job as a server. I had things to do. 

In just a few months I would be going overseas. I had to get a passport.