Pen pals get the inside scoop in Arabic.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

REEDSPORT - It was just before school let out on Friday afternoon, and Jeff Mason's fifth-grade class was packed with parents, reporters and cameras.

Such things mattered little, however. The students had mail.

"Jeeefffff," came the plaintive wails from Mason's pupils, who are on a first-name-basis with him. "Hurry up!"

This was real mail - not the electronic kind - sealed in a bright yellow envelope, carrying hand-written letters in Arabic from children in a country where the United States has been at war for two years: Iraq.

Mason's students couldn't wait to tear into the envelope.

"Wow," said Steven Schriver, after scanning the translated letter from his new Iraqi pen pal, Muhammet Mustafa. "It's got a picture and everything."

The letter was short, and to the point:

"I am 11 years old and my favorite food is chicken," the Iraqi boy wrote. "I wish you to send me a picture, bye."

Last month, Mason and his class began a "Global Pen Pals for Peace Initiative," which he hopes to spread to other U.S. classrooms and countries worldwide, especially those ravaged by war and poverty. With the help of Mercy Corps, an international aid organization, the class wrote letters to children at an elementary school in Khanaqin, in northern Iraq.

On Friday, the Reedsport students received the replies, written in Arabic and translated into English by Mercy Corps volunteers.

"You're an artist," said A.J. Hoover, thrusting a picture he received in front of classmate Kelly Deamaral. "What is this?"

"Probably like water or something," Kelly replied. But she was busy with her own letter. She'd asked her pen pal to translate a couple of Arabic words for her. The answer: plane and door.

The point of all this, Mason explained, is "building bridges of peace, through understanding and communication. We're trying to have kids reach out at this age so perhaps in the future, it will be easier to create dialogues between our countries."

Mason and a parent volunteer, Heather Vail, tracked down Mercy Corps volunteer Albana Dwonch, who found the willing school in Iraq.

When the Reedsport letters arrived in Khanaqin last month, the excited schoolchildren took them home and committed them to memory, Dwonch said.

"It was a real event in two schools: Khanaqin elementary for boys and Khanaqin elementary for girls," wrote Dwonch in an e-mail to Mason and Vail. "Impossible to keep the class quiet.

`The next day, the students knew by heart the content of the letter and of course the names of their pen pals. They wrote the answers in half an hour and they were really happy. They asked me if they were going to have an answer again and I promised them that they will."

Getting mail out of Iraq proved a challenge, however, thanks to the closed border. Eventually, Dwonch flew to Jordan to send the letters out. Mason is hoping the correspondence continues.

"One of our students said `What if my pen pal gets blown up?' ' Vail said. Instilling concern for others who are half a world away, she added, is "exactly the point."

Winston Ross can be reached at [phone] or rgcoast@ oregonfast.net.

CAPTION(S):

Fifth-graders Jay Morris (from left), Chad Dugan, Russell Jarrett, Neal Larson and Steven Schriver take part in "Pen Pals for Peace." INSIDE Excerpts: Pen pal letters to and from Iraq / B4