Culture

When she was 7 years old, Rahila Muhibi was engaged to her 8-year-old first cousin. The betrothal was arranged, in the Afghan custom, by her father. When Muhibi was ready for high school, her father fended off relatives who demanded that the marriage take place. He thought she was too young, and instead helped her win a scholarship to attend school in Canada. Last month, Muhibi, 24, graduated from tiny Methodist University here.

In the heart of the Ethiopian community here, a group of friends gathered after work in an office to chew on dried khat leaves before going home to their wives and children. Sweet tea and sodas stood on a circular wooden table between green mounds of the plant, a mild narcotic grown in the Horn of Africa. As the sky grew darker the conversation became increasingly heated, flipping from religion to jobs to local politics. Suddenly, one of the men paused and turned in his chair.

Sometimes, it's the forbidden stories, the ones people are afraid to tell in full, the ones that emerge only in fragments, that reveal the truth about a place. This is such a story. It's being told now not because the complete truth is known, but because the story nags at those familiar with its outlines, and because it says as much about Iraq's progress as it does about Iraq's resistance to change.

The police were polite but firm as they arrested Shahin Felakat, a lanky teen whose mussed-up strands of dirty brown hair reach in all directions, and charged him with singing lyrics that threatened Iran's Islamic order. After a few days in jail, the 18-year-old rapper ran back to the studio to rejoin his homeboys. "The authorities have a very negative view of rap," Felakat says. "They say rap has a corrupting influence.

As master brewers have done for 13 centuries before him, the sake factory boss is everywhere at once in his rustic timbered building along Japan's rugged northern coastline: helping to drag sacks of rice, gently issuing instructions to his four brewing assistants, consulting with his own boss, a fifth-generation owner.

There's one bookstore in the world where you'll never, ever find a copy of "The Bookseller of Kabul." That would be the Bookseller's. The epic literary feud that erupted with the book's publication more than five years ago still endures -- at least from the perspective of Shah Muhammad Rais, who hated his depiction as Sultan Khan, a liberal intellectual in public but a tyrant in his own home.

For a member of a supposedly extinct species, Craig Wetherill does a pretty good impression of the living. He responds to premature reports of his demise by launching into a local fairy tale. "Y'n termyn eus passys, 'th era tregas yn Selevan den ha benyn yn tyller cries Chi an Hordh. . . . " The story he's recounting is "John of the Ram's House." The language he's speaking is Cornish.

We attacked the start of first grade with military precision. Up at 6:15, with pretty purple dress at the ready. Pancake served, teeth brushed, sandals cinched -- with time to spare. We were a Swiss watch. But this isn't Switzerland. The school bus didn't arrive at 7:20, as scheduled. Or at 7:30. Or 7:45. The van finally pulled up at 7:54. But the driver gave no sign anything was wrong. She was all grins and big waves, as pleased as if she'd nailed an especially difficult dismount.

Standing outside his hookah station at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Glendale, Alfonso "Abou Salim" Ramirez grabbed a red apple and, using a sharp knife, sliced off the top. He flipped the apple over and made four quick incisions, creating a small square. "This is my secret," Ramirez said, jabbing a finger into the square to pop out the core. He then stuffed red, apple-flavored tobacco into the hole and covered it with a piece of tin foil.

The motley caravan of boats, their engines popping in staccato rhythm, headed out to sea sounding like a platoon of sputtering lawn mowers. Painted bright red, turquoise and orange, they carried a dozen men wearing baseball caps and T-shirts fashioned as turbans to block the equatorial sun. Johnny Aralaji perched on the pointed bow of one of the craft, his sun-creased face frowning in concentration. He was born on a boat like this. His family wandered, allowing the currents to lead them.