Samarra

“While it’s an interesting and provocative idea, where is safe? In the Ring of Fire where freeways topple, is anywhere truly safe. Fires break out everywhere, even massive ones. There is no saying that anywhere a museum moves won’t be the ‘Appointment in Samarra’ for the collection.

Associate art director Samarra Khaja, a longtime vegetarian, admitted that “a regular hot dog generally skeeves me out,” but she would buy her Field Roast Signature Stadium Dogs again.

She is a Sunni Muslim, from the religiously mixed area around Samarra about two hours north of Iraq’s capital, and at first the fighting did not touch her.

But back in Samarra, her fathers’ four brothers were kidnapped by anti-American Sunni insurgents.

When Noor was 11, the family returned to Samarra to put flowers on her uncle’s grave.