She Aint Lara Croft

The New York Times recently covered the travails of a Muslim female recruit in training to be a military translator in "From Head Scarf to Army Cap, Making a New Life." I was reminded of how different things were for "Samia Faris" the fictional female Arabic-speaking sidekick in the military-funded videogame Tactical Iraqi. Samia's cultural hybridity, as a "Chaldean Christian," and the college-educated social mobility in her back-story present a shart contrast to the struggles of real-life Middle Eastern women preparing to be bilingual translators in the field.