Several weeks ago, someone whom I described as an "old friend" prompted an entry on why I started writing the blog.  Carla wrote later to gently suggest that since she is considerably younger than I and since the phrase "old friend" is ambiguous in English, perhaps I should have said "a friend I've known for a long time."  Suggestion taken.  She also wondered why I hadn't written more about Mohamed and especially how he and I met.  The main reason I haven't is that he is generally a private person, and I wanted to respect his privacy; this was also augmented by the fact that he is a Muslim from an Arab country, and I didn't want to discuss too many details.  But given the fact that my life would have been/would be entirely different without his presence, I ought to fill in at least some of the gaps.

We met online almost exactly six years ago.  On paper, it didn't look like a promising encounter.  He lived 5,000 miles away; I'm an atheist, he's a Muslim.  The cultural differences were not entirely daunting; since 1990, with only one exception, all my significant relationships have been with Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab.  (Only about 20% of all Muslims are Arabs.)  And I had lived for a year in Morocco, a Muslim country.  When we met online, he was 27; I was 61.  Age, religion, culture, and distance--not much seemed to hint at the possibility of a real relationship.  But we began chatting, first in one of the chatrooms, and then, more often, I'd steer him into a private conversation, at first on MSN, then on Skype.  The chats had both camera and microphone, but for the first months, we just typed the chat, though with the cameras on.  Mohamed's typing was slow (he'd write in Arabic and then use a translating site to rewrite it in English), and I was a bit skeptical of his English.  But I'm nothing if not stubborn, so we continued.  Maybe a slow learner too--because one night I realized that I could hear his typing, and therefore our microphones must be working.  It took a little persuasion, but we began speaking, and much to my amazement his English was very fluent--both his speaking and comprehension. 

As soon as the spring semester was over, I would have more free time during the summer school, and I had a sabbatical scheduled for the fall semester.  (It finally produced an article on linguistic invention in Melville's Pierre.  For at least a year, all my friends abroad teased me because they never saw me without a copy of Pierre, which got more and more tattered.)  I suggested that I would come visit Mohamed, an idea that both tempted and frightened him.  After some hesitation on his part, I booked a ticket to Paris for my birthday (Bastille Day) and then on to see Mohamed.  He picked me up at the airport, and we went to a very nice hotel with an underground parking lot, which made his comings and goings less conspicuous.  I kissed him in the elevator on the way up to the room and then realized there was a camera in the elevator.  I was greeted with a basket of fruit, a huge bouquet of roses, and a gold-plated Dolce & Gabbana cellphone.  Over the next two years, I visited Mohamed six times, and he came to Topeka four times.  In the time between visits, we spent hours a day on Skype, despite the time difference, which meant the chats were often at odd times.

And then after much discussion of who should live where (I could probably have gotten a teaching job there, but we couldn't have lived openly together), we decided that Mohamed would come here on a student visa.  He already had an A.A. degree in business from a local university.  He was accepted at Washburn, but at his first two visa interviews, the embassy official turned down his application.  So we changed strategy: he applied to and was accepted by KU.  And somehow KU was more convincing at his third visa interview, and he was given a student visa.  He arrived in May 2009, took one course during the summer at KU, and then transfered to Washburn.  Once you've received a student visa, you're not committed to staying at the university you put on your form.  Nowadays, a student submits his transcript (for a large fee) to a national evaluation company, and the company tells the university which courses, how many hours, and what grades are the equivalent of those at an American university.  On the company's advice, Washburn accepted 86 hours of credit.  We thought that another two or three years would be sufficient for Mohamed to get the B.A.  But two problems emerged: American is virtually the only country that has general education courses.  Elsewhere, once you go to a university, you study only your major.  So Mohamed had to start with lower division courses to fulfill Washburn's complicated gen ed requirements.  Second, although Washburn accepted 86 hours of credit, the School of Business would accept exactly zero hours.  So ultimately, the A.A. degree counted for nothing.  This semester is Mohamed's eighth at Washburn, and if all goes well, he'll graduate next December.  In one way, the delay has been beneficial: as long as he's in school, his student visa is valid.  Once he graduates, however, the problem of his visa status will arise.  Even if there's been immigration reform by then, Obama's proposal that international students who graduate from American universities should be given green cards rather than sent home extends only to those in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects--not to business or, for example, the humanities.

That's how we met and how nearly four years ago, Mohamed came to the U.S.  He returned home briefly in the summer of 2010 before meeting me in Paris for the summer, but he hasn't suffered from homesickness and immediately fit in with American culture and with my American friends.  Of course, with modern technology it's easy to keep in touch with his family and friends back home.  I never met his family in the six visits, nor, at least in theory, do they understand the nature of our relationship, though why he's living with a 67-year-old man might raise some suspicions.  He left behind a good job and a fancy car, in addition to his friends and family--quite a sacrifice for a life in the U.S. that didn't turn out exactly as planned.  Next time, then, I'll write more personally on what has happened after April 13, 2011, when a doctor first told me I had cancer.