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“Remind me again why you are taking this class?”
“Because I wanted to take the comparative education course that is only offered every other year. And my assistantship covers all my tuition, so I decided to take a French class as long as I’m here. It’s an independent study,” I reminded him.
“What is this movie?Goodbye, children?” Nao Kao didn’t speak much French, but having grown up in a former French colony,au revoirwas still a common enough phrase that he recognized it right off.
“Holocaust movie. French children hiding from Nazis at a boarding school run by priests.”
“It’s a true story,” I added, as though this would be a selling point.
“No happy ends, I’m guessing.”
“Are there ever, Nao Kao?” I asked, thinking of the horrors of the past week, the planes, the flames, the plunging bodies.
He was silent, but stayed for the movie. I didn’t even try to hide the tears that were so predictable, nor the sniffles or half-choked sobs that accompanied them.
“You should leave. Last bus and all that,” I sounded pathetic, but really, who watched a movie about Nazis hunting little children in the days after September 11?
“Too late. It’s gone past just now. I will stay here.”
I turned on my computer and began to type to the sounds of Nao Kao settling to sleep on the couch, the music I had downloaded from Napster offering a late-night soundtrack interrupted by the occasional ping of an instant message.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
God bless socialmedia. And those who still make their posts public. Scrolling backward through time, I saw that mere hours after I received Nao Kao’s email, he had posted a trove of campus photos, spring, summer, winter, and fall. The last was a group shot of our cohort – or my cohort, plus Nao Kao and perhaps others who had also taken education courses throughout the year. He is standing just behind me, his hand resting casually on my shoulder. I am wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, while the girl next to me is dressed in a flimsy blue and white sundress. That didn’t exactly narrow the window of when it might have been taken. I tried to recall the names of the other students in the picture, or even the professor, but drew only blanks.
The holes in my memory aside, the connection to campus was too obvious to miss. I finally did what I originally intended to do.
“Nao Kao, would you, whether you personally or your team at NUOL, want to partner with UM on some Southeast Asia programming?” I texted him.
“That sounds promising. What do you have in mind?” he replied, almost immediately.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. We could discuss it to determine what makes the most sense. We need to offer our students more that focuses on the region, especially the CLMV countries, but we don’t have a firm idea.”
“Sure. It would be an honor for NUOL to affiliate with UM, and for me to give back to the school that gave me so much.”
“Wonderful! I was hoping you’d say yes. We’d love your expertise and input on developing the programming – courses, study abroad programs, faculty exchanges, whatever makes the most sense.”
“I’ll think about it and send you a message. Thank you.”
“Hey, no problem. It’s always nice to do business with friends.”
The conversation was so much easier than I expected; I couldn’t imagine whatever had led me to put it off. I crossed “Ask Nao Kao about CLMV stuff” off my to-do list and moved my finger to the next item. My phone buzzed.
“Friends, huh? That’s the best you can do?”
I stared at my phone, blinking hard. I wasn’t seeing things.
“I don’t know,” I pecked out the letters slowly, my heart hammering at the unspoken implication that hung between the lines. “What else do you have?”
Then, “Got a meeting – gotta run,” I added before he could reply. It wasn’t the first time my courage failed me.
After that, it was no difficult task to coax him into attending the virtual alumni reunion a week later. Business and pleasure. The invitation from the alumni office that I forwarded him before he was even officially back on their radar or in their database asked attendees to wear maize and blue.
“I don’t even have a shirt anymore,” he apologized.
“Just wear something navy. You’ll be fine.”
“You always were pragmatic,” Nao Kao replied.
