I'm much older now. I've lived a full life, a good life, full of adventures and misadventures. I've loved deeply. I've loved brightly. I've loved recklessly. I don't have any regrets on the path my life took, or about the places I've been, things I've seen, or experiences that have stacked up inside me.
My memory is a deck of tarot cards, nestled one on top of the other, each holding an incident or an event or a person. Sometimes, when it's quiet, I like to shuffle through the deck, pull a card, and indulge myself in a memory. One of those cards, one I pulled recently, is Farah, Fondly. Every now and then I pull it from the deck, smile, and shake my head.
Life is strange.
Love is stranger.
I was a few years older than my peers in college. I went from high school into the Marine Corps. In part because I didn't know what to do, I didn't really have a plan or a dream to chase. In part because of the influence of my older brother, who'd also gone into the Corps. In my memory there is a whole set of cards relating to the experiences I had in the Corps. This story isn't about them though. Well not entirely, though the Corps is going to sneak back up and bite my ass before this tale is done. Those I'll save for another day. It's just the reason I was a few years older than most of my college classmates.
After the Corps I was still drifting through life. I had a neat little stack of money set aside for college alongside my enlistment bonus and a twenty-year obligation to the inactive reserve. I went home to Minnesota, did some research, and ended up selecting the University of Minnesota, in Morris. It was a small college in a small town, about ninety miles from my home in St. Cloud. I considered St. Cloud State, but decided I wanted a little distance from my family, and the small-town environment appealed to me.
UMM, as it is known, has about a thousand undergrads, give or take. I was looking at a degree in Psychology with a minor in English Literature, a classic liberal arts education. If you want the experience of a quality school in a relaxed setting, I would highly recommend it. Morris is a small rural town. The campus is nestled on the north-eastern edge. Downtown is within easy walking distance, six or seven blocks away. The campus has maybe twenty buildings all told, including the student residential halls and the campus apartments.
Normally, incoming freshman are lodged in either Independence Hall or Gay Hall for that first year, then they can move into one of the upper-class halls, on-campus apartments, or off-campus. I landed in Independence Hall, on the third floor on the north wing. It had a nice little set up, eight rooms and a common area per floor. Independence Hall has three wings, each wing five stories. All told, there were probably a little over two hundred students nestled together there. In addition to the smaller common areas on each floor, there was a larger common area that was split into two parts. One part was a sizable TV and study room, the other part was a recreation room, with a couple of pool tables, a shuffle-puck table, and a common table for gathering and playing cards.
The campus has all the amenities one would expect. There was a dining hall, a regional fitness center, a student recreation center, a library, and, appropriate for its rural setting, a horse stable. It has everything a student would need, all assembled in a rather intimate community setting. Move in day went smoothly, registration was a breeze, and as quick as that, I was a college student.
I had a roommate for the first two weeks, but, at the end of that second week, he left. Nothing drastic. Apparently, he'd applied to multiple universities and, shortly after he arrived, a slot opened at his preferred college, so he was gone. I suddenly had a single room and managed to hold onto it for that first semester. An unexpected gift from the random college experience gods. Most floors in my wing of Independence Hall were co-ed, so it was a mix of young men and young women scattered seemingly randomly throughout the building. There were several dedicated single gender floors in the hall, for the convenience and comfort of the students, and I imagine, their parents.
After four years in the Marine Corps, Morris was a quiet little paradise. I settled into a routine quickly enough and after those first two weeks started exploring everything the town and university had to offer. I walked both the campus and the town. It wasn't big, it took no more than a weekend to figure out where everything was at, all the amenities of the university and the offerings of the town, its cafes, bars, and stores.
Three things caught my attention. First, the student recreation center was nice. I'd learned to play pool in the Corps, so I immediately gravitated to the area set up with pool tables.. The fitness center was luxurious. Most nights involved a trip there. I'd lift weights, take a swim, enjoy a sauna, and then play pick-up ball, or randomly shoot hoops. But the place I fell in love with was the stables.
I'd grown up on a small Minnesota farm and being around horses was a great experience. They're incredible creatures, strong and beautiful. Horse are good judges of character. On my exploratory walk I signed up to be a volunteer stable hand. There were about thirty horses stabled there, so three times a week I took my turn shoveling horse poop and helping keep the stables running smoothly.
Stabled there was a beautiful palomino. Simply a gorgeous horse, well-formed and friendly. I fell in love with the horse, whose judgement led me to fall in love with Farah, by a convoluted path. The horse belonged to a young lady named Paula, who was equally well-formed and friendly. She and I struck up an almost instant friendship, bonding over our shared love for the horse. Paula also shot a wicked game of pool. She'd grown up playing pool on her family's table and was virtually unstoppable with a cue in her hand. You only need a few connection points to form a friendship, so Paula and I developed a quick bond.
Paula's roommate was Georgette, another Minnesotan, smart as a whip, outgoing and friendly. Georgette worked in the student recreation center through one of the work-scholarship programs. Georgette had serious people skills. She remembered everyone's name and face and everything they told her or that she observed. Even a few weeks in, when she walked across campus, she'd say hello to a dozen people by name. If you needed or wanted to know anything about someone, you could just ask Georgette and if she didn't know, she would in a day or two.
Now, I don't know how you do it, but I fall in love in bits and pieces. It's never been a sudden thing for me. I can dive into lust headfirst, but love, love takes time for me. It's a gradual thing. It starts when someone catches my eye. Then they catch it again. Then again.
I was in the recreation center playing pool with Paula one night, about midway through the semester, when a small group of Persian students came in to use a table. Morris had a small community of international students. You'd think that in a student body of a thousand people you'd meet everyone quickly, but I'd never seen them before. Four men and two women. One of the women instantly caught my eye.
She was young, like most of the students there. She was about five foot seven, a little on the tall side, and slender. She had a head of luxurious dark brown hair and big brown eyes. Her smile was easy if a little bit shy. She turned heads when she walked in. She turned heads when she played pool. She was dressed in blue jeans and an off-white shawl sweater that was a near perfect frame for her hair, spilling down her back in a ponytail. I am not ashamed to say I looked, though I tried not to stare. They settled in a couple of tables over and animatedly chattered away in Farsi, laughing, and taking turns on the table.
I just watched her out of the corner of my eye. To my eye, she was quietly graceful, moving like a dancer. She mesmerized me from the very beginning, with her hair and her eyes, with the way she moved, simply and softly sensual. When she passed near me, I got a whiff of her perfume, something faintly floral, barely there. She smiled as she passed, making a moment of eye contact, before looking down. It was just a lingering moment, just the flash of a smile, but it sent my heart racing.
Georgette came through. She must have noticed our moment of contact, must have noticed something in my expression. As she delivered Paula and I soft drinks, she leaned in and whispered a name in my ear.
"Farah."
Beauty had a name.
Paula and I wrapped up our game and headed over to the cafeteria for dinner. That was the first time I saw Farah and she gently settled into a soft, quiet corner of my mind. You know how some people do, you see them once and they're there in your imagination, fully formed. With Farah's striking looks and that wonderful scent she was an easy memory to create.
Over the next couple of weeks, the international students settled in and became regulars at the pool tables. One of them was an excellent player, so it was inevitable that, sooner or later, he'd cross Paula's path. We had an organized tournament one weekend and, though I went out in the third round, Paula reached the final bracket with the Persian student.
As the spectators lined up to watch, I found myself standing by Farah. Okay, I kind of made it a point to end up standing next to her. When the opportunity was presented, I took it and introduced myself. I knew her name now. The faint floral hints of her perfume filled my senses. She smiled warmly when she shook my hand. Her handshake was cool, dry, and strong. Her eyes were hypnotic.
Moments after introducing myself the Persian Mafia swooped in, cut me out and moved her away. I was probably transparent in my attentions, and they didn't like it. I just shrugged it off and went back to enjoying watching Paula work her magic on the pool table. She won the final bracket handily. Her opponent didn't take it well, muttering under his breath in Farsi. I just stepped up and congratulated Paula with a hug, made eye contact with him, and smiled.
Don't imagine me as any sort of tough, threatening character. That's never been me. There wasn't a moment where we went mano-a-mano with macho posturing. I just let him know that Paula was my friend.
That is usually enough to settle people down and it worked. He had a problem losing but pulled himself together quick enough. A short while later he came over, congratulated Paula, and introduced himself as Rashid, shaking both her hand and mine. After congratulating her, he introduced us to the Persian Mafia. We all exchanged names and introduced ourselves how I got to shake Farah's hand twice in one night.
I thought of the Persian Mafia as a herd of horses. They were a long way from home and both culturally and instinctively protective of each other. Not unfriendly, but not outwardly friendly either, with the bond of a shared language and culture pulling them together and erecting a protective screen around them. The trick to getting one horse from a herd of horses is simple, you just move slowly and talk softly until you're close enough to slip a halter on and then lead the horse you're after out of the herd.
Why did I go to a horse metaphor? Because my chance to spend time alone with Farah circled back to the stables. As the semester ended the university prepared for the Christmas holiday shut-down. Most of the students were heading home for the holidays. I wasn't. Oh, I planned on driving down to my parents for Christmas Day, but I was content to stay there through December and the first few weeks of January. There were bridge seminars available to students who stayed, short little courses on a variety of topics for four weeks. A couple of them caught my interest.
