I met Sharif Bashiri in the late 1990s at a friend’s house, and thought, “Cute.”
He was married to Isla for a green card, but Sharif saw it solely as a marriage of convenience, while Isla was hoping for romance to develop. It did not. It was with this understanding that I began a relationship with Sharif, a Fulbright Scholar from Israel. He was admitted to the philosophy program at the University of Utah to earn his PhD.
As a Druze from Northern Israel, Sharif was a perfect candidate. I had never heard of this mysterious group and religion. The Druze don’t reveal the full precepts of their religion until the congregant is 40 years old, so there is an element of mystery and contemplation preparing for the unveiling of these truths. Sharif said that he spent hours in caves, meditating in the most silent places he had ever been.
The Druze, though they speak and appear Arabic, side with the Jews politically in Israel. The reasons remain unclear to me. Sharif, ever a pacifist, refused to fight for the Israeli army. The penalty was jail.
“What was it like?” I asked. “How long were you there?”
I was impressed. Someone willing to go to jail for his beliefs held my attention. Ever curious, I asked more questions about the experience.
“‘Jail, jail’ . . . you keep saying ‘jail.’ Sona, I want to forget.”
“I just admire you.”
“It’s like if you worked at the Brumby’s and someone asked you to poison a customer. You cannot.” Brumby’s was a local coffee shop and bakery. It was his attempt to give me an American analogy of why he was willing to go to jail.
Sharif had a crappy apartment far from the university with cinder block walls. When I spent time there, he always cooked.
“I like to do the cooking, Sona.”
Our relationship developed, and I was happy to have him in my life. He asked me if we could live together. I said no, and he was disappointed. I think he saw moving in with me as a solution to his financial problems and his problems with Isla. Still, our relationship continued.
I don’t think there are many men more sensitive than Sharif Bashiri. When I suggested one day that we go to a hotel (and I offered to pay for it), he said, “What? Just go to a hotel? I can’t go to a hotel and fuck! First, you walk around—look at flowers, have a day together.”
When I convey this story to other men, they usually say, “Fucking idiot!” but I treasure it because Sharif really was that sensitive.
In fact, Sharif was so sensitive, he was eventually kicked out of the philosophy department. He rebelled passionately against cognitive interpretations of philosophy. It angered him. “What is he going to do now?” I thought. He applied for the PhD program in the Middle East Center and was enthusiastically accepted. He wrote his dissertation on Ibn Arabi, a Sufi philosopher and prolific writer. Sharif lived and breathed his dissertation. He made a friend, Matt, in the Middle East Center. Sharif had many good things to say about Matt, until he trusted him enough to read a passage from Ibn Arabi.
“Sona, Matt recited Ibn Arabi like he was reading a newspaper. I couldn’t believe it!” Matt committed one of the worst crimes in Sharif Bashiri land, and it took a while to heal their friendship.
I don’t know what possessed us, but Sharif and I called one of those dating phone lines – this was before online dating.
“Hi, my name is Sandy. I like hiking and biking, and, you know, kicking back!”
We laughed and listened to a couple more phone messages.
The next day Sharif said, “What is this shit? ‘Hi, my name is Sandy. I like hiking and biking, and, you know, kicking back!’ I have not heard someone say, ‘I like poetry. I like philosophy.’ I have not heard anyone even say, ‘I pick up a newspaper once in a while.’
“What I am trying to say, Sona, is that I love you.”
Wow! I passed the Sharif Bashiri profundity examination. Not an easy thing to do.
“Did I tell you about the time Hillary dumped me?” He was referring to Hillary Clinton. “Hillary came to meet the Fulbright scholars. She shook my hand, and I tried to talk to her, but she just smiled and moved on. She did not want to talk to me, Sona. But she is a beautiful woman. A lot behind her eyes.”
I brought some roses from my mother’s garden and put them on Sharif’s kitchen table. “They are beautiful,” he said.
But as with all cut flowers, they began to die. We noted this fact, and Sharif went to throw them away. “I cannot,” he said dramatically. I suppose he saw them symbolic of our love. It was strange to be the tougher one in the relationship. I was not used to it, but I took the flowers and did the nasty deed of throwing them away in the trash.
When people liked Sharif Bashiri, they really liked Sharif Bashiri. So much so, he had a stalker.
Sharif’s hat disappeared from the library one day, and he assumed he had lost it. Later, he received a note saying, “You will get your hat back if you meet me under the road on 100 South at 10:00 p.m.” This was an underground tunnel between an elementary school and the playground. A very unusual structure for Salt Lake, dark and isolated at 10:00 p.m. Sharif did not retrieve his hat. More notes followed, and I started to get scared that Stalker Girl would find out that I was with Sharif Bashiri and turn on me.
According to Sharif, she was not a happy person. “What does she have? No books. No parties. Just Sharif Bashiri. I, too, would be depressed if all I had was myself.”
Finally, Stalker Girl went too far, and stated in a note that she would kill him if he did not agree to meet her.
“This is serious,” I said. “You need to tell someone at the university.” Sharif felt sorry for Stalker Girl but needed someone in the department to know that he or the department was possibly in danger. Sharif gave the note to the department secretary who read it and notified Sharif’s advisor, “Professor Peter” immediately. Professor Peter was concerned and asked for more details. Eventually, a representative from the University of Utah met with her and stated that stalking Sharif Bashiri was not okay. To my relief, after that conference she only popped up now and then in a non-threatening manner.
Sharif Bashiri was the least likely person in my head to follow American basketball, but this, he did, with great enthusiasm. The Utah Jazz had the most winning season ever, and people who were never into basketball got into basketball.
It was good for Sharif, because he spent so much time in his head. He watched the games at the union building and on his crappy TV. When we were together, he kicked me out of his apartment so he could watch the Jazz game alone—as if his powers of concentration could help the Jazz win.
During the NBA playoffs, while we walked, I listened to Sharif for blocks on end about how Karl Malone’s wife should not have gone to the playoffs against the Bulls in Chicago. “You know, Sona, Malone’s wife is a beautiful girl. What do you do when you are alone with a beautiful girl? You fuck! That will take Malone’s concentration off the game and make him tired. I want to say, ‘Woman, this is the playoffs!’”
You never can tell where someone’s brilliant mind will take them.
Author’s note: names have been changed to protect privacy.
Sona Schmidt-Harris is a published poet and fiction writer. Her forthcoming novel, The First and the Last, will be published with Europe Books in 2025. As an award-winning journalist, she particularly enjoyed writing profiles of individuals. Travel writing is also in her blood. Her publication debut was in Short and Long and Even a Song, the esteemed literary journal of San Miguel Elementary School. She currently calls Lisbon, Portugal, home, where life with her spirited wire fox terrier and husband keeps her on her toes. She continues to be awed by the mystery and grace of the Portuguese.
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