Throughout the school year, my father studied on weekdays; on weekends, he studied some more. The combination of being shy, not knowing English well, and missing most of the orientation proved to be a recipe for loneliness. During one long weekend, another of the Fulbright students barged into my father’s room and announced that he could no longer take the loneliness and would be abandoning his studies to return home. My father tried to dissuade him, but in view of Kazem’s thick accent and his unique flair with the English language, it’s anybody’s guess what actually came out of his mouth. Anyway, the student went back home.

A few days later, my father noticed a large envelope addressed to the departed student. Accidentally opening other people’s mail has always been one of my father’s favorite hobbies. The envelope contained a letter from the Fulbright office letting the student know that he could transfer to any school he chose, and that any accommodation would be made to ensure a memorable experience. This gave my father a brilliant idea.

He decided he wanted to transfer to another school with a livelier environment, but he didn’t want to ask directly for a transfer. He wanted the committee to suggest it. So he painstakingly wrote a letter describing how lonely he was. The Fulbright office responded immediately, telling him that he had been assigned an American hostess who would show him around town on weekends. This is not what my father had had in mind.

The following Saturday, he found himself standing in the lobby of an art museum. His hostess had obviously thought that as an engineering student, my father could benefit from a bit of culture. Little did she know that the only culture my father was interested in was the kind in yogurt. My one memory of a family excursion to an art museum ended with my father asking, “Did we have to pay to get into this place?”

After half a dozen culturally enriching weekends, my father decided that the merits of loneliness were highly underrated. Given the choice between spending time with a kind soul who had given up her weekends for some engineer from a country she had never heard of, or reading, say, theories about fluid mechanics, his decision was obvious. My father informed the Fulbright office that, thank you very much, he had been cured of his loneliness.