Honor Court: An Academic Thriller: Doctor Rowena Halley, #5

By Sid Stark

Doctor Rowena Halley signed up to be a professor, not a cop. Now she may have to be judge, jury, and executioner as well.

 

When a student with a hijab and a strong Chechen accent confides in Rowena about a tricky sexual assault case and asks for her help, Rowena can't say no—again. Being the only Russian professor on campus, as well as the faculty member students go to for help, has its advantages. But the disadvantages can be deadly.

 

After a tragic incident last semester, Rowena is trying to get her career back on track, not to mention her love life. With her Russian ex-fiancé Dima supposedly out of the picture, Rowena is hoping to build a future across the country in California with her American boyfriend Alex.

 

But the past has a nasty habit of coming back to haunt you. When Aishat Aslanbekova comes to Rowena with her suspicions that she was drugged and assaulted at a frat party, Rowena finds herself forced to confront her own demons as well as Aishat's.

 

With Aishat making accusations against the college's star quarterback and posterchild for diversity, Rowena doesn't know which will be more heartbreaking: finding out that Aishat is lying, or finding out she's telling the truth. Either way, both Aishat and the men she says assaulted her are in danger of an honor killing at the hands of Aishat's family. Rowena believes in non-violence. Non-violence may not believe in her.

 

*Content warning: Along with the kind of adult language you should expect from mouthy undergrads and battle-scarred Iraq vets, this book also contains a serious discussion of racism, Islamophobia, economic injustice, PTSD, and sexual assault. You've been warned.*

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helia Press
• Release date: Mar 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952723070

Book preview

1

I HATE HOW HISTORY keeps coming back to haunt you, no matter how much you try to run away from it.

Right now, on the first day of classes for the 2016 spring semester, Chloe and I were catching up over an early lunch at Sullivan’s, the nicest (and only) restaurant on campus, and trying to deal with a little of our own history.

Chloe and I had both started teaching at Crimson College the previous semester, me as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, her as an Assistant Professor of Chinese. I was a regular hire. She was a Special Diversity Hire. Crimson had brought her in as the college’s first-ever African-American faculty member after a report had come out about the college’s utter dearth of black faculty, and their overall unwelcoming atmosphere to black students. But as the college liked to remind us, thanks to a generous donation from Security Solutions, the private prison company that had given a pile of money to Crimson, they were able to hire Chloe, and to a tenure-track position.

We had both been incredibly grateful to have jobs, and ones that paid almost living wages. The sheen of our gratitude had dulled somewhat over the course of the fall semester, especially after one of my students had attempted to shoot one of Chloe’s students during finals. I had tried to talk down Chris, my student, while Chloe had pulled Taylor, her student, to safety. Taylor, Chloe, and I had all escaped unscathed, at least physically. Mentally, we were maybe a little bit scarred. Especially, it seemed, Chloe.

Now she was pushing her Caesar salad around on her plate without looking at it. But she also couldn’t bring herself to look at me. She had greeted me by saying that she had to talk to me, since no one else could understand what she was going through. Then she had chattered nervously about nothing for 20 minutes while failing to eat a bite of her salad. Judging by the weight she’d lost over winter break, she’d been failing to eat a lot.

Taylor was in class this morning, she finally said, still not looking at me.

How was that? I asked.

It was...it was weird. The whole thing was weird. I felt weird all break, and now that I’m back, I feel even weirder. It was so...it was so awful, what happened...Did you think you were going to die?

A bit, I said.

I did. I could feel Death rising up to take me. As I lay there, my face pressed into the carpet, I could feel Death all around me, rising up out of the carpet to take me, filling the air all around me so that I was breathing it in with every breath, absorbing it with every pore. Death was coming for me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I know, I said.

Yeah. Chloe shook her head, still not looking at me. "Yeah. And now it still feels like Death is with me every minute of every day. Especially when I was there. In my classroom. As soon as I stepped across the threshold, I felt Death rising up to take me once again."

That’s horrible, I said.

"And you know, I didn’t know I was going to save Taylor until I did. Right up until the moment I grabbed her and pulled her into the classroom with me, I thought I was going to leave her there. I wanted to leave her there, with her blonde curls and all the men chasing after her. But then—it’s funny how you can have so many thoughts at a moment like that—I realized that the way I felt about Taylor, and all those other blonde, pretty girls like her, the ones I kept hoping would have something bad happen to them, was like the way Celie felt at first about Sophia and Shug Avery in The Color Purple."

Mmmmm, I said. Chloe did have a problem with other women. I had just never known how to point it out to her. Luckily, it was looking like I wouldn’t have to.

You know, I always hated Celie, especially at that moment, but here I was, thinking and acting just like her. Me hoping that men would come and teach all those pretty blonde girls a lesson was like Celie telling Harpo to beat up on Sophia because she wouldn’t mind him. And I—I felt so ashamed of myself. And I knew that’s not who I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be the kind of woman who goes around telling men to beat up on other women.

So you weren’t, I said. Just like Celie, in the end you stood up for yourself and other women.

Yeah. Only...that was just the one time. What am I going to do the next time?

You’ll do the right thing, I said. I’m sure you will. And each time you do it, it will get easier.

Maybe, said Chloe. Anyway, since the...you know...the panic attacks I had all last fall have gotten really bad. I can’t even set foot in Bedford Hall—our classroom building was named Bedford Hall, quite possibly after the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest— without getting one. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the semester. And I’ve started seeing a therapist, and I’ve been really good about taking my meds and stuff, and none of it’s helping. My therapist told me to go get a full physical work-up because I was freaking out about how maybe there was something really wrong with me, so that’s what I spent winter break doing.

What did the doctors tell you? I asked.

Well, first I went to see Doctor Blake, the same one who Mel—Mel had joined the Crimson faculty at the same time we had, as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Arabic—went to see last semester when she thought there was something wrong with her. You know, he wouldn’t even do a proper physical exam? I know Mel said he was way too handsy for comfort, but with me he just sat on the other side of the examining room and told me I needed to see a psychiatrist. And maybe he’s right, but it sure didn’t make me feel any better about myself to have a known groper refuse to lay a finger on me. Like, am I really that ugly? I mean, Mel’s a lesbian, and she’s getting more action than me in that department. It’s not right!

Um, I said. Maybe. I mean, sure, being ignored by men is bad, but so is being groped and fondled in a gross creepy way.

I guess. I’d like to have the chance to find out, though.

Oh, I said. Well, uh, so did you go see a psychiatrist?

"Seems like I’ve seen dang near everybody. My dad—he’s a surgeon—had to call in a bunch of favors to get them to see me so quickly, since normally you have to wait for weeks or months to get in to see a lot of these specialists. I don’t know what happens if you’re really sick. I guess you just die."

I guess, I said. So what did they say?

She snorted, starting to loosen up now that she was angry instead of scared. They all lectured me about losing weight and staying in shape and told me I have an ‘aversive personality’ and I’m just having a hard time adjusting to a ‘real job.’ They obviously thought I’m a total wimp who can’t be trusted to get out of bed in the morning. I’m a black woman with a PhD from an Ivy League, Research 1 institution and a tenure-track job at a selective liberal arts college. What kind of person do they think I am? But they just told me to stop whining and lay off the fried chicken.

I’m sorry. That’s awful.

I know. And then they kept going on and on about somatization disorder or some shit—did I just say that? I didn’t mean to. It just kind of slipped out!

It’s okay, I said. I’ve heard worse.

Yeah, I know you have, but I was still raised not to talk like that!

I won’t tell if you won’t tell.

Deal. So, they kept going on and on about somatization disorder and did I have any episodes of childhood trauma and what was my difficult childhood like growing up in the ‘hood. I told them I grew up in a loving nuclear family in a well-to-do suburb of Atlanta and I had about the least traumatic childhood a person could have, but they just shook their heads and muttered stuff about repressed memories and sent me to get more psychiatric counseling.

Is it helping? I asked.

She shrugged. "Maybe. I keep trying to tell myself that at least they didn’t find anything really wrong with me, but I tell you what, there were times when I was hoping they would, just so that I could get them to take me seriously—is that girl trying to talk to us?"

A girl in a headscarf was edging towards us. Gosh, she looks North Caucasian, I thought.

Professor Halley? The Russian professor?

She sounds North Caucasian too. Yes? I said.

I, um...I hoped I can talk to you, she said in a rush.

Yes, of course.

In Russian? she asked hopefully.

Of course, I said in Russian.

Oh, thank God! I’ve been here for years but I still don’t feel comfortable speaking English. My name’s Aishat, by the way.

Boy, does she sound Chechen. The hairs on the back of my neck had risen at the sound of her distinctive Caucasian hard n. Which was completely unfair. Probably she was a perfectly nice person who had nothing to do with the man who had held me at gunpoint in Moscow. But the visceral terror provoked by her accent remained.

So is Russian your native language, then? I asked.

Well... She looked down, twisting her toe on the floor. Chechen, she mumbled, not catching my eye.

I thought so, I said.

Really? Now she did look up. Do you know many Chechens, then?

I’ve known some, I said. Do you want to take Russian classes? I couldn’t think of any other reason for her to seek me out, although I was surprised that she would do that. There was not a lot of love lost between Chechens and Russians, as a general rule. But maybe it was the closest she could get here in small-town Georgia to reconnecting with her native culture.

No. Now she was looking down at the ground again. I, um...I might need your help. Over a question of honor.

2

OH GOD. A question of honor made me suspect we were dealing with a sexual assault issue. Please let it be a cheating thing, I prayed silently.

Of course, I’ll be glad to help you if I can, I said out loud. What is it?

It’s...well...did you have Owen Wu in your class?

Um, yes. Owen Wu was one of the Chinese students that Crimson had started admitting in large numbers. Families from mainland China were apparently thirsting to pay full sticker price to send their children to private colleges in the US. Most of them were keen students who spoke excellent English and brought a lively air of internationalism to the Crimson campus and Greenfields, Georgia (population 5,000).

I had had two such students in the second section of RUS 101 the previous semester. Jessica Chang and Owen Wu, to give them their Americanized names.

Jessica Chang combined two passions in life: Chinese nationalism and getting good grades. I could certainly sympathize with the latter, and I felt it was good for the American students to be exposed to the former, so I enjoyed having her in my class. She had gotten the top grade in RUS 101-002 last semester, signed up for RUS 102-002 this semester, and was already talking about doing an intensive study abroad over the summer. Jessica Chang was obviously going places, starting with the top of the Dean’s List.

Owen Wu had been very different. Owen Wu had missed half his classes, shown up obviously hungover or high half the time when he did manage to drag himself into class, and failed to turn in 90% of his homework. As far as I could tell, the only thing he actually cared about was his frat and his sorority sister girlfriend. The only conversation of meaning we’d ever engaged in had been about her, when I’d said something about the Ukrainian gymnast Ganna Rizatdinova and Owen had said she reminded him of his girlfriend, Hannah Reiser. Then he’d disappeared for a week and flunked the next test. Since he had taken Russian before, he managed to scrape through the fall semester with a C-. There was no sign of him so far in either section of RUS 102, and I was hoping it would stay that way.

What about Owen Wu? I asked Aishat.

She rubbed the toe of her boot into the floor, and fiddled with the hem of her headscarf. Can we talk about this somewhere alone?

Oh God. It’s definitely something I don’t want to get dragged into. Sure, I said out loud. I have class from 12:00 to 1:00 today, but I’ll be free after that. Can you come by my office at 1:00? It’s Bedford 154.

Uh, yeah. I can do that. Thank you. Aishat hovered for a moment indecisively, and then turned and walked hesitantly away.

What was that all about? asked Chloe. What did she want?

To talk to me. Probably about testing into a Russian class. I highly doubted that was why Aishat wanted to talk to me, but that was the fiction I was going to go with for the moment.

Oh God, said Chloe. They can’t leave us alone for a moment, can they?

Nope, I said. In fact, I didn’t mind that my students often came to me for help or just attention. At least someone wanted me. But it was fashionable for faculty to complain about constant pestering by importunate students, so I pretended to go along with it. I had a strong tendency to rock the boat even without trying, so I made an effort not to make waves about things that were of secondary importance.

I checked my phone. 11:45. 15 minutes to pay up, double-time it across campus, and go teach my third class of the day. I’d better go, I said. But let’s get together again soon, okay? Maybe Mel will be able to join us, too.

Oh, right. You have class at 12:00. I guess... Chloe looked down at her salad. I guess I’ll try to finish this off before teaching my one o’clock class. Although I don’t like being here by myself. I always feel like everyone’s looking at me.

Maybe you can get a to-go box, I told her. As the only black faculty member, and one of the few black people on campus at all, Chloe tended to make heads turn wherever she went, and not in a flattering way. She didn’t like to go places by herself because of it.

I left as she was negotiating the to-go box with the waitress. It was a more involved process than maybe it should have been, since Chloe was one of those people who always asked for very complicated things from wait staff. I made my escape as she was asking for two separate boxes so that she could split up the order into a serving for lunch and a serving for supper, with extra dressing on the side for both. Anyone who hadn’t been looking at her before was certainly looking at her now.

I hustled through the dank January air across the front quad, around Lee Hall (the main administrative building, which may or may not have been named after Robert E. Lee), and onto the back quad. I was quick-stepping past Saunders Hall (home to English, Classics, History, and half of Modern Languages; possibly named after a KKK leader) when, at 11:53, my phone pinged.

It was a text message from Alex. Great news! it said. A Russian job has just opened up, practically right here in Monterey!

3

REALLY? I wrote back. What kind of a job?

A VAP position at Carmel-by-the-Sea College. Just a few miles away from Monterey!

That’s great, I texted. Alex, my boyfriend, taught Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. It was a bit of a commute between there and Greenfields, Georgia. Since my VAP (Visiting Assistant Professor) position at Crimson College could be yanked away as soon as this semester, we had been talking quite a lot about me moving out to California to live with him.

We were both aware that it wasn’t a great plan, since his position at the DLI wasn’t much more secure than mine at Crimson. And there was the whole problem of him working with his ex-girlfriend. It was the still the best plan we’d managed to come up with. We’d assumed that I would have to quit teaching and leave academia in order to make it work, but now it looked like there might be a potential faculty job opening up nearby. Emphasis on the potential. There would probably be somewhere between 50 and 150 other applicants for the position, and every one of them at least as qualified as I was.

I checked the time. 11:55. I have to get to class, I wrote. I’ll check in with you later, okay?

No problem, he replied, as I sprinted into Bedford Hall at 11:58 and took the stairs two at a time to Bedford 218, where RUS/HUM 150, Introduction to Slavic Civilization, was waiting for me.

By the standards of Crimson College, RUS 150 was a big class, with sixteen students. There are a lot of downsides to tiny small-town colleges, but there are also upsides, and one of them is small class size.

RUS 150 had no prerequisites and fulfilled the Crosscultural Diversity general education requirement. It was filled with students who knew nothing about Slavic Civilization but were curious, or students who just had to fulfill their XD requirement and this was the only class that fit into their schedule. I spent the first part of the 50-minute class taking roll and trying to find the base level of knowledge about Eastern Europe. Once I had ascertained that half the students couldn’t reliably find the former USSR on a map, I spent the rest of the class helping them learn the geographic location of the largest country in the world.

By 12:50 I had some confidence that most of the students knew where Russia was, and some of them even knew why that was important. A couple of them, most notably Alicia, an elfinly petite girl with a giant afro she’d died cotton candy pink and the only black student in the class, and Anthony, a tall, preppy-looking guy with an air of confidence that I hoped would be endearing rather than infuriating, even went so far as to make some astute observations about contemporary geopolitics and Eurasia.

Telling myself that this was an encouraging start, I dismissed class and set off at a brisk walk towards my office, on the first floor of Bedford Hall. If I was quick, I might even be able to check my email before Aishat showed up. My phone’s notifications were telling me that I had already received a dozen messages about the start of the semester, all of them urgent.

When I came out of the stairwell, I saw Aishat waiting for me by the door to my office. But before I could go over to her, Karen, the Modern Languages department chair, came out of her office.

"Oh, Rowena, there you are, she said. I’ve been looking for you all morning. We need to talk. You know this was supposed to be another probationary semester for you in any case, and after, well, what happened, it has been decided that your record must be examined very carefully. Come see me in my office right now, please."

Um, I said. I’m supposed to meet with a student...

"Well, tell them to meet with you later! This is important. I want to see you taking your responsibilities as a Crimson faculty member seriously for once!"

O-kay, I said. I’ll be right over.

Aishat was fidgeting nervously when I came up to her.

I’m really sorry, I told her in Russian. But my department chair wants to talk to me, and she says it has to be right now. Can we meet later? Maybe at 1:30 or 2:00?

My father will be coming to pick me up at 2:00. I’m not supposed to be out by myself after...What about tomorrow?

Tomorrow should work, I said. Are you free at 11:00?

Yes, she said. Tomorrow at 11:00. Thank you, professor.

Of course, I told her. I watched her walk off, and then, steeling myself, I set off for my meeting with Karen.

4

KAREN HAD IMPRESSED me from our very first meeting with her bad temper and poor sense. Subsequent interactions had not improved my opinion of her. She had spent a good deal of the previous semester berating me for my incompetence and lack of school spirit, and suggesting that my contract was about to be terminated.

My contract had not been terminated, but she had told me that this semester was going to be another probationary semester. Since I was on a two-year contract, a probationary semester seemed like bullshit to me, but bullshit is the fertilizer for so much of what happens in large organizations.

After the shooting during finals week, I had given multiple statements to both campus and town police as well as the FBI, and undergone a lengthy interview with Jennifer from HR, who was heading up the internal investigation into the incident. No one had suggested that I was in any way at fault, or that my position at Crimson was in danger because of it. The repercussions of the shooting were likely to go rippling out for years, but I had been hoping that I had seen the end of the bureaucratic side of things. A vain hope, it seemed. Knowing Karen and her ilk, she had some particularly stupid yet refined torture lined up for me.

Don’t blow your stack and do something you’ll regret! I told myself as I walked with doom-laden footsteps up to her door. She’s not worth it! Just smile and go along with whatever she wants. It will all be over soon.

"Oh, there you are, said Karen, when I knocked at her door. What took you so long?"

I had to explain things to my student.

"I hope you didn’t tell her that you were on probation, under investigation, said Karen. We don’t want to do anything to harm student morale. It’s already bad enough as it is!"

I just told her you wanted to meet with me urgently, I said.

Karen pursed her mouth. She had a heavy, jowly face and a flabby, vaguely frog-like mouth that looked even worse when she made a face, which she did often.

I told myself that judging people by their physical appearance was shallow and immoral, and started clearing a pile of old papers and falling-apart textbooks off the guest chair. The desk was completely overflowing with homework, illegible notes, half-full coffee mugs growing mold, and cough drop wrappers, so I put the stack of papers and textbooks on the floor. Karen made another face at that, opened her mouth to say something, looked around, saw that there was nowhere else to put it, and made an unpleasant sniffing sound.

So, she said, once I had seated myself gingerly in the chair. I started to cross my legs, and then stopped when I felt my trousers stick to something on the chair seat. I hoped it was just an old cough drop. I shifted cautiously. My trousers made a vaguely rude sound as I tore myself away from whatever it was. Good thing I had already taught all three of my classes today.

Stop fidgeting, Karen told me severely. "Honestly, Rowena, you’re like a student sometimes. I know you’re young and inexperienced, but you’re not that young."

Thirty-five, in fact, I told her.

Karen looked startled, and then tried to conceal it. Most people mistook me for 5-10 years younger than my actual age. I knew many women envied me my youthful looks. In my chosen profession, however, visible signs of age were a marker of power and authority, so looking like I was still in my 20s was a disadvantage.

"Anyway, she said. We need to make arrangements for you to have another teaching observation and performance review. After your rather shaky performance last semester, I want to make sure to get started on this early, in order to ensure that you are in fact teaching at a level appropriate for Crimson’s high standards."

She stopped and gave me what was supposed to be a stern look.

Okay, I said. Why was it so hot in here? The heat must have just kicked on. Maybe that explained the sickening smell of mildew that was suddenly filling the room. When would be good for you?

Well. She seemed taken aback at being put on the spot like that. "You see...we also have to arrange a time to hold the hearing about the, um...the incident."

There’s going to be a hearing? I asked.

"Of course. The senior administration is very concerned that such a, a heinous incident took place, right in our own classes. They are asking some very probing questions. I don’t have to tell you how bad this makes us look. And I also don’t—well, I shouldn’t—have to tell you how disturbing it is that you completely failed to see any of the warning signs—or heed any of the many warnings I explicitly gave you that something like this might happen."

Mmmmm, I said. Karen had pestered me repeatedly last semester about the fact that Miranda, one of my students, was a troublemaker. Only Miranda hadn’t been involved in any of the troubles of last semester, except as a target. Chris and his semi-friend Nathan had been the troublemakers. And in my opinion, the true culprit was Nathan, who had been the leader of a Men’s Rights group that put up blog posts blaming women for their unhappiness and fantasizing about rape and murder.

The actual members of the group hadn’t had the wherewithal to carry out their fantasies, for which we should all be devoutly grateful, but Chris had sucked in their poison and decided to take revenge on the girls who had rejected him by coming into their final exams and...doing something bad. What exactly that bad thing was supposed to be was not clear to anyone, because Chris had ended up in a coma after getting shot himself and was still incoherent. But he’d shown up with an AR-15 and a .45 semi-automatic handgun, so we had to assume that mass murder had been on the agenda.

"This has caused me so much trouble, Karen was saying. And will continue to cause a lot of trouble and inconvenience all semester, I’m sure. I want to hold your observation and evaluation as soon as possible, but I have been asked to find out your schedule and submit some possible dates for the hearing, and I want to make sure we do that first so that we don’t have to reschedule the observation and make even more trouble."

Okay, I said. My teaching schedule is MTWF from nine to eleven, and twelve to one MWF. Any time other than that will probably work.

"Of course, for something as important as this, you may be called upon to cancel class. You should expect to adjust your schedule to theirs, rather than expect these very senior faculty and administrators to adjust their schedule to fit your convenience."

No problem, I said.

"Well...well...I guess that’s all for now, then. But be sure to be ready to attend the hearing whenever it’s called!"

Sure, I said, and, ripping myself free of the sticky chair, left.

5

IT WAS ONLY 1:15. AFTER picking off the remains of whatever sticky thing had stuck to the seat of my trousers, I hung around my office for a bit, hoping that maybe Aishat hadn’t left yet and we could go ahead and talk about whatever difficult thing she wanted to talk about, but no such luck. Instead, I was forced to go through the emails that were stacking up in a holding pattern in my inbox.

I dealt with the least tedious of my emails first. It was a letter from Shaniqua, one of my students at UNC-Matthews, where I had taught as a one-semester adjunct the previous spring. Shaniqua’s great-grandfather had gone over to the Soviet Union as part of the exodus of African-Americans fleeing Jim Crow. While it hadn’t been the paradise of equality and freedom that they had hoped, Shaniqua’s great-grandfather had survived the experience and come home with a Ukrainian bride. Shaniqua had started studying Russian as a way to find out more about that part of her family, and had gone on a study abroad program to Ukraine the previous summer. She’d sent me some updates about it while she’d been there, and now she was reaching out to me again.

Hi Rowena!

Hope you’re having a great spring. Thanks so much again for writing that rec letter for me to go to Ukraine last year. I had a FABULOUS time and even got to visit the village where my great-grandmother came from. And I met a super-hot guy, just like you said I might :) Picture of me with Oliksiy is attached :) My family isn’t super happy about it, but they say they understand—I must have gotten my taste for Ukrainians from my great-granddad ;)

I want to go back again this summer on the same program. It’ll be my last chance before I graduate! Not sure what I’m going to do then :( Accounting doesn’t seem so exciting anymore. Although maybe if I could do accounting in Ukraine...I’m not sure how friendly people would be to me there, though. I mean, I met lots of people who were very friendly to me, especially Oliksiy ;), but there were some pretty scary Nazi white supremacists too. Of course, we have them here too, but it was still kind of scary. I didn’t have any trouble from them last summer, but Oliksiy has gotten some stuff from some of his friends that makes me worry. Though like I said, we’ve got lots of that bad stuff over here too, so...maybe I just need to follow my heart, huh? :)

Anyway, I’m hoping you’ll be able to write another rec letter for me for the program and a scholarship that goes with it. I know it’s been a year since I was your student, but I need two letters. I’ve already gotten one from Anna Ilinichna, my current Russian professor, but I was hoping you would give me one too. Of course, when I’m there I’ll be studying Ukrainian, but I still thought rec letters from my Russian professors would be best. If you can’t do it I understand, but I really hope you can!

Best,

Shaniqua

I wrote back that it would be no trouble for me to provide a letter of recommendation, and I would be happy to do so.

The neo-Nazi/white supremacist thing is concerning, I told her. But I’m not sure there’s anywhere you could go where you *wouldn’t* encounter it right now. So I guess you might as well do what you want to do. Stay safe, and let me know how it goes!

I spent a while staring at the picture of Shaniqua and Oliksiy. They had their arms around each other and were standing in front of a Ukrainian wooden house. Presumably far from the war zone. The war in Eastern Ukraine