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  • Messages from Abroad
  • Alexis Nelson (bio)

A few days ago, I received an unexpected letter. It came—via email, of course—from a former French student of mine, Mehdi. In and of itself, a letter from Mehdi isn't unusual. We've corresponded regularly since I left France last summer, after a year of giving English lessons at the school where Mehdi was a terminale, a senior.

Mehdi was my best student at the lycée, as well as the only French person I met who seemed to love everything about my country—even peanut butter, even smog, even our freeways and our gas-guzzling American cars. He was the only pupil who attended every one of the volunteer conversation groups I held on Fridays at eight in the morning. I remember sitting across from him in an otherwise empty classroom while the sun struggled to rise over a dewy soccer field outside. Sunlight slanted into the room and I sipped espresso from a white plastic cup as Mehdi gushed about all the things I was supposed to know already: surfing and basketball, the pure golden beaches of Malibu, Hollywood and the beautiful young stars who crowded its sidewalks. Any hints from me that I might not share his passion for these things were met with bewilderment and incredulity—but I generally didn't bother correcting these misty-eyed impressions of my home. It was enough that I had left the States far behind to begin a new life in France; I didn't see any point in crushing this sweet kid's dreams.

Now that I'm back in the States, Mehdi's letters arrive like clockwork, every week, and though the thought that I am slowly losing my French is devastating to me, we always write in English. Mehdi's prose bubbles over with exclamation points, and his unique patois includes lots of slang expressions—some of them charmingly mangled or out of date—that I suppose he's picked up from American pop songs, or cnn, or God-knows-where.

It's not uncommon for Mehdi to refer, in his letters, to his deep, unwavering love for the U.S. Even greater than his love for America, though, is his love for my home state, California—or, as he calls it, Cali. (I don't think I've heard Mehdi refer to my California as anything other than Cali or, when he's in a more poetic mood, "Land of My Thousand Dreams.") I knew it was a profound wish of his to visit, or even live in, California someday. But [End Page 26] Mehdi's parents, who'd immigrated to France from Algeria, were hardly wealthy, and I didn't think it was likely that they'd be able to afford to send him here.

But then, quite out of the blue, this arrived:

Hey there Alexis! How R U?! Give me some news of you sometimes, as often as you can, for sure, lol!!! I been lookin' for a work placement in import/export in Cali, but I think I ain't gonna find one here, thousands of miles away, so I'll pack my bags just after the holidays (in May) and go there. I'll try to find some works all over Cali, do you know a good way to travel over it? Train? Bus? Rent a car? I also plan to hang out in all the fresh places!!! Take care?…?and see U soon!!!

Mehdi's letter sent me into a mild panic. I pictured this sweet-faced eighteen-year-old boy arriving in Los Angeles with nothing but a suitcase and this vague plan of finding "some works" in the field of "import/export" and "hanging out" all over California. It was clear he had no idea what he was getting himself into. The way he signed his letter alone—"see U soon!!!"—betrayed his painful ignorance. Mehdi knows I now live in Oregon, not California; but the immensity of space separating Portland from Los Angeles must be unfathomable to him. I looked it up: 820 miles. That's over two hundred miles more than the entire length of France.

As...

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