One large bloc of Middle Easterners lived in Parker Hall, a brick tower overlooking the campus' Lake Vann, a restful crescent of water frequented by migrating birds and couples holding hands.
Groups of Arab students would gather in a fifth-floor dorm room and follow a kind of ritual: boil a chicken, share it with rice among all present, pray and commence intense discussions, before praying anew.
In the Middle Eastern tradition, they would leave their shoes in the corridor. Some U.S. students could not resist the temptation: The footwear sometimes ended up in the lake. Another prank involved filling 55-gallon garbage containers with water and propping the vessels against the doors of the "Abbie Dahbies," knocking and running away. When the door opened, water flooded the room.
The hijinks did not appear to discourage the visitors, many of whom remained in the States and completed their degrees. Years later, one alumnus interviewed at his office in Kuwait City recalled his time at Chowan with great affection, remembering in particular the becalmed lake -- an extravagance for Arabs reared in parched latitudes.
"In a place like Chowan, some students became more insular -- speaking only to Arab students, while others tried to mix with the Americans," he recalled. "I tried to mix, but others did it differently."
Mohammed completed his semester at Chowan and moved on.
Greensboro: The Mullahs
In summer 1984, Mohammed enrolled as an engineering major at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in Greensboro, a historically black college on the Piedmont plain in the central part of the state.
On Feb. 1, 1960, students at A&T -- whose most famous graduate is Jesse Jackson -- staged the first lunch-counter sit-in at a downtown Greensboro Woolworth's, a galvanizing action that spread throughout the South.
College abroad was a rite of passage for legions of Middle Eastern students -- overwhelmingly men. Typically, this was their initial long-term exposure to Western life. Some left appalled at what they witnessed. Others ate it up.
"We were all excited about going to the States," said Khalil A. Abdullah, a 1987 A&T graduate. "In high school we had seen all the movies, heard the music. We wondered so much about it."
In Greensboro, Mohammed was part of the large Middle Eastern bloc in the university's expansive engineering department -- a natural major for Kuwaitis and others from oil-producing nations. By all accounts, there were three distinct student groups at the school: African Americans (by far the largest group), white Americans and Middle Easterners.
