Chapter 44
“They just used that as an excuse to reject you because they didn’t want to take the time to listen to you,” I told him. “My letter made clear that you had been invited as my guest, that I would pay for everything. Do you honestly mean to tell me that I can’t invite a friend from another country to visit me if he has no money?”
But that indeed appeared to be the case. A quick conversation with a co-worker whose wife was from Ukraine indicated that his wife had had the same experience when she invited a relative to visit this summer, even though she and her husband had visited Ukraine the previous summer. They were as baffled by the rejection as I was.
I didn’t know for sure how Amir was dealing with all this. Our communication temporarily stopped. But I entered a period of extreme depression. I remembered how I had watched him walking out of the airport at the end of my visit, wondering if I would never see him again. Now it appeared that would actually be true.