I walked into Bilal’s restaurant ten minutes after six expecting to find a dozen old friends reunited for dinner. Instead, I found only Rose and Arshad, the usual people I meet for dinner and none of the others who had responded to the e-vite. I should have known everyone would be late since we were notorious for running on CP (colored peoples’) time.

Rose and Ghaith, now a law student at NYU, organized the dinner to reunite former “mother org” and CPO student leaders. We all attended UCLA around the same time and were involved in various student groups. Despite coming from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, we still worked together on various campaigns. The height of our coalition work came during my third year, 2000-2001, when we organized to repeal SP-1 and SP-2, two policies that eliminated affirmative action at University of California campuses. After countless meetings, a few protests and even a turnaround road trip to San Francisco, we got to know each other pretty well.

Kei was the fourth one to arrive. Her normally neat black hair looked messy due to the high winds. She apologized for being late, but she was still “early” when it came to CP time. Yousef and his younger brother, Muhammad, walked in a few minutes later. I hadn’t seen Yousef since he left to Iraq in July. Afterwards, Ghaith and Mahmood came in. I used to work with Ghaith in the Community Programs Office. Rose mentioned something about needing a tan, but how is he supposed to get one in late autumn NYC? The two Iraqis (Ghaith and Yousef) and Mahmood immediately began discussing Iraq and Yousef’s experience working in the prime minister’s office. Nahui joined us next and agreed with Ghaith that even though the weather in LA was a bit cooler and a whole lot windier than usual, it was better than the weather in Michigan or New York. Bernice, a current UCLA student who had just returned from studying abroad in South Africa, was the last to arrive before we started having dinner. As we ate, Elisa arrived in time to still enjoy some good Pakistani food. Chris, Bryant and Tad were too late.

There were a lot of questions, like “what’s new?” and “how’s school/work?” The evening was good, except for when Kei asked me if I had spoken to Ome lately. Something inside me flip flopped. It was the first time someone with no idea about the situation brought up her name. I think Kei got the sense that she shouldn’t ask any other questions. “But weren’t you two roommates?” She let it drop after I shook my head and simply said no. I looked away quickly to Arshad so that Kei would not notice me blinking back tears. Arshad and Rose are the only ones who know why such a question would affect me like that.

It was a good reunion, but there were way too many people missing. Ome was one of them.