Via Prague

Islam and I have what you could call a working friendship. We help each other, since we're sort of in the same boat. I first met him at Pavels, the pub in the Vrsovice neighborhood where I hang out a lot. Islam is the cook, and his curry dishes are a refreshing break from all the gulash and dumplings and other staples of the Czech diet. A couple months ago, I got home to the flat I shared with a Czech girl (just a flatmate) and found all our stuff out on the sidewalk. It seems our lease had expired and the owners had promptly got another tenant and changed the locks. The girl apparently had also run up a lot of debt. Anyway, long story short I was out on my ass.
That evening I'd gone to Pavels, feeling a bit lost, to have a beer and get my options together. It was Islam who said, 'No problem, no problem. You stay with me.' And so I moved in. The flat is in the basement of a building across the street from Pavels. I have a bed in the kitchen, a washing machine and a shower that is beautifully boundless in its hot water. Islam was paying 10,000 a month (USD 700) so now I split it, and that's not a bad price for a flat not far from the center of Prague.
'You helping me, I helping you,' Islam said.
His girlfriend Monika is really sweet, an old-fashioned Bohemian woman. She's been in and out of the hospital the past few months for surgeries, but when she is at home I notice when I get home from teaching that my clothes have been ironed and folded and my bed freshly made, and sometimes some little dish laid out. Islam too occasionally will bring home fresh fish from the market and cook up a wonderful spicy dish with rice. He tells me to eat the bones, too. 'Good for calcium,' he says. Actually, it's not half bad, and afterward I notice I do feel better.
Since he's Muslim, Islam doesn't drink alcohol or smoke, which is ironic since he works in a Czech pub, the hub of national life here. Usually when I go there in the evenings he's in back, on his computer to family in Bangladesh, or chatting online with Monika, or following the news, both here and back in Southeast Asia, while at the same time the pots in the little kitchen are boiling away. He also makes fresh sandwiches, which he sticks in a fridge out near the bar. The guys, especially some Ukrainians, like them because they provide good soakage for the beer.
Islam and I talk politics, about life in America and Bangladesh. He was actually a big Hillary supporter ('James, with Hillary you get two good leaders, Hillary and Bill'), but now he's very intrigued with the prospect of Obama.
'So people in America they like Muslims?' he asks.
'They do, they just don't like extremists,' I say.
He nods.
'We don't like them either.'
Islam usually works until the bar shuts down, which can be well after midnight, and comes home and is usually asleep when I get up to teach. For a while he was suffering from pains in his legs (he was recently diagnosed with diabetes) and he can't sleep at night. He went to the doctor's office (after making an appointment) and was told to come back another day. A sad downside of universal health care, you could say. The doctor had already seen her allotted number of patients, so he had to make another appointment. Never mind the pains in his legs. Islam got angry. 'This is not like business meeting,' he told the doctor. 'It is my health. My leg is paining and I am not sleeping. You must be giving me something.' The doctor, apparently put off by his anger, called the police. The police and arrived and Islam explained the situation. In a rare show of intelligence by Czech police, the cops actually sided with Islam, and told the doctor Islam after all had a point. He has health insurance, for which he pays 1,000 crowns per month out of the not-exactly stellar salary he gets at the bar.
Anyway, as I say we're working friends. I've got to renew my visa and he's trying to get the flat owner to sign a paper I need showing I've got a residence. Problem is the owner, like many in Prague, is absentee and almost never around. And I took him to my school yesterday to get his papers translated in Czech that he'll need if he and Monika are to marry. Just having two pages translated cost 1,300 crowns (almost 100 USD). What a racket! But then again, who am I to complain? I'm proofreading a friend's college term papers, about 60 pages, and he's paying me 3,000 crowns. Not bad. If you think I'm raping him, note that with the going rate, he actually should be paying me about 6,000. But he's a friend.