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From the Boston Globe and PRX, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
We've heard a lot of stories this season about how and where people find help as they try to make sense of relationships themselves and the world.
One thing I love about these narratives is that the assistance often came from unexpected places like exes, pro athletes animals, even the government.
For today's story, we're going to interpret the help theme in a slightly different way.
I'm going to introduce you to two people who forged a bond over a shared interest in helping others.
Two people who, on the surface, appeared to have little in common.
Two people who grew up some 5000 miles apart, in completely different cultures, and found one another in a most unlikely way.
Two people named Kate and Rami.
Kate and Rami are in their mid-30s.
They live on a quiet, wooded street in northern Rhode Island.
At their request, we're using only their first names to protect their privacy.
They both work for non-profit organizations.
For the purposes of this story, one of the organizations is especially important.
It's called Adesia.
It's a Rhode Island-based NGO that's helped millions of children around the world avoid starvation and malnutrition.
We'll come back to Adesia later on because it's a pretty major character in the story.
For now, just remember the name.
I want to tell you about Kate and Rami and where they come from.
I'll start with Kate, who was born in Rhode Island and spent most of her early life and young adult years there.
I grew up in a suburb in North Providence, so middle class.
We had Sunday dinners.
I was Italian-American, mostly Italian-American, so there was always a gravy on the stove on Sunday.
Holidays were really big, like Easter, Christmas. like literal weeks of preparing for those.
Kate says her childhood was pretty family-oriented and pretty conventional.
When she imagined her future romantic life, she figured she'd find somebody to marry and start a family.
It was just sort of, this is what you do.
You go to school, you get married, you have kids kind of thing.
And so I didn't even think that there was something beyond that.
During her senior year of high school, Kate gets her first real taste of how vast and varied the world is, a taste of all the opportunities that lay beyond Rhode Island.
One day she's talking with her neighbor, a woman named Kat, about what she should do for her senior project.
Kat, whose husband is Guatemalan, suggests that Kate go abroad on a service trip and write about it.
And I'm like, where am I going to go?
I don't, like, I've never, I didn't have a passport at the time.
I was like 17, 18.
With Kat's help, Kate gets her passport and arranges to spend two weeks in Ecuador.
I was connected with an orphanage in the capital in Quito, and I just kind of took it all in.
I did some traveling around the country and just kind of, you know, I did my project and my serve time and then came home and wrote my senior project.
And they say you get bitten with a travel bug, and it's totally that.
While all of this is happening, Rami is growing up in Idlib, a city in northwest Syria, not far from the Turkish border.
He's the oldest of five siblings, four boys and a girl altogether.
Rami says that his home life revolved around family too.
Usually when we had holidays, they were really big.
We used to have like big feasts, get together as a family and celebrate.
One of the biggest gatherings always came on Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, the sacred month of fasting and worship observed by Muslims.
Rami's father traveled a lot for work, so his mother ran the household.
I used to watch my mom cooking when I was young.
I was very curious of what the ingredients she puts and she actually taught us, like how to do everything.
What was your favorite dish at home growing up that your mom would make?
There is, like, one dish that I really enjoy.
It's called makloubi.
Basically, it's translated to a flipped dish.
So basically, you make the rice and it has like eggplant in it and some meat and nuts.
So it's cooked all together in one pan.
And then you flip the pan over and then it comes all as one piece.
And then obviously it's served to everyone.
In Rami's family, education was a big deal.
As a boy, he attended a private school where he was able to learn English.
This turns out to be an important skill for reasons we'll get to.
Rami goes on to study agricultural engineering at the University of Aleppo in Aleppo, Syria.
I didn't even think I'm going to leave the country and start a life somewhere else.
I dated someone not from my city.
She was from Aleppo.
I never thought that I would get married from someone not Syrian.
When it comes time for Kate to go to college, she comes up to Boston to attend Suffolk University.
Her experience in Ecuador... had ignited a keen interest in Latin America.
In my early adulthood my eyes started to be open to sort of beyond my small world and my state and kind of things around me, to more you know what's out there in the world, global issues, things like that.
Through my bachelor's, I traveled a lot.
I went to Guatemala, El Salvador.
I lived in Costa Rica.
I traveled a lot in Central America and South America.
Kate graduates with a double major in history, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
And when I graduated I knew I wanted to do something working to like help people and somehow make an impact in that region.
This is when Kate gets a job at Edesia, the Rhode Island-based nonprofit that I mentioned earlier.
Edesia was founded in 2009 by a woman named Navin Salem.
Adesia makes this special peanut paste that's distributed to severely malnourished children in the poorest corners of the world.
Depending on the formula and kind of depending on where it's being sent, it could be completely life-saving, like reverse malnutrition, or it could be preventative in a sense.
Just be an extra dose of sort of like fats and nutrients and vitamins to those who are food insecure and are at risk for malnutrition.
Adesia fed nearly 5 million children in 2023.
The organization says it can now double that to 10 million children a year, thanks to a recent 137 million grant from the family of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
For Kate, a first job out of college at this mission-driven organization seems just right.
She starts working there in 2013.
When Rami finishes his undergraduate degree at the University of Aleppo, he decides to stay at the school to pursue a master's in food microbiology.
One day in 2014, Rami is on a bus from Aleppo back to Idlib to see his parents for the weekend.
He's 25 years old and only a few courses short of his degree.
It was in June when I took the ride.
It was a normal day.
It was a bus that had other students as well.
Syria in 2014 is being torn apart by civil war, with some 3 million people displaced from their homes.
Aleppo is a major flashpoint.
The terrorist organization ISIS is battling government forces and other rebel groups for control of the area.
Here on the streets of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, evidence of the civil war's toll can be seen everywhere.
The Shah neighborhood of Aleppo under heavy government fire.
As Rami's bus is headed to Idlib, it gets stopped by an ISIS militia.
They're recruiting young men for the cause.
Young men like Rami.
And by recruiting, I mean, you don't really have a choice.
The militia demands everyone's identification.
They're pulling men off the bus.
They start to take Rami away too.
It's a moment of pure terror.
Rami has to think fast.
As he's being led away, he turns to the armed militia member walking behind him.
I made up this story of like, I'm the only child that my mother has.
And I work in Aleppo and I come back to Idlib to basically provide for her.
I could go back home and give her what she needs and then come and join you guys.
I had like a million thoughts in my head.
I was very afraid, very scared for my life.
I didn't know what's going to come or who's this person I'm talking to.
Is he really going to believe me or what's going to happen?
It was like, A split-second decision that, like, that's what I'm going to say.
If they let me go, fine.
If they don't let me go, I tried.
ISIS buys Rami's story.
They let him go, but on the condition that he has to come back and enlist in the next few days.
They basically made it clear that, like, we know who you are, we can get to you.
I'm like, yeah, you can.
When Rami finally makes it home to his parents, he tells them the whole story.
There's only one thing to do.
We decided as a family that I can't go back to school.
I can't take that ride again.
And then I needed to leave the country.
Over the next couple of days, Rami and his family devise a plan for him to cross the border into Turkey.
So my dad said, okay, well, your brother is already in Turkey.
Just go there and then we'll decide what needs to happen after.
So I packed my stuff.
My dad put me in a car and we both drove to the Turkish border.
And I crossed and he stayed.
He went back home.
Did you have to worry about your parents' safety at that point?
Yes and no.
I mean, yes, because they could reach where they need to reach.
But also, no, because at the time...
Idlib had like different groups of armed militias that some of them were good.
Some of them were really terrible, similar to these people.
So like it was like a really hot mess situation of multiple groups.
And we did not get involved in anything, not with the government stuff, not with the ISIS stuff.
So I was concerned.
But my dad said, like, you don't have to worry about us.
Like, get yourself out of the country and we'll figure it out.
Rami meets up with his younger brother in Turkey.
They take a 13-hour bus ride to the capital Ankara, where Rami makes an appointment at the US embassy.
The idea is that Rami will apply for a visitor visa to the US, where his father has a friend.
When it's time for his appointment, Rami is asked if he wants to do his visa interview in English or Arabic.
He's more comfortable in Arabic, but he figures he'll have a better chance of getting approved if he does the interview in English.
The whole interview was like probably five, six minutes.
He said, okay, leave your passport and we'll send it to you.
I'm like, what do you mean?
Did I get the visa?
And he said, yes.
I'm like, so you're going to send it to me?
And he said, yes.
I'm like, okay.
And he said, you're all set.
And then I just like stood there for like probably 15 seconds trying to understand, like okay well, is he saying yeah?
Am I understanding exactly?
Rami and his brother go back to the hotel they're staying in.
Rami's seen other visa applicants get rejected that day.
So he has a hard time believing his visa is real.
I did not really believe it until I got the UPS package and it had my passport in it.
I opened it and I had the visa to come to the States.
And at that point, was there a plan of like where you were going?
No, no, no.
There was no plan.
It was like in my head, it's like a step by step.
We'll figure things out as they come.
So Rami and his brother return to the Turkish-Syrian border.
His father meets them there with Rami's belongings and some money.
His father books Rami a flight, and they go to a restaurant for one last meal together.
For Rami, this moment with his father and his brother is a heavy one.
He's leaving behind his country, his family, and the only life he's ever known.
I said bye to both of them, and I honestly didn't know when I'm going to see them again.
It was really hard to leave and leave everything behind, but we had to do it.
Rami flies to Los Angeles, where he stays with a family friend for a couple of weeks.
He quickly realizes though, that he'll soon run out of money, and he's on a visitor visa which prevents him from legally working.
His college degree, his graduate training, it doesn't count for anything right now.
So Rami's dad calls another friend, a guy in Rhode Island, and asks him do you know anyone who could help my son?
And the guy says, actually, I own a convenience store and I'm looking for someone to help me out.
The man offers to give Rami room and board in exchange for Rami working at the store.
And I'm like, great.
That's actually awesome.
So he connected me with him.
I called him.
He said, book a flight and come to Rhode Island.
Rami arrives in Rhode Island in late July of 2014.
I didn't even know where Rhode Island is.
I honestly, it was just...
I didn't even know like I mean back when I was in Syria.
Okay well, there is New York, there is LA.
I didn't even think that I will, it never crossed my mind that I would come to the States.
When Rami lands in Rhode Island, it puts him within shouting distance of Kate, who is still working at Edesia at this point, but they occupy entirely different worlds.
Kate is thinking hard about her next move where to go to graduate school, what to study, how to pursue her interest in the world and in helping other people.
Rami is eking out an existence in this small state he'd barely heard of.
He's grateful for the convenience store gig and for this man who took him in, a man he'll come to see as an uncle.
But only weeks earlier, back home, he'd been a master's student in microbiology.
What does this new life hold for Rami?
He has no idea.
The story continues. after this short break.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, we're back.
So, before we've returned to Rami and Kate, I feel the need to tell you about Rhode Island for a minute.
I spent two years as a reporter at the Providence Journal.
I wrote about small towns.
I covered municipal meetings.
Everything looked a lot like the show Parks and Recreation.
These experiences taught me that Rhode Island is a funny place, that it's insular and tiny, literally like it does not take long to drive across the whole state.
But it's also proud. and it's full of huge personalities, especially around Providence.
I'm thinking about all of this because I'm trying to put myself in Rami's shoes.
Here's a guy who, having talked his way out of being an ISIS conscript in Syria, ends up behind the counter of a convenience store in Rhode Island.
Of all places.
I wonder if he felt like everyone in his new home was speaking in secret code, because everyone already knows each other.
I wonder if anyone turned him on to coffee milk, a Rhode Island delicacy.
It's basically coffee-flavored sugar water.
Highly recommend.
Anyway, just as Rami is trying to get his bearings in Rhode Island, Kate is making plans to leave.
She wants to get a master's degree, but she's leery of taking on debt.
She starts exploring cheaper international options and finds a program she likes in Barcelona.
Kate begins her master's program there in immigration studies in 2015.
She gets a full scholarship from Rotary International, a group she'd been involved with since she was 18.
I'm studying immigration and migration in Europe and a huge topic of what we're studying is forced migration and Syria is sort of the center point for all of the study and all of that.
Kate finds herself more and more interested in the Syrian refugee crisis.
By this point, The civil war has created more than 4 million Syrian refugees, according to UN figures.
You might remember the awful photo from 2015 that brought the crisis home to so many people around the world.
It showed the body of a two-year-old Syrian child, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey.
Kate graduates from her master's program in 2016.
She's learning Arabic, looking for jobs.
That's when she gets an opportunity to work for a small non-profit helping displace syrians at a refugee camp in lebanon.
She moves there later that year.
It was a originally a palestinian refugee camp settled after the state of israel, so it was a very established refugee camp and and that it was a city five, six story high structures buildings, you know, network of schools and all of that.
So Syrians had now moved in.
I need to rewind a little bit to bring us up to date on Rami's story.
After he arrives in Rhode Island in 2014, Rami applies for political asylum in the United States.
Under U.S. immigration rules, he has to wait at least 180 days before he can legally work.
So he bides his time and helps run the convenience store for his uncle.
And during this time I wanted to be ready for when I get my work authorization card so I can like find a different job, because I felt like okay well, working in the store is great, but that's not where I belong.
I don't want to do this.
Rami is also trying to get his family in the Middle East to safer ground.
His brother in Turkey eventually makes it to the UK.
A second brother makes it out of Syria to Germany.
Everybody else in Rami's immediate family, including his parents and two youngest siblings, decide to try for Canada, where Rami has an aunt.
But first they have to go to Lebanon, where they can apply for Canadian resettlement.
In Rhode Island, after Rami gets the okay to work, he starts applying for jobs.
He gets a call from a recruiter about an open position in the quality department of this nonprofit.
That nonprofit is Adesia.
After a couple of interviews, Rami lands the job.
He starts in August of 2015, just weeks after Kate had left the organization.
So in December of 2016, Rami is working at Adesia and starting to make a life in the United States.
Kate is working in Lebanon, but it's only a three-month gig.
She's trying to figure out if she'll stay in the Middle East, return to Spain or do something else entirely.
Their mutual friend Nicole, who also works at Adesia, says to Kate Listen, you're in Lebanon working with Syrian refugees.
Let me connect you with my colleague Rami, whose family is there.
Rami and Kate start texting each other on WhatsApp.
They arrange for Kate to visit Rami's family in Lebanon for a weekend.
For Kate.
It seems like a way to bridge this gap between Rami and his family, to be a point of connection.
Plus through her involvement with Rotary International.
Kate is an old pro at staying with perfect strangers in random cities.
So she doesn't think twice about visiting this family she doesn't know.
That's how you learn the culture and the life of where you are.
It sounds really wild to some people.
And my boss at the time was like, you don't know these people.
Give us your address.
They're trying to call people in Syria to vouch for this family name.
I just called my parents and said hey mom, there is this girl that used to work at Edesia and she's coming to visit you.
Just the fact that she's coming from me was enough for my parents to host her like, open their house for her and take care of her, but I honestly didn't even know who she is.
Rami tells his parents that Kate's living situation in the refugee camp is pretty rustic.
And I was like, oh, where are they?
Where are they staying?
And he told me this neighborhood and I looked it up and I was like wait a second, that's a really nice neighborhood.
And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, they have a regular house and da-da-da.
And so, leading up to my trip, it turned into, like this great opportunity to meet other people, to also like oh man, I get a home cooked meal and a hot shower because I didn't have hot showers.
I agreed to spend the weekend.
And I remember the first thing, like Rami was telling them how, like I didn't have water and power, go in and out.
And so they were like appalled.
And then one of the first things that they did was like direct me to the bathroom.
They were like, take this hot shower.
And I was like, thank you so much.
And it was just like... Kate's Arabic at this point is still limited.
So the conversation with Rami's family is pretty choppy.
But that turns out not to matter so much.
When you can't physically communicate with someone, I really think their humanity comes through in their personality.
And that's when I was like, these people are really good.
They're huggers, and they smile, and they laugh, and they're trying, and I'm trying.
And I used to sit with his grandmother...
She'd pat on the couch and she'd sit me down and, like she didn't speak any English, but she'd hold my hand and she'd in, one hand would be my hand and the other hand would be the prayer beads.
And she would just like kiss me and hug me.
It was just like a feeling of being home.
And I had been out of my country for like two years at that point almost.
And I hadn't had that.
After that first weekend, Kate returns to Rami's family for more visits.
It's been two and a half years since Rami has seen them.
Kate becomes a proxy for Rami.
His family couldn't be with him.
It wasn't their decision.
It was out of their hands.
It was undetermined when they would ever physically hug or embrace or see each other again.
I was like this representative of him.
I was like a physical... connection.
So I was a stranger.
I was a stranger for him.
I was a stranger for his family.
But like, I came from the place that he was in.
I knew the roads he took to get to work.
I knew the people he worked with.
And for some reason, like through me, it was like, okay, he's okay.
Another thing is happening too.
The more Kate and Rami talk, the more they're falling for each other.
It only takes a few weeks before they're both hooked.
They're talking all the time, sometimes so late into the night that the sun comes up for Kate in Lebanon.
They do video chats when the reception is strong enough.
We continued to talk, and she went for multiple other visits to my parents, and I liked her.
Were they like, you should date this person?
I mean, I don't think, no, that didn't happen.
They were just staying out of it.
But I think my sister spoke very highly of her.
So that was enough for me.
So like we started dating through WhatsApp.
Wait, who brought up like what if we're, what if this is something more?
Who brought that up first?
I think I did probably.
Yeah.
Though Kate is working in Lebanon, she still has this whole life in Spain from grad school.
She's got her apartment, her stuff, her friends.
She has no plans to return to the U.S.
But Rami can't leave the U.S. because of his immigration status.
And Kate, is pretty into Rami.
Rami is a very, like, he's, I'm black and white, but he's very black and white.
He's like, all right, if we're going to be together, like, this is the thing.
We're not going to be thousands of miles away and you're not going to be going off in La La Land and putting yourself in danger and here and there, like being transient.
Like, we got to figure out, like, what are we doing, right?
And you're talking about this having... at this point, never really met in person.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
He could have been a psychopath and I could have been a nightmare for him, right?
Both of you could be terrible kissers.
You have no idea.
Okay.
This thing that's developing with Rami presents a conundrum for Kate.
She had worked so hard to build a life abroad to see the world.
To satisfy that travel bug she'd caught on her high school trip to Ecuador.
What would it mean if she came back?
Would it be giving up?
But, I think at the time, I was also pretty homesick.
And because I didn't have anything solidified about what life was going to look like after Lebanon, I was like, let me just go home.
All my stuff is still in Spain.
Worst case scenario, I book a flight and I go home to Spain.
Let me just go home and see what happens.
Kate arrives back in Rhode Island in February of 2017.
I came home and he's like, I'm going to pick you up at the airport.
And I'm like, no, you're not.
And so he was like, all right.
And then the next morning he showed up at the door.
For Kate and Rami's first date, their options are pretty limited.
Because while she'd been away, Kate's parents had moved to a rural part of Rhode Island.
They're like a half an hour to Providence, like the city where, like you know, restaurants and stuff are.
And I was like, that's going to be a weird first car ride.
What if he kills me?
Like, I still don't know him.
I'm like, let's just go somewhere close.
So we went to like a Chipotle as our first date, which is so lame.
And I don't want to tell my kid that.
But like, we went to a Chipotle, which was like maybe 12 minutes, 15 minutes away.
He said Chipotle.
And in my head, I'm like, Chipotle?
Like, it's our first date.
And she's like, no, no, I just want to go there.
I'm like, maybe she likes it.
I don't know.
I had never tried Chipotle before and it was my first time.
I don't like fast food.
I don't like these meals and stuff, but I went with it.
These early weeks together unfold like a dream.
We were like, like teenagers.
We were like so, we were just young love.
I look back, we would, like we literally, like beyond Chipotle, we would like hang out at the mall.
Like we were just, hangout places.
And I think too, like Rami, he was so fixated in the first, maybe year of being in the US on like working from sunup to sundown.
Like he had never gone to restaurants.
He had never gone to the mall.
He didn't, like he just had a mission.
For Kate.
She's trying to reacquaint herself with this place she'd known so well but had been away from for two years.
We both knew I was home because we liked each other and it was serious and we wanted to make it work.
And see, we got an apartment together pretty quickly like it was whirlwind.
Kate wanted us to get married, probably after a couple months.
I was like no, this has to happen in very specific sequence or order.
We get you a car, we you get a job, then we get an apartment, and then we get engaged, we get married, and then that's how it needs to happen.
That was the order.
She hated me for it because I'm like well, it needs to happen in a really specific way.
So like it's the appropriate way.
Rami eventually buys an engagement ring and makes a plan to propose.
She already told me, I'll kill you if you propose to me in a restaurant.
So she likes books and she studied history.
So I'm like, OK, great.
A library is a good place.
Rami chooses the Providence Athenaeum, a gorgeous private library near the Brown University campus.
I called my mother-in-law and I'm like, we're going to have to make up a story so you can take her.
So my mother-in-law came up with the idea that she's doing a fundraising and she's looking into areas.
So she takes her and go to the library.
And Kate was like, do you want to come with us?
I'm like, no, no, I don't like libraries.
It was like the dumbest excuse.
But I knew what was going on.
She was like, what do you mean you don't like libraries?
I'm like, I don't know, whatever.
I don't feel like going.
And then I was waiting there.
We had organized it with the library staff.
Then she came in.
I think she was surprised and not surprised because she always says, like, I can't hide anything.
She'll know immediately.
And then she comes in and I proposed to her and it worked out.
They get engaged in March of 2018. and married that May at a mosque up in Boston.
In the years ahead, a number of milestones follow.
Rami's family makes it to Canada.
He reunites with them in 2019 after more than five years apart.
He still hasn't seen his brother in the UK after 10 years.
He hopes they'll finally get together this year.
In 2020, Rami fulfills his long-deferred dream of getting his master's.
He graduates from Northeastern University with a degree in regulatory affairs.
I brought this with me to the States and it was always on my mind, every day when I was at the store working.
I'm like, I need to finish what I started.
Kate and Rami have a daughter in 2022.
She's now an active two-year-old who loves to cook in her play kitchen in the living room.
Last year, Rami became a U.S. citizen.
I asked Kate how she got her head around this idea of being back in Rhode Island and raising a family.
She recalled seeking the counsel of a close friend.
Once you leave a place and once you see the world differently, it's really hard to reinsert yourself back in sort of that narrow-minded kind of small you know.
Put yourself back in that box.
And She gave me really great advice.
And she's like say you fall head over heels for him and you end up married and you end up in Rhode Island right for the rest of your life raising kids right down the street from your family.
She's like, you're not going home the way that you left it.
That advice turned out to be exactly right.
Kate and Rami speak Arabic in their multi-faith household.
They listen to Middle Eastern love ballads.
When we visited their house, they had just taken down their Ramadan decorations.
They shared with us these amazing date-filled mamoul cookies that Rami's mother had made and shipped to them.
And so yeah, like I'm home where I grew up, but it's very different from where I grew up.
It is the best of both worlds, where it's like I was so afraid of being like bored or feeling trapped, or feeling so stagnant, but it's just, it's different now.
You know, it's richer and feels different.
Thank you so much for sharing your story.
This is So romantic.
Thank you.
It's a good reminder as our anniversary is approaching.
Thank you for taking the time to share our story and talk to us.
We appreciate it.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe and PRX.
Today's episode was produced by Jesse Remedios and Scott Hellman.
Ned Porter does our audio mixing, sound design and mastering.
Maddie Mortel does our audience engagement.
Special thanks to Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column and I love to address letters on here.
So send a letter about your problem to lovelettersatboston.com.
Find episode transcripts and more Love Letters content at lovelettersshow your bathroom one more time.
I'm having so much beverages.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
