In the cold, twilight days of 2008, inside the University of Michigan’s fortress-like Fleming Administration Building, one student received a particularly glowing farewell.
Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university at the time, organized a ceremony for the last Rhodes Scholar to attend Oxford University: Abdul El-Sayed. “There is no doubt among anyone who crosses his path that he will achieve everything he does and much more,” she told a room full of university leaders, calling the medical doctoral student “the embodiment of engaged intellect.”
She even recalled Bill Clinton’s response to a speech El-Sayed gave in 2007, with the former US president saying: “I wish every person in the world could have heard you speak today.” »
For those who encountered El-Sayed a few months later, in the fall of 2009, when he finally crossed the Atlantic, these words of praise rang true. “He always seemed very motivated,” says Elias Rothblatt, who played lacrosse alongside the Michigan senator-elect more than 15 years ago. El-Sayed was captain of the Oxford lacrosse team and student journalists described him at the time as a “defensive master” at the sport.
Rothblatt, 36, who works in fintech, says El-Sayed was a “very fierce competitor” on the field and a “wonderful” captain. “He had a great sense of humor. He found a really good mix of being friendly with other people on the team, but also setting the tone and helping lead the team and keeping things going, staying serious.”
Off the field, Rothblatt said, El-Sayed was just as “fun and friendly.” He said: “It was always a pleasure to meet him. He was with his wife sometimes and she was wonderful too.” El-Sayed also had a fixation on a decidedly British sandwich: coronation chicken. Speaking to The Times, Ricardo Chasebi, owner of a now-closed cafe in Oxford’s indoor market, recalled El-Sayed’s order as a grilled ciabatta filled with Coronation chicken, cheddar, peppers and red onion, topped with lettuce and tomatoes.
He eventually put El-Sayed’s version on the menu, naming it “the Abdul.” The future senator loved Chasebi’s sandwiches so much that he would call ahead from the airport and say, “I’ll be in Oxford in two hours, don’t close until I get there.” El-Sayed even gave Chasebi a copy of his doctoral thesis, in which he thanked the cafe owner for “feeding my stomach and my soul.”
Rothblatt tried the Abdul sandwich. “That’s good,” he said. El-Sayed also had a fondness for Nando’s, holding meetings there with his fellow Rhodes academics.
Although he eventually settled into life in Oxford, things did not start off smoothly for El-Sayed. He did not enjoy his course at first and returned to Michigan two weeks before the end of his first term. And based on a recent outburst, where he told a Sky News reporter: “You know how many votes I want to get in the UK? Zero”, you might assume he was, at best, apathetic about his time in Britain. But that’s not the case. In his memoir, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, El-Sayed wrote: “My classmates at Oxford taught me more than I could learn in any classroom. » And in several articles El-Sayed wrote for the Guardian, he expressed his appreciation for Britain and, in particular, its political system.
In an article declaring that British democracy had the “upper hand” over the United States, El-Sayed expressed fear over parliamentary elections in Tower Hamlets, east London, ahead of the 2010 general election, where all candidates were of Bengali origin, reflecting the demographics of the area. He said: “As an Arab-American, the likelihood of ever having the opportunity to vote for an Arab-American candidate for national office in my lifetime is minimal. »
But this week, he had the opportunity, since he was able to vote himself. He was joined by more than 2.5 million others who followed suit and elected El-Sayed as the country’s first Muslim senator.
Rothblatt is “very excited” to see what El-Sayed will do in the Senate. “I think he’s going to do a fantastic job. At the time, he was a talented, ambitious person who had really good ideas about what he wanted to do in the world. Today, he continues to bring them to life,” he says.
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