and he doesn't look a thing like jesus

So if you know me at all you know that this past year I wrote my thesis on the Uighurs (an ethnic group in Western China). I had never heard of them before I went to China for study abroad in 2004. Actually, that's not true, I remembered recently that when I took summer Chinese classes at age 17 there was a Chinese culture class where we were always talking about the "Wiggle" region of China; I thought was a bizarre name for a place but figured it made sense because the region was always "wiggling" between Western and Eastern influences...and now of course I sheepishly realize that we must have been talking about the "Uighur" region. but anyways, one dirty summer night in 2004, my very good friend Brenton and I discovered the Uighur band that played at what was then "sanlitun nanjie," the seedy side of the bar street which has since been torn down...*moment of silence*...at the bar Cheers. we stayed until dawn, observing their off-the record jam session in the back of another bar. we went back almost every weekend after that. eventually we began here and there exchanging words with the musicians and i think they at least started to recognize our faces. summer ended and Brenton moved outside the city, so I continued to go with Fall semester folks but much less frequently. We were nearing the end of the program and Olivia and I decided we really wanted to get their CD, so we started asking for it every time we saw them, but they never had any with them. finally the head honcho, Parhat, gave me his number and told me to call him and we would set up a time to meet so he could give me one. Olivia and I met him at Afunti restaurant, and had tea and conversation. We walked around the room discussing the photos on the walls, which were of Xinjiang, where I had recently visited. A conversation about one of them stuck in my mind in particular, and I used it as the opening of my thesis on the Uighurs.
So on Friday night, when I ran into Parhat on the street, I felt sort of funny. I had seen him once a few weeks earlier at a restaurant, but had been glued to my seat out of awkwardness and hadn't had the nerve to approach him. But Friday night when I saw him, I tapped him on the shoulder and identified myself. He was polite but didn't remember me, clearly. Which is understandable. But it was so odd standing there face to face with someone who had in some ways been a very big part of my life since I met him (as the inspiration for and introduction of my senior thesis) who had no idea who I was. To me, he's a big celebrity; my professors and advisors back at UNC have read about him and asked questions about him, I gave him a false name just in case anybody, ever, read my thesis aside from the people who were required to read it (my review board). But to Parhat aka Memet I'm just another white face. the more I think about it, the funnier it is. If he only knew! he would think I was such a creeper, esp since he doesn't seem to remember any of the interaction between us ever even happening. he's a star among 1/5 of the Anthropology faculty and '06 majors at UNC and he has no idea.