The Magician and The Dreamer

OHIO WESLEYAN GRADUATE ACCUSED OF STALKING PROFESSOR

Friday, January 19, 2001

NEWS 02D

By Robert Ruth

Dispatch Staff Reporter

A 25-year-old Ohio Wesleyan University graduate is charged with using the Internet to stalk her former professor, who is more than twice her age and with whom she once had a sexual affair.

Erum Ahmed, a native of Pakistan, was arrested Tuesday night in a motel room after trying to confront Conrad A. Kent, 58, outside his Delaware home.

Ahmed had flown to the United States the previous day from Karachi, Pakistan, according to testimony yesterday in U.S. District Court in Columbus.

At the end of the two-hour hearing, Magistrate Terence P. Kemp ordered Ahmed held in the Franklin County jail without bail. She is charged with one count each of using interstate communications to threaten someone and traveling across state lines to threaten someone.

Kent, who has been married for 34 years, is an award-winning professor of modern foreign languages and humanities at Ohio Wesleyan. Ohio Wesleyan Provost William Louthan yesterday described Kent as ``widely recognized as one (of) our best professors. He has been a spectacular professor here for a quarter-century.``

The university does not have a policy that bars sexual relations between students and faculty members, Louthan said. But any professor who engages in such conduct could be subject to sexual harassment allegations, he added.

No such complaint has been filed against Kent, he said.

Ahmed, dressed in a green jail uniform, glared at Kent as she was escorted in handcuffs into the courtroom yesterday. Kent did not look at her.

He testified that he and Ahmed met in spring 1998 when she took one of his classes and began an off-and-on sexual affair in August of that year. While he never promised to marry her, he told her he loved her.

In March 1999, Ahmed allegedly phoned Kent`s wife anonymously and accused him of having an affair with one of his students.

Kent said he broke off the affair May 14, 1999, the day Ahmed was leaving for Pakistan.

``She came to my office and I said, `Goodbye,` `` he said. ``I wanted to end the relationship. She did not accept that.``

Despite the breakup, the one-time lovers corresponded through e-mail. Some of Kent`s messages to Ahmed were ``of a sexual nature,`` he said.

Ahmed`s e-mails and phone calls took on a negative tone, he said. ``Her tenor was desperate,`` Kent testified.

In July 1999, Ahmed allegedly sent e- mails to Ohio Wesleyan officials accusing Kent of raping her three times. He then informed university officials that he was being stalked.

Additional e-mails from Ahmed urged Kent to convert to Islam and to marry her. She allegedly threatened to return to the United States, injure him and burn down his house if he rejected her pleas.

``Are you going to be a Muslim? Are you going to marry me?`` one message read. ``If I hear even one word of disagreement from you, I shall fight you until I die . . . expose you to the police. (I will) take off your glasses and break them, hit you, slap you and beat you.``

Kent testified that he was terrified of Ahmed and that in a long-distance phone conversation earlier this month told her, ``Please don`t hurt me.``

FBI agent Kevin Horan at yesterday`s hearing estimated that Ahmed is about 5 feet 2 and 110 pounds and that Kent is about 5 feet 10 and more than 200 pounds.

Horan said Kent alerted him earlier this month that Ahmed might soon return to the United States and confront him. Kent said that Tuesday night, as a colleague was driving him home, he saw Ahmed knocking on his front door.

His colleague drove him to a pay phone so he could call police, Kent said.

Kent`s wife, who was home alone, did not answer the door. Ahmed left before police arrived, but was arrested at a nearby motel.

Kemp yesterday said he would consider releasing Ahmed from jail if arrangements could be made to have her stay at a halfway house or with friends.

Ahmed did not testify yesterday, but as she was being led out of the courtroom she told a Dispatch reporter, ``I want to get back to Pakistan. I hate this country. He`s not a good guy at all. I don`t want to marry him anymore.``

Kent declined to comment after the hearing.

According to Ohio Wesleyan`s Web site, Kent received a bachelor`s degree from the University of the Americas in Mexico City and master and doctorate degrees in Spanish from Harvard University. Before joining Ohio Wesleyan`s faculty in 1976, he taught four years at Harvard and seven years at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Kent has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, held research fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institute. In 1993, he received the Bishop Herbert Meritorious Teaching Award at Ohio Wesleyan.

bruth@dispatch.com

ouch, toothache.

rizvi

Love is addictive and the hope is the last resort. I think the hope was invoked when the dreamer met the magician the very first time. But it was only the desperation, later, that brought with it the revelation.

``itni si hay meri mohabbat ki daastaan
aik shakhs tha jo dard-e-judai day gaya``

Dear Zeejah:

Once again you have done it. But the pain of revelation, that came with the reading of ``The Puppet``, will always remain unparalleled. Very well penned; especially liked the following weave:

``Gently lifting it she saw it was Hope. The Magician had left Hope to keep her company. Hope is always the last to leave a Dreamer, for all dreams are woven on Hope`s loom.``

Hmm another one to add to your looonnng list of articles on chowk .I wanna ask you interactors ...dontcha think Zeejah deserves some permanent column like hoodbhoy ?I mean look at her list of articles ..,it`s huge ! and all fo em are immensely readable !Oh yeah great article again ..left me with this eerie feeling at the end though ..

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view this users filtered interacts

Zeejah !

That was just B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L- !! Felt like it was me ... i have a tendency to drift away too... only to be woken by the alarm clock !Darn it !

yes dreams can be so real .. so many of them stay with us .....

Thanks for such a simple, yet truthful piece!

sa:)

Zeenat:

...enjoyed it the first time i read it...and now again...you are quite a magician yourself...weaving this allegory with words:)

...without Hope what good is an existence...any existence?

...and sadly there are places here where even dreaming, hoping is equated with sin...and yet others never fail to remind us we are born free...

love,

t