ABSTRACT
Omar came into my life four years ago through a personal ad he had placed in a freebie San Francisco publication. On the phone, Omar told me that he needed a mentor. He has mentored him well maybe even too well. Following is Omar's saga. Omar was not one for small talk. Five minutes into the visit he told me the bizarre story of his emigration from North Africa to San Francisco. A year after Omar's birth, Dolores left his father and moved to Algeciras, Spain, on the European side of the Strait. There she met an American tourist, Charles Goodwin. Throughout his childhood, he believed himself to be of Basque origin, the son of an ETA underground separatist killed by the Spanish police. His school documents list his birthplace as Bilbao, Spain, a major Basque city. Dolores Goodwin she never bothered to learn much about the people of Omar's fictitious father.
