Obama can cook qeema and daal

WASHINGTON: United States Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama told Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani when they met on 29 July, “I will probably be the only US president who can cook qeema and daal.”

Obama has not only had Pakistani friends, but he has also visited Pakistan and spent some days staying with one of them in Sindh.

One of his friends, Imad Husain, now a Boston banker, was his roommate at Occidental College in California when they were both freshmen. Another, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, with whom he was quite close at about the same time, is now a financial consultant in New York.

Yet another, Wahid Hamid, was the one Obama travelled to meet in Karachi after graduation, but stayed with Chandoo’s family. Hamid is a senior company executive living in New York. Sohale Siddiqi, who is referred to as Sadik in Obama’s book Dreams from my Father, also came from Karachi. He is described as a “short, well-built Pakistani” who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. He was Obama’s roommate when at Columbia University, although he was not a student and in fact ran into trouble because he overstayed his visa.

Obama knew Siddiqi at Occidental. Siddiqi, who now lives in Seattle, has claimed that Obama stopped using drugs when he arrived at Columbia. khalid hasan

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