Max Whittaker/Prime for The Wall Street Journal ; WireImage
阿卜杜拉法塔赫•詹达利（左）与亲生儿子史蒂夫•乔布斯取得了联系，但从未谋面。
过
去一年里，阿卜杜拉法塔赫•詹达利(Abdulfattah "John" Jandali)会定期给自己从未谋面的儿子史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)发封电子邮件。电子邮件都很简短：“生日快乐”或“祝早日康复”。 相关报道
不清楚乔布斯是否回过信。乔布斯家的一位朋友说，没有，他没有回过信。不过，詹达利说，他收到过两封简短的回信。
詹达利说，最后一封信是在乔布斯去世前六周收到的，信中只是说，谢谢。
对詹达利来说，除他用的iPhone 4手机外，这些电子邮件几乎就是他与参与创建了苹果公司(Apple Inc.)、并成为全球最知名商业人士之一的儿子之间唯一的联系。
詹达利现年80岁，在内华达州里诺市(Reno)郊外荒山中的Boomtown赌场担任总经理，管理着约450名赌场工作人员，他因安静的领导风格和精通营销而受到了同事们的称赞。上周五，他在巡视赌场时，一名员工拦住他，感谢他装上了5美元的老虎机。詹达利和这名员工握了手，然后在赌场中的中国面馆里坐下来，和往常一样吃了份三文鱼特价餐。
詹达利说，我不能把我孩子们的成就当做自己的功劳。知名作家莫娜•辛普森(Mona Simpson)也是他的孩子。乔布斯还是婴儿的时候就被人领养了。詹达利说，他几乎与乔布斯没有联系，和辛普森的关系也很紧张。
詹达利的密友说，他与孩子们之间的疏离多年来一直让他很伤心。他甚至没有向最亲密的朋友透露过自己是乔布斯和辛普森亲生父亲的事实，因为他担心大家会认为他想借孩子们的光。
WireImage/Getty Images
乔布斯的妹妹莫娜•辛普森
乔布斯最近健康状况的恶化吸引了人们对詹达利的关注。他说，这样的关注令他感到不自在。詹达利同意在赌场的面馆中接受采访，但他说自己的故事可能不够有意思，不值得记者专门来采访他。
詹达利眼角满是皱纹、已经谢顶，剩下的头发也已全白。他的相貌与乔布斯很像。在他办公室里一张靠 的桌子上，醒目地摆放着一一幅镶有相框的辛普森宣传照。詹达利说，这张照片是他从网上下载的。
他说，自己是周三在办公室得知乔布斯去世的消息的，当时一个陌生人打电话给他表示慰问。他很快就挂了电话。
詹达利说，我并不感到震惊，我感到的只有难过。
詹达利直到2005年左右才得知乔布斯是他的亲生儿子。他不记得自己是如何听说此事的，但他说这个消息是“一个重大冲击”。
在那之后，詹达利开始在网上观看乔布斯在苹果新品发布会上所做的那些著名的主旨发言。在得知乔布斯的健康状况不断恶化之后，他在过去几年中曾给乔布斯发过几封电子邮件。
詹达利说，我不知道自己为何要写那些电子邮件。我猜大概是因为当我听说他的健康状况时我的感觉糟透了。我和他都有各自的生活，我们俩此前也没有联系。如果我和他交谈，我真不知道要和他说什么。
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
图片：乔布斯的这些年
詹达利说，跟我年轻时一模一样。
詹达利说，上周他还通读了乔布斯2005年在斯坦福大学（Stanford University）的演讲稿。在这次演讲中，乔布斯反思了生与死，也讲述了自己被收养的故事。他在演讲中说道，我的生母是一位年轻的未婚大学毕业生，她非常坚定地认为我应该被大学毕业生收养。
乔布斯1955年生于旧金山。他在演讲中说，事实上他的生母最终同意他被保罗•乔布斯（Paul Jobs，高中辍学，后成为一名机械师）和克拉拉•乔布斯（Clara Jobs，一名大学肄业生）夫妇收养。乔布斯在旧金山附近长大。虽然乔布斯承认他与生母和妹妹保持联系，但他却没有公开讨论过父亲詹达利。
了解詹达利的人说，他和乔布斯一样有过人的智力以及理解消费者需求的本能，只不过二人所处的行业不同。不过，和喜欢用新产品吸引人群的“推销员”乔布斯不同的是，詹达利和其他人说，他更喜欢待在幕后。
Pinnacle Entertainment Inc.的首席执行长圣菲利波（Anthony Sanfilippo）说，詹达利对周围的人影响很大。Pinnacle Entertainment Inc.拥有Boomtown。大约在一年前，圣菲利波将詹达利从礼宾部主管提升为赌场总经理。圣菲利波说，他真的不喜欢抛头露面，因为他总是将灯光投射在舞台上的其他人身上。他了解宾客的喜好，也明白他们愿意为什么东西埋单。
詹达利说，自己对科技从来就不很精通。但他的确觉得自己在接受新事物方面先人一步。他使用的第一台以及后来的所有电脑一直都是苹果产品。他家里有苹果的笔记本电脑和台式电脑各一台。苹果发布的每一款iPhone他都会尽快购买，还有一台iPad。此外，他还有Twitter和Facebook账户。
詹达利说，你必须利用一切可利用的工具，不这样做是愚蠢的。
詹达利说，自己出生于叙利亚第三大城市胡姆斯并在那里长大，其家庭属于名门望族，在胡姆斯市以外拥有多个村庄和大量土地，劳动者在这些土地上种植小麦和棉花使这个家庭富足。
詹达利说，其父对三个儿子强调过教育的重要性。詹达利是三个兄弟中最小的一个。他当时打算成为叙利亚的一名外交官。1952年，詹达利来到美国，一年后进入威斯康辛大学(University of Wisconsin)攻读政治学博士学位。他的研究重点是中东国家何以能够摆脱殖民主义。该校档案显示，詹达利于1956年被授予博士学位，其博士论文的题目是《联合国制定国家独立标准的举措》(United Nations Efforts to Set Standards for National Independence)。
Getty Images
史蒂夫•乔布斯在1977年的苹果二代电脑首发式上。
为了解脱，怀孕的辛普森去旧金山呆了几个月。生下儿子乔布斯后，她最终决定让别人来收养他。
辛普森回到麦迪逊分校后不久，她的父亲去世，她和詹达利得以终成眷属。詹达利毕业后，他们搬到叙利亚，但叙利亚政府当时正处于过渡期，这打乱了他成为外交官的计划。他说，自己当时管理着一个炼油厂，而辛普森在叙利亚的生活并不快乐，她回到了美国的格林贝，并且在那里生下他们的第二个孩子莫娜。
詹达利说，他也回到美国，开始在威斯康辛大学麦迪逊分校任教。在该分校以及后来其它几所大学里，除在阿拉伯语报纸上发表过几篇文章外，詹达利没有其它著作。(现任威斯康辛大学政治学系系主任的科尔曼(John Coleman)说，该校没有聘用詹达利为教授的记录，但他可能在这里教过课。)
几年后，詹达利与辛普森离婚，辛普森后来再婚。据詹达利和与其家庭关系密切的一位人士表示，詹达利对莫娜的成长漠不关心。这个人说，他抛弃了这个家，大部分时间都找不着他人。
成年后，乔布斯找到并与生母乔安妮•辛普森取得了联系。他还和母亲以及妹妹莫娜建立了亲属关系。记者无法联系乔安妮•辛普森置评。
莫娜•辛普森在1993年写了一部小说《消失的父亲》（The Lost Father），书中的主角一直在寻找她不曾了解的父亲。詹达利读完小说之后认出书中父亲一角正是自己。
詹达利说，在我看来，这部小说就是莫娜发泄情感的一种方式。这没问题。她有权这样做。这是你身为人父却没有陪在子女身边所必须付出的代价。虽然我见不到她，但我深深爱着她。
在苹果公司董事长史蒂夫・乔布斯(Steve Jobs)去世后，许多人在问：哪位企业家有潜质成为下一代创新领袖？AllThingsD的专栏作家卡拉・斯维什尔(Kara Swisher)认为，不会有“下一个乔布斯”出现。
詹达利说，后来他娶了一位在地产业工作且有成年子女的妇女为妻。他说，在进入拉斯维加斯一家大型赌场管理一间餐厅之前，他曾在雷诺买下一家破产的法国餐馆，随后他卖掉这家餐厅，并赚了一笔钱。他在1999年成为Boomtown赌场的餐饮主管。
此后不久，Boomtown和雷诺的其它赌场面临客源流失的问题：来自加州的赌客被离加州更近的印第安赌场吸引走。雷诺的赌场只好将当地赌客作为主要收入来源。詹达利在2000年推动赌场推出龙虾自助餐，这在周末吸引了数千名顾客。詹达利说，当我推出龙虾自助餐时，人们都以为我疯了。他们认为我们会赔钱。但此举吸引了大量赌客。詹达利此前的同事汉森说，这是雷诺地区赌场所推出的最成功的促销活动之一。
2006年，丧偶的詹达利再婚，现居住在雷诺市郊一个有门卫把守的僻静社区里。据他本人和旁人说，詹达利经常读书，通常是在他的iPad上。他已经大致规划好了他希望退休后完成的多本虚构和非虚构作品的写作计划。
但在周五他更多的精力还是放在赌场事务上，其中包括将于第二天举行的“超级旋转星期六”（Super Spin Saturday）的促销活动。届时通过旋转一个巨大轮盘，赌客有望赢得高达40万美元的奖金。
吃完午餐，詹达利走出中餐厅，途经印有挎着枪的牛仔剪影的桌子以及在玩电子扑克游戏机的赌客。詹达利一边走一边晃着手中的iPhone，他平静地说，他们（苹果公司）生产最好的产品，史蒂夫•乔布斯是个天才。
ALEXANDRA BERZON
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
Periodically in the past year, Abdulfattah 'John' Jandali would shoot off an email to Steve Jobs, the son he never met. They were simple notes: 'Happy Birthday' or 'I hope your health is improving.'
It's unclear if Mr. Jobs ever wrote back. A person close to Mr. Jobs's family said, no, he didn't, while Mr. Jandali said he did receive two short replies.
The last one arrived six weeks before Mr. Jobs's death, Mr. Jandali said, and said simply, 'Thank you.'
For Mr. Jandali, aside from the iPhone 4 he carries, his story of the emails is pretty much all he has of a son who co-founded Apple Inc. and grew into one of the world's most famous businessmen.
Mr. Jandali, 80 years old and general manager of the Boomtown casino in the barren hills outside Reno, Nev., presides over a staff of around 450 casino workers and is praised by his colleagues for his quiet leadership style and a marketing savvy. Walking the floor on Friday, he was stopped by an employee who thanked him for reinstalling $5 dollar slot machines. Mr. Jandali shook his hand, then sat down at the casino's Chinese noodle joint to eat the salmon special, as he does many days.
'I can't take credit for my children's success,' said Mr. Jandali, who is also the father of the celebrated novelist Mona Simpson. Mr. Jobs was put up for adoption as a baby. Mr. Jandali said he had almost no contact with him and also has a strained relationship with Ms. Simpson.
Mr. Jandali's close friends say the estrangement with his children has been a source of great sadness over the years. He kept the fact of his famous offspring private from even those closest to him for fear of being perceived as someone seeking to ride their coattails.
'To me it felt like his whole life this (estrangement) is something he regretted and he wished he made different decisions or wished there was a different result,' said Keith Henson, a general manager of L'Auberge Lake Charles, a casino in Louisiana. Mr. Henson said he found out only three years ago that Mr. Jandali had fathered Mr. Jobs even though Mr. Henson was mentored by Mr. Jandali at Boomtown and was the best man at his third wedding.
The recent decline in Mr. Jobs's health attracted notice to Mr. Jandali, which he said he finds uncomfortable. Mr. Jandali agreed to be interviewed at the casino's noodle restaurant, only after saying he didn't think his story was interesting enough to warrant the attention.
With crinkled eyes and white hair surrounding a balding head, Mr. Jandali has a physical resemblance to Mr. Jobs. A side table in his office prominently features a framed publicity shot of Ms. Simpson that Mr. Jandali said he downloaded from the Internet.
He said he learned of Mr. Jobs's death on Wednesday at the office, when a stranger called to offer condolences. He quickly hung up the phone.
'It was not a shock,' Mr. Jandali said. 'Basically all you feel is sadness.'
Mr. Jandali only learned around 2005 that Mr. Jobs was his biological son. He doesn't remember how he heard, but he said the news was 'a major shock.'
After that, Mr. Jandali began watching online videos of Mr. Jobs's famous keynote speeches launching Apple products. He emailed a few times in the past year after becoming aware of Mr. Jobs's failing health.
'I don't know why I emailed,' Mr. Jandali said. 'I guess because I felt bad when I heard about the health situation. He had his life and I had my life, and we were not in contact. If I talked to him, I don't know what I would have said to him.'
After hearing of Mr. Jobs's death Mr. Jandali called Ms. Simpson, who he said didn't respond. He stared at pictures that were saturating news web sites online of Mr. Jobs in his 20s and 30s.
'That was exactly how I looked,' he said.
Mr. Jandali said he also read the speech last week that Mr. Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005 in which the Apple chief reflected on life and death and told the story of his adoption. 'My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student … She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates,' Mr. Jobs said in the speech.
Mr. Jobs, who was born in San Francisco in 1955, said in the speech that in fact his birth mother finally agreed that he be adopted by Paul Jobs, a high-school dropout who became a machinist, and Clara Jobs, who never graduated from college. He grew up near San Francisco. While Mr. Jobs has acknowledged he had a relationship with his birth mother and sister, he didn't publicly discuss Mr. Jandali.
People who know Mr. Jandali say he shares the intellectual capacity and instinct for understanding of consumer desires as his son, albeit in a different context. Yet unlike Mr. Jobs, a showman famous for wowing crowds with new products, Mr. Jandali prefers to remain in the background, he and others say.
'He's a great influencer on those around him,' said Anthony Sanfilippo, chief executive of Pinnacle Entertainment Inc., which owns Boomtown. Mr. Sanfilippo promoted Mr. Jandali to general manager of the casino from head of hospitality around a year ago. 'He is really the opposite of a showman because he would always put the light on others to take the stage. He understands what guests like and what they are willing to pay for.'
Mr. Jandali said he was never very technologically savvy. But he does consider himself an early adopter. His first and only computers have been Apple products─he has both a laptop and a desktop at home─and he purchased every iPhone model as soon as it came out, along with an iPad. He maintains Twitter and Facebook accounts.
'You have to use all the tools available to you,' he said. 'It's stupid not to.'
Mr. Jandali said he was born and raised in Syria's third largest city, Homs, to a prominent family that owned villages and vast amounts of land outside the city, where workers tended wheat and cotton to enrich his family.
His father, he said, stressed education to his three sons, of which Mr. Jandali is the youngest. Mr. Jandali planned to become a diplomat in Syria. In 1952 came to the U.S., enrolling a year later to get his PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin. His emphasis was on how Middle Eastern countries could emerge from colonialism. University records show he was awarded his doctorate in 1956 with a dissertation entitled 'United Nations Efforts to Set Standards for National Independence.'
While a student in Madison, he became romantically involved with Joanne Schieble, a graduate student in speech therapy from Green Bay. Ms. Schieble, now known as Joanne Simpson, became pregnant in 1954 but her father didn't approve of the relationship, Mr. Jandali said.
Ms. Simpson went to San Francisco for a few months to get away while she was pregnant. She eventually put her son, Mr. Jobs, up for adoption.
Ms. Simpson returned to Madison and soon after, her father died, enabling Ms. Simpson and Mr. Jandali to marry. After he graduated they moved to Syria but by then the government was in transition, disrupting his plans to become a diplomat. Instead, he said, he managed an oil refinery. Ms. Simpson was unhappy in Syria and moved back to Green Bay, he said, where she gave birth to their second child, Mona.
Mr. Jandali said he returned and began to teach at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. There and later at other universities, he didn't publish beyond a few articles in Arab-language newspapers. (The University of Wisconsin doesn't have a record of Mr. Jandali being employed as professor but he might have taught classes, said John Coleman, the current chair of the political-science department.)
A few years later Mr. Jandali and Ms. Simpson divorced, and she later remarried. Mr. Jandali wasn't involved in the younger Ms. Simpson's life when she was growing up, according to both Mr. Jandali and a person close to the family. 'He abandoned the family' and was 'for the most part unreachable,' that person said.
As an adult, Mr. Jobs found and contacted Joanne Simpson and forged a relationship with her, as well as with Mona. Joanne Simpson couldn't be reached for comment.
Mona Simpson in 1993 penned a novel, 'The Lost Father,' about a protagonist searching for a father she never knew. Mr. Jandali read the book and recognized himself in the father character.
'The way I look at it, it's her way of venting, and it's OK,' Mr. Jandali said. 'She's entitled to that. It's the price to pay for not being there for your child when you're a father. Even though I don't see her, I love her dearly.'
According to the University of Wisconsin, where he got his PhD, Mr. Jandali was affiliated with a number of universities around the country. Around 1968, he said, he taught in the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno. However, his time there was brief and he left in 1970, according to university records. By that point he already owned a restaurant in Reno, where he would sometimes treat faculty members, recalled Joe Crowley, a former Reno colleague who went on to become president of the university.
He married a woman who worked in real estate and had grown children, Mr. Jandali said. He bought a bankrupt French restaurant in Reno and later sold it for a profit, he said, before joining a major casino in Las Vegas to run a restaurant. He became head of food and beverage in 1999 for Boomtown.
Not long after that, Boomtown and other Reno casinos faced the loss of out-of-town customers from California to Indian casinos closer to their homes. Turning to the locals as a source of income, Mr. Jandali in 2000 pushed the casino to introduce a lobster buffet─which drew thousands of customers on the weekends. 'People thought I was crazy when I introduced that,' he said. 'They thought we would lose money. But it attracted a lot of people.' Mr. Hansen, the former colleague, said the move was 'one of the most successful promotions' for a casino in the region.
In 2006, widowed, Mr. Jandali remarried and now lives on a cul-de-sac in a gated Reno suburban community. He constantly reads books, usually on his iPad, he and others say, and he has outlined several fiction and nonfiction books that he hopes to finish writing if he retires.
But on Friday he was more focused on the casino's affairs, including the next day's 'Super Spin Saturday' promotion, when casino-goers have the chance to win up to $400,000 by spinning a giant wheel.
Finishing lunch, he walked out of the Chinese restaurant, past tables printed with silhouettes of gun-slinging cowboys and by gamblers playing video poker machines. As he left, Mr. Jandali waved the iPhone in his hand. 'They produce the best,' he said quietly. 'Steve Jobs was a genius.'
ALEXANDRA BERZON
It's unclear if Mr. Jobs ever wrote back. A person close to Mr. Jobs's family said, no, he didn't, while Mr. Jandali said he did receive two short replies.
The last one arrived six weeks before Mr. Jobs's death, Mr. Jandali said, and said simply, 'Thank you.'
For Mr. Jandali, aside from the iPhone 4 he carries, his story of the emails is pretty much all he has of a son who co-founded Apple Inc. and grew into one of the world's most famous businessmen.
Mr. Jandali, 80 years old and general manager of the Boomtown casino in the barren hills outside Reno, Nev., presides over a staff of around 450 casino workers and is praised by his colleagues for his quiet leadership style and a marketing savvy. Walking the floor on Friday, he was stopped by an employee who thanked him for reinstalling $5 dollar slot machines. Mr. Jandali shook his hand, then sat down at the casino's Chinese noodle joint to eat the salmon special, as he does many days.
'I can't take credit for my children's success,' said Mr. Jandali, who is also the father of the celebrated novelist Mona Simpson. Mr. Jobs was put up for adoption as a baby. Mr. Jandali said he had almost no contact with him and also has a strained relationship with Ms. Simpson.
Mr. Jandali's close friends say the estrangement with his children has been a source of great sadness over the years. He kept the fact of his famous offspring private from even those closest to him for fear of being perceived as someone seeking to ride their coattails.
'To me it felt like his whole life this (estrangement) is something he regretted and he wished he made different decisions or wished there was a different result,' said Keith Henson, a general manager of L'Auberge Lake Charles, a casino in Louisiana. Mr. Henson said he found out only three years ago that Mr. Jandali had fathered Mr. Jobs even though Mr. Henson was mentored by Mr. Jandali at Boomtown and was the best man at his third wedding.
The recent decline in Mr. Jobs's health attracted notice to Mr. Jandali, which he said he finds uncomfortable. Mr. Jandali agreed to be interviewed at the casino's noodle restaurant, only after saying he didn't think his story was interesting enough to warrant the attention.
With crinkled eyes and white hair surrounding a balding head, Mr. Jandali has a physical resemblance to Mr. Jobs. A side table in his office prominently features a framed publicity shot of Ms. Simpson that Mr. Jandali said he downloaded from the Internet.
He said he learned of Mr. Jobs's death on Wednesday at the office, when a stranger called to offer condolences. He quickly hung up the phone.
'It was not a shock,' Mr. Jandali said. 'Basically all you feel is sadness.'
Mr. Jandali only learned around 2005 that Mr. Jobs was his biological son. He doesn't remember how he heard, but he said the news was 'a major shock.'
After that, Mr. Jandali began watching online videos of Mr. Jobs's famous keynote speeches launching Apple products. He emailed a few times in the past year after becoming aware of Mr. Jobs's failing health.
'I don't know why I emailed,' Mr. Jandali said. 'I guess because I felt bad when I heard about the health situation. He had his life and I had my life, and we were not in contact. If I talked to him, I don't know what I would have said to him.'
After hearing of Mr. Jobs's death Mr. Jandali called Ms. Simpson, who he said didn't respond. He stared at pictures that were saturating news web sites online of Mr. Jobs in his 20s and 30s.
'That was exactly how I looked,' he said.
Mr. Jandali said he also read the speech last week that Mr. Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005 in which the Apple chief reflected on life and death and told the story of his adoption. 'My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student … She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates,' Mr. Jobs said in the speech.
Mr. Jobs, who was born in San Francisco in 1955, said in the speech that in fact his birth mother finally agreed that he be adopted by Paul Jobs, a high-school dropout who became a machinist, and Clara Jobs, who never graduated from college. He grew up near San Francisco. While Mr. Jobs has acknowledged he had a relationship with his birth mother and sister, he didn't publicly discuss Mr. Jandali.
People who know Mr. Jandali say he shares the intellectual capacity and instinct for understanding of consumer desires as his son, albeit in a different context. Yet unlike Mr. Jobs, a showman famous for wowing crowds with new products, Mr. Jandali prefers to remain in the background, he and others say.
'He's a great influencer on those around him,' said Anthony Sanfilippo, chief executive of Pinnacle Entertainment Inc., which owns Boomtown. Mr. Sanfilippo promoted Mr. Jandali to general manager of the casino from head of hospitality around a year ago. 'He is really the opposite of a showman because he would always put the light on others to take the stage. He understands what guests like and what they are willing to pay for.'
Mr. Jandali said he was never very technologically savvy. But he does consider himself an early adopter. His first and only computers have been Apple products─he has both a laptop and a desktop at home─and he purchased every iPhone model as soon as it came out, along with an iPad. He maintains Twitter and Facebook accounts.
'You have to use all the tools available to you,' he said. 'It's stupid not to.'
Mr. Jandali said he was born and raised in Syria's third largest city, Homs, to a prominent family that owned villages and vast amounts of land outside the city, where workers tended wheat and cotton to enrich his family.
His father, he said, stressed education to his three sons, of which Mr. Jandali is the youngest. Mr. Jandali planned to become a diplomat in Syria. In 1952 came to the U.S., enrolling a year later to get his PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin. His emphasis was on how Middle Eastern countries could emerge from colonialism. University records show he was awarded his doctorate in 1956 with a dissertation entitled 'United Nations Efforts to Set Standards for National Independence.'
While a student in Madison, he became romantically involved with Joanne Schieble, a graduate student in speech therapy from Green Bay. Ms. Schieble, now known as Joanne Simpson, became pregnant in 1954 but her father didn't approve of the relationship, Mr. Jandali said.
Ms. Simpson went to San Francisco for a few months to get away while she was pregnant. She eventually put her son, Mr. Jobs, up for adoption.
Ms. Simpson returned to Madison and soon after, her father died, enabling Ms. Simpson and Mr. Jandali to marry. After he graduated they moved to Syria but by then the government was in transition, disrupting his plans to become a diplomat. Instead, he said, he managed an oil refinery. Ms. Simpson was unhappy in Syria and moved back to Green Bay, he said, where she gave birth to their second child, Mona.
Mr. Jandali said he returned and began to teach at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. There and later at other universities, he didn't publish beyond a few articles in Arab-language newspapers. (The University of Wisconsin doesn't have a record of Mr. Jandali being employed as professor but he might have taught classes, said John Coleman, the current chair of the political-science department.)
A few years later Mr. Jandali and Ms. Simpson divorced, and she later remarried. Mr. Jandali wasn't involved in the younger Ms. Simpson's life when she was growing up, according to both Mr. Jandali and a person close to the family. 'He abandoned the family' and was 'for the most part unreachable,' that person said.
As an adult, Mr. Jobs found and contacted Joanne Simpson and forged a relationship with her, as well as with Mona. Joanne Simpson couldn't be reached for comment.
Mona Simpson in 1993 penned a novel, 'The Lost Father,' about a protagonist searching for a father she never knew. Mr. Jandali read the book and recognized himself in the father character.
'The way I look at it, it's her way of venting, and it's OK,' Mr. Jandali said. 'She's entitled to that. It's the price to pay for not being there for your child when you're a father. Even though I don't see her, I love her dearly.'
According to the University of Wisconsin, where he got his PhD, Mr. Jandali was affiliated with a number of universities around the country. Around 1968, he said, he taught in the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno. However, his time there was brief and he left in 1970, according to university records. By that point he already owned a restaurant in Reno, where he would sometimes treat faculty members, recalled Joe Crowley, a former Reno colleague who went on to become president of the university.
He married a woman who worked in real estate and had grown children, Mr. Jandali said. He bought a bankrupt French restaurant in Reno and later sold it for a profit, he said, before joining a major casino in Las Vegas to run a restaurant. He became head of food and beverage in 1999 for Boomtown.
Not long after that, Boomtown and other Reno casinos faced the loss of out-of-town customers from California to Indian casinos closer to their homes. Turning to the locals as a source of income, Mr. Jandali in 2000 pushed the casino to introduce a lobster buffet─which drew thousands of customers on the weekends. 'People thought I was crazy when I introduced that,' he said. 'They thought we would lose money. But it attracted a lot of people.' Mr. Hansen, the former colleague, said the move was 'one of the most successful promotions' for a casino in the region.
In 2006, widowed, Mr. Jandali remarried and now lives on a cul-de-sac in a gated Reno suburban community. He constantly reads books, usually on his iPad, he and others say, and he has outlined several fiction and nonfiction books that he hopes to finish writing if he retires.
But on Friday he was more focused on the casino's affairs, including the next day's 'Super Spin Saturday' promotion, when casino-goers have the chance to win up to $400,000 by spinning a giant wheel.
Finishing lunch, he walked out of the Chinese restaurant, past tables printed with silhouettes of gun-slinging cowboys and by gamblers playing video poker machines. As he left, Mr. Jandali waved the iPhone in his hand. 'They produce the best,' he said quietly. 'Steve Jobs was a genius.'
ALEXANDRA BERZON
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