I love my job, I thought sarcastically as I made my way out of the Bayshore Mall in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Ah, the life of a cashier or adventures in retail. The hell that I endure for eight hours for a measly twelve bucks an hour. As bad as things are around here, they're way better than they were in Quebec City where I was born. Being the only daughter of a Somali female immigrant who married an Italian-Canadian Muslim convert wasn't easy, especially since we lived in a lily-white French Canadian town where xenophobia is the order of the day.
My name is Zahrah Ibrahim-Napolitano. How I came into the world is a rather unique story, or so I've been told. My mother, Halima Ibrahim moved to the City of Montreal, Quebec, from the town of Barawa, Somalia, in the summer of 1989. While studying accounting at the University of Montreal she met Luciano Napolitano, a handsome young Italian-Canadian engineering student. The two of them fell in love, and my father ended up converting to Islam and marrying her. I came into the world a couple of years later, and for some reason my parents felt the need to leave racially diverse, progressive Montreal for the urban wilderness of xenophobic and openly racist Quebec City. Bad move if you ask me.
I used to hear the N-word along with "Muslim cunt" and "terrorist bitch" tossed my way in the hallways of my high school. Not easy being a mixed woman wearing a Hijab down there. That's why I left Quebec City a couple of years ago, never to return. Seriously. An angel armed with a flaming sword couldn't compel me to return to that town full of creeps. As far as I'm concerned, Quebec City can go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah. Burn it to the fucking ground for all I care. I know that since I'm a minority woman and a Muslim at that these words could come back to haunt me but I don't give a flying fuck. I mean every word.
The City of Ottawa proved to be somewhat better than what I left behind. It's livable, I guess. I'm taking two courses at Carleton University this summer and since the Ontario provincial government decided that my parents made too much money for me to qualify for financial aid, I'm basically on my own. I'm five credits away from earning my bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice, man. I'm so close I can almost taste it. Once I'm done I'll take the LSAT and try to get into a good law school. The University of Ottawa is one of the best in Ontario, along with the University of Toronto and a couple of others. I'm twenty one years old and about to finish university, how cool is that? I can't wait to get out there in the real world.
Here I am, living life and feeling free in our nation's capital, trying my best to make my way in a world both thrilling and hostile at times. I live with my boyfriend Jacques Chevalier, a tall and handsome brother originally from the island of Haiti. He recently graduated from the University of Ottawa with a Master's degree in Business Administration but he can't seem to find work in his field. As much as it saddens me to say it, I am not surprised. The City of Ottawa is dull, boring and bigoted. And they're almost pathologically afraid of highly educated people of color who possess a single gram of ambition. Since he's tall, good-looking and has a Canadian university education, my poor Jacques terrifies them.
Even though, according to shifting demographics, almost half the population of metropolitan Ottawa hails from places like continental Africa, Latin America, southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Arab world, the local white people insist on treating us as if we're second-class citizens. That's the thing about Ottawa people. They're the most polite racists in the world. Sometimes I almost miss the brutal honesty of the Quebecers. With them you always know where you stand, you know? They're brutally honest in their dislike of we who are called visible minorities. Jacques has been hitting company after company, mailing his resume to place after place. So far nada.
My boo refuses to get discouraged but I can tell that his fruitless search is starting to get to him. I feel bad for him, I really do. All I can do is try to be supportive. A lot of recent college and university graduates across Canada find themselves unemployed but it's even worse for us who come from immigrant backgrounds. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer but in the real world it doesn't work like that. Even though white people in America, Canada and Europe will soon be outnumbered by folks from Africa, Asia and the Arab world on their own turf, white privilege is here to stay. Anyhow, I'll stop whining about the politics and boring details. I want to become an advocate for civil rights and social justice when I get my law degree. Bring balance to a universe that's dangerously askew. Can you tell?
