There is much to be said about one's origins, that's for sure. My name is Solomon Rashid Joseph. I was born in the City of Detroit, Michigan, to a Haitian-American mother and Lebanese immigrant father. My father, Rashid Ahmed, met my mother, Nicolette Joseph, while attending Wayne State University in the 1980s. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, he died while visiting his parents in Beirut, three months before my birth. My mother married a guy named Harold Jacobson three years later, and this hard-working brother from Atlanta is the man I called daddy all the days of my life. My mom has a daughter by him, my sister Tanisha.
Growing up in the City of Detroit, I embraced my African-American identity. A lot of folks coming up from Detroit always make it out to be an urban nightmare. Martin Lawrence, Eminem, even Kidd Rock, all these fools give Detroit a bad name. For me, it's home, pure and simple. My pops Harold is a police officer and he always worked hard to provide for our family. I always wanted to be a police officer where I grew up, but ended up in law instead. I'm at the University of Detroit Mercy's Law School right now, trying to become a lawyer at the tender age of twenty three. I'm young but I've already done a lot of living, I think. Last year, I went to the City of Beirut, Lebanon, to meet my paternal grandparents, Omar and Amina Ahmed. It was a bit of a shock for me to meet them. My mother seldom talked about my biological father or his side of the family while I was growing up, and that summer in Lebanon I found out why.
The Republic of Lebanon is considered the most modern of all Arab nations, and it has a lot to be commended for. It's the only place in the Middle East where Christians and Muslims actually make an effort to coexist, instead of slaughtering each other over who loves God more. For now anyways. I saw a lot of fascinating things in Lebanon. I saw policewomen at the airport, women politicians speaking on television and female soldiers in the streets, and I also saw women in burkas. I saw churches and mosques on the same street. Yeah, Lebanon was an interesting country. I also saw the way they treated a black guy who was walking around with an Arab woman. I don't speak a lick of Arabic but I know a racial slur when I hear one. The Arabs aren't fond of Black men, especially the ones who have dealings with Arab women. I got the feeling that for all of black Muslims fondness for all things Arab, the Arabs couldn't give two shits about black folks. Wherever I go, the black man seems to be universally hated. The Arabs don't like us, and white folks have no love for us. Hell, we don't even have much love for each other, judging by what I see on the news sometimes. Nigerian Muslims bombing Christian churches in northern Nigeria. South Sudan and Sudan perpetually on the brink of war because the former is a secular republic where religious freedom is the law of the land, and the latter is an Islamist nation. One of these days, if we're not careful, we're going to have a global war, between the Muslims and everyone who isn't Muslim. Mark my words.
My biological father's family was less than thrilled to meet me, the American-born son of their long-dead wayward son. My father was born and raised into a Sunni Muslim family, and before he died, he'd planned on marrying my mother, the daughter of a Baptist minister. Not only was he marrying a foreigner but he was also marrying a black woman who was an infidel, a Christian, the enemy. They didn't approve of his relationship with my mother, brief though it was. When I met them, I saw surprise on their faces, along with a gruff disapproval of my very existence. I stood before them, proud and strong, all six feet two inches and two hundred and twenty pounds of me. I'm light-skinned with curly hair and amber-colored eyes but you can tell that I'm at least of partial African descent. I've always embraced my African heritage. When my paternal grandparents called me a kafir to my face and asked me if I came for my father's inheritance, I told them that I didn't want anything from them, cursed them and their godforsaken land, and left.
I drove straight from my father's old neighborhood in east Beirut to the airport, and flew home. Thus ended my middle-eastern adventure. I don't know what I expected to find in Lebanon, but I didn't find it. Oh, well. I should have listened to my mother. She sought to protect me from the awful truth, but I didn't listen. I always have to discover everything the hard way. That's cool, though, because I am a hard-headed brother. I never take the easy way out, in anything. When I was nineteen, I was a bit confused, sexually speaking. I hadn't had sex yet, and I felt drawn to both girls and guys. I met this hot chick named Milena Monteiros, a half-Black, half Hispanic gal who was one of my sister Tanisha's best friends. Milena was around five-foot-nine, big-bottomed and chubby, with raven hair, light brown skin and a lovely face. Just the way I liked my women. You know those chicks whom you can tell they're trouble just by looking at them? Milena was definitely one of them chicks.
Milena and I had been flirting for weeks, and I kept asking her out, but she wasn't feeling me. Or so it appeared to my immature younger self. Now that I think about it, the broad was playing with my mind. Anyhow, I was at a party at Milena's house with my sister Tanisha, and as usual, I wasn't having a good time. My buddy Kendrick was having a blast dancing with this hot Jamaican chick named Renee and I kept drinking and watching a rerun of Hell Date on BET. Guess who walked up to me? None other than Milena herself. Smiling coyly, she asked me if I was having a good time and when I shook my head, she asked me to follow her upstairs. I dutifully followed her, and once we got to her room, she let me know the jig was up. Translation? Milena wanted to fuck. Damn, I wasn't expecting that. I didn't even have a condom on me.
