Djibouti Women Got Booty

Salutations, dear reader. My name is Mario Jean Constantin and I'm a young man living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. I was born in the town of Laval, Quebec, to a French Canadian mother, Beatrice Tremblay, and a Haitian immigrant father, Leonard Constantin. It's not easy being half black and half white in Canada, even though I grew up on the outskirts of Montreal, a racially diverse town. After graduating from the University of Montreal with a bachelor's degree in business, I decided to explore life outside of Quebec. La belle province is a fun place to be but I wanted to see what life is like in the rest of Canada.

Thus I ended up in the Capital, working as a bank teller for CIBC and renting an apartment in Orleans, half an hour from downtown Ottawa where I work. One of the first people I met when I moved to the City of Ottawa was Fowziyah Mahmoud, this exotic-looking, tall and chubby, hijab-wearing young woman who came to my bank and asked for help with setting up an account. Fowziyah is new to Canada, having recently moved to Ontario from her hometown of Hargeisa, somewhere in Somaliland.

For someone experiencing what had to be a lot of culture shock, Fowziyah Mahmoud seemed remarkably composed. Sitting her large derriere on the comfy chair across from me, Fowziyah told me what she wanted. The lady spoke French fluently and when I asked her about it, she told me that although her father Yassin Mahmoud is Arab, her mother Farah is originally from the Republic of Djibouti. It's a largely Francophone country, after all. Impressive, I must say. I helped Fowziyah with setting up her new checking and savings account, and deposited the two hundred dollars she pulled out of her well-worn wallet into the account. I also gave her my business card containing my cell phone and email should she need any help.

I never expected to hear from her again, so you can imagine my surprise when I got a friend request from Fowziyah Mahmoud on Facebook. In my inbox I found a cheerful message from her thanking me. I started declining her request because we at CIBC aren't encouraged to become friends with our clients, at least not the regular people like Fowziyah Mahmoud. If a major conglomerate was looking to set up a multi-million dollar account with CIBC and I brought them in, I'd get promoted to branch manager or even regional president for sure. Nevertheless, there was something about Fowziyah Mahmoud's fearless smile. Growing up near Montreal I knew a lot of Muslims, and for the most part, Muslim girls were meek, especially the veiled ones like Fowziyah. Yet I could somehow sense that she wasn't like the others. That's why I added her as a friend on Facebook.

I added Fowziyah Mahmoud as a friend, as I said before, and let me tell you, her Facebook profile was not what I expected. Generally speaking, Muslim women are careful about what they post online. The more adventurous ones will have a few pictures of themselves with female friends or relatives, that's about it. Fowziyah was...different. This chick had a hundred pictures. Shots of her holding a paintball gun while playing with friends in the snow. Shots of her holding a bow and arrow. Shots of her playing rugby with some other girls, all of whom wore the hijab. Damn. I wasn't expecting that. I saw pictures of her with guys, regular-looking, non-bearded, and very western-looking guys. Not the bearded and conservatively dressed Muslim dudes I expected. Cool.

I was about to click off for the evening when I got a PM from Fowziyah. Curious, I opened the chat feature, and sent her a greeting. As Salam Alaikum my friend, Fowziyah typed, by way of greeting. Aku Salam, I replied, thankful for all the time I'd spent in Lebanese restaurants in Laval. I love Lebanese cuisine and made friends with a lot of guys from that part of the world, thus I have a working knowledge of Arab culture and Islam. Of course, I knew next to nothing about Somalis. We have a few in Montreal but they exist in greater numbers in Ottawa and Toronto. They're more Anglophone than Francophone any day of the week, except for the ones from the Republic of Djibouti.

Fowziyah and I began to chat, and let me tell you, it wasn't easy to keep up with her. This chick could go a mile a minute, man. Fowziyah couldn't stop raving about the City of Ottawa and how thrilled she was to see so many Somalis and other minorities. At her new school, Algonquin College, she joined the Muslim Students Club. I warned her about the Capital's covert and insidious racism. If your last name sounds 'other', some companies won't hire you even if you have recommendations up the yin yang and a degree from McGill University. Trust me.

Every year, thousands of African, Asian, Arab and Hispanic students graduate from schools like the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. Most of them end up working at Starbucks or Wal-Mart because this racist and close-minded little government town doesn't believe in hiring people of non-European descent. When I applied to work at CIBC, the person from human resources thought I was white because of my last name and thick Montreal accent. When I showed up for the interview, I could tell that she wasn't expecting me. I'm six-foot-one, broad-shouldered and muscular, with light brown skin, curly black hair and hazel eyes. I get my hazel eye color from my French Canadian mother.

When I told her this, Fowziyah didn't reply for several minutes. Then, in her next Facebook message, she wrote her phone number. Call me, she wrote. I punched the number into my Blackberry. What to do now? Hesitantly I dialed Fowziyah's number. The foxy lady from Djibouti answered on the first ring. Her voice sounded demure and sultry, not at all like the cautious gal I remembered from my office at CIBC. Hello brother, came Fowziyah's husky voice. I swallowed hard, then replied. And just like that, we continued the chat we'd begun online.

After this talk, I found myself quite curious about Fowziyah. The foxy lady from the Republic of Djibouti intrigued me. The following week, I took her to the movies at the Silver City theater. We watched the new Frankenstein movie, then grabbed a bite at the nearby mall's food court afterwards. For the better part of two hours Fowziyah and I sat across from each other, and talked. What surprised me was how much we had in common.

I guess underneath it all, we weren't that different. I was born in Laval, Quebec, in 1988 and lived in Canada my whole life, but this gal from the Horn of Africa seemed to totally get me. We had a lot in common as I said before. It wasn't easy for her growing up half black and half Arab in Djibouti. Fowziyah's face darkened as she told me about how other girls teased her for her skin color and treated her badly while older men shot her lustful looks wherever she went, frightening the young doe she'd been in those days.

As Fowziyah shared that with me, I nodded and found myself empathizing with her immensely. To the point that my hands went to hers and clasped them, before I realized what I was doing. Fowziyah looked at my hands on hers, and froze. I held my breath. Muslim women aren't big on touching guys they're not related to, things like a handshake or a simple hug between strangers go against the rules of Islam, apparently. I expected her to freak out. Instead, she fixed her brown eyes on me and smiled. You've got nice hands, she said in an awed voice, entwining her fingers with mine. Slowly I let out my breath and quietly thanked her.

Afterwards, Fowziyah and I walked out of the mall, and took the bus. When it came time to part ways ( she lives in Vanier and got off at Hurdman station while I took the ninety five bus heading to Orleans ) we hugged briefly, then I walked away. I had a grin bigger than the Joker's on my face, I thought as I looked at my reflection on my phone's reflective case. I went to bed that night with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I couldn't stop thinking about Fowziyah, the Djibouti gal with the mesmerizing eyes.

I resolved to ask Fowziyah out the next time I saw her. I couldn't get her cute face and mesmerizing ass out of my head. Djibouti women got booty! I didn't get the chance, because Fowziyah beat me to the punch. Smiling, she asked me to go check out Sexapalooza with her. It's a big event in Ottawa, by the way. An expo slash discussion on all things sexual. I stared blankly at Fowziyah. Cocking an eyebrow, she cleared her throat and asked me what my answer was. As you can imagine, she got a resounding yes from me! Thus Fowziyah and I had our official first date at Sexapalooza. Yup, I went to the sex show with a hijab-wearing and long-skirted Muslim chick. How do you like them apples?