Just because I'm an extremely tall and assertive woman doesn't automatically make me dominant in the bedroom, I calmly told Omar Yusuf as he sat across from me at a table inside the Saint Laurent Mall's crowded food court. I'm glad to hear it, the handsome young black man said, gently caressing my knee under the table. Let's go home, I told him, licking my lips for emphasis. Arm in arm we left the east end mall together. What a pair we made! A six-foot-eight, curvy and definitely statuesque, exotic-looking young woman with caramel skin, long curly black hair and lime-green eyes, clad in business attire...escorted by a stocky, muscular black guy dressed in urban gear and sporting a shaved head. Hot damn!
My name is Mona Abdirahman, and I'm a young woman living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. I was born in the City of Edmonton, Alberta, to a Somali immigrant father and Irish-Canadian mother. My parents, Abdullah Abdirahman and Christine O'Donnell divorced before I started high school. To say that my parents came from different worlds would be the understatement of the century. My father was Muslim and my mother is a staunch Catholic. The funny thing is that they're both of average height, and I look like neither of them.
Somehow, I ended up being six-foot-six, which is kind of odd because Somali-descended women aren't known for their great height. Somali women are known for their beautiful faces, curvy bodies and phenomenal butts but they're usually a short bunch. By comparison with most of them, I am a female giant. I suffered from a rare form of gigantism when I was younger but thanks to hormone therapy it's all over and done with now. It has made my life interesting, to say the least. I recently graduated from the University of Calgary with a Master's degree in business administration. These days, I work for the Toronto Dominion Bank's MBNA Branch in the east end of the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Life couldn't be better.
Although I was raised Muslim, I wouldn't consider myself a very religious person. My father died when I was younger and I was raised by my mother's side of the family. At different points in my life I've considered myself anything from a liberal, nondenominational Christian to Agnostic and finally, a staunch atheist. Religion is all bullshit, man. Especially Islam with all of its iron-clad rules. The way I see it, religion is a system of socio-cultural beliefs granting men power over women. That's the one thing that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have in common, besides their common origin. In all three faiths, men rule and women are secondary. Thanks but no thanks. I've kind of had enough of that.
I consider myself a feminist these days, simply because I don't believe women should be second-class citizens anywhere in this world. It's 2013, yet honor killings still go on in Muslim and Hindu communities around the world and women still can't drive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Yeah, as women we've got a lot of work to do in this world. I have been exploring my sexuality lately, and I consider it one of the most empowering things I can do as a woman. Too long women have been told that their bodies are men's property. I honestly don't care for that sort of thing in the least. I have sex with whomever I want, whenever I want. It's my pussy, dammit!
