Lying in bed, Mona Ismail cried herself to sleep. In her parents plush suburban townhouse in affluent Barrhaven, the young Lebanese Canadian Muslim woman bit her lip, thinking about what she lost. Every time Ismail Mona thought about her Somali Muslim ex-boyfriend Rashid Ali, her heart winced. In all her life, no one had ever loved Mona or made her feel the way Rashid did. The Somali brother was like an angel, seriously.
The tall, handsome Somali stud from Alberta treated Mona like a queen. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough for her conservative Lebanese Muslim parents, Mohammed and Mariam Ismail. To them, Rashid Ali's skin being black was unacceptable. There's a lot of racism in the Muslim community of Ontario, Canada. Even though Arabs and Somalis were both newcomers to Canada, the old prejudices many Arabs held against the Africans continued to perpetuate themselves. The Arabs continued to treat the Africans like shit, leading to lasting animosity between both communities.
When Mona Ismail, the daughter of a middle-class Lebanese Muslim family residing in Ottawa began publicly dating Rashid Ismail, a handsome Somali brother from Alberta, people definitely talked. At Carleton University, Arab male students glared angrily at Rashid Ali every time they saw him, for he was the one African Muslim male daring enough to go after one of their precious Arab ladies. Many Arab guys date and even marry African women but Arab ladies are considered off-limits to African men, that's like an unwritten rule in the Islamic world. Rashid Ali and Mona Ismail broke the rule, with devastating consequences.
Mona rose from bed, and went to the nearby washroom. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, the tall, dark-haired and brown-eyed young woman sighed profoundly. There were dark circles in her eyes from lack of sleep. Exactly three days ago, Mona would have celebrated the anniversary of her first meeting with Rashid, but it was not to be. For Mona's cowardice in the face of her parents racism doomed her fledgling romance with Rashid, the man who loved her.
Arab racism against blacks predates the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and it's really nothing new. For centuries, from Mauritania to Morocco, from Ethiopia to Yemen, Arab men have availed themselves of African women and forbade African men from even looking at Arab women too long. By dating Rashid, Mona was breaking all the rules and her family was not about to let that go unpunished. Mona chose to listen to her parents, and dumped Rashid. Now he was lost to her forever. Or was he?
