My culture is conservative, but that doesn't mean I have to be. Religion and culture are important, of course, but so is the individual. The name is Warsama "Sam" Osman, and I'm a tall, skinny and perpetually bald-headed young Black man of Somali descent living in metropolitan Calgary, province of Alberta. Why am I perpetually bald? It's a rare condition I've got. I'm basically hairless all over. Anyhow, I got a story to share with y'all. When you're from an immigrant background and you happen to be a visible minority, people in Canada tend to judge you before they even get to know you. Look, I'm not going to start with the whole poor-me-I'm-Black routine, but folks living in the Great White North have got to stop fronting with their "multiculturalism" bullshit. If you're different from them, they don't trust you, end of story. I'm a Somali male in redneck Alberta, so I know what I'm talking about.
Whenever I tell people that I was born in Somaliland, they assume all kinds of things about me. I love shocking them with the awful truth. No, I'm not conservative. Hell, I am totally bisexual, though it's not something I go around telling people. Haters can make life hell with you if they find out your business. I'm not a believer in archaic traditions like female circumcision, and I wish Muslims would do away with that sexist and barbaric practice. I support progressive causes like legalizing marijuana, gay marriage and immigration reform. Hold on, let me clarify what I mean by immigration reform. Canada needs more immigrants and those retarded bastards on Parliament Hill need to stop making life hard for those of us they call visible minorities. Am I religious? I was born in a Muslim family but I've long stopped practicing my people's religion. I find it way too restrictive, and I don't share the fascination ninety nine percent of all Somalis have for all things Arabic. I choose instead to love myself, and my people of course.
The Arabs hate us sub-Saharan Africans more than White people do, but you can't tell that to my fellow Somalis. They refuse to see the truth for what it is. Case in point? A lot of Arab guys date and even marry our beautiful Somali girls. How many Arab females do you see with Somali males? Not many, and that's mainly due to Arab male jealousy and racism, that's what's up. That's quite a double standard, isn't it? Why would I be friends with some bozos who think they can have their way with my sisters but balk at the thought of their daughters dating a guy like me? I bet you're wondering where all this animosity comes from, huh? I had a bad experience with the Arabs after dating this fine-looking Lebanese chick named Amaal Abdul-Ghaffur. Arab girls in general are a fine-looking bunch but this one was something else.
We met while I was in my second year at Lakeland College. You should have seen her, man. Five-foot-eight, curvy and sexy, with light bronze skin, long Black hair and light brown eyes. Did I mention she also had a killer booty? Hell yeah, man. The first time I laid eyes on her I thought she was Hispanic or Italian or something along those lines but she was Arab. Amaal was born in Mount-Liban, Lebanon, and moved to the province of Alberta, Canada, with her family ten years ago. This sweet young thing was an art student at Lakeland College and as luck would have it, she liked the brothers. How about that? Amaal and I began dating, and for the first time in ages, I was happy.
I haven't had a lot of happy moments in this life, ladies and gentlemen. Things have a way of unexpectedly going south when you're, well, me, and there's not much you can do about it. That's why I was so upset when I ended up losing her. We were walking out of a restaurant in downtown Calgary one Friday night when these three Arab guys attacked us. They called me "abeed" which means slave in Arabic, and started roughing me up. I tried to fight them off but what could I do against three guys? I'm six-foot-one but only weigh about a hundred and sixty pounds. Yeah, they fucked me up, man. Beat me until I lost all consciousness. When I woke up, I was in a hospital. Amaal never even bothered to visit me, and I never heard from her again. I guess she wasn't the one, huh?
I've never been what most people would consider lucky by any stretch of the imagination, ladies and gentlemen. My father, Ahmed Osman, is a wastrel and a bit of a drunk. He used to work for Canada Post delivering the mail but he got canned a while back. Now he spends his days at home, drinking, watching television and occasionally smacking my mom around. My mother, Haweeyo Ibrahim-Osman, is the glue that holds our family together. After we moved to Alberta from Somaliland, she went back to school and became a nurse after graduating from the University of Calgary. Nowadays she works at the Foothills Medical Center in Calgary. I am and always will be proud of my mom. She's a strong Black woman in every way.
If it weren't for my mom, I honestly think the Osman family would be lost. My older brother Abdikarim dropped out of high school his senior year but mom basically threatened to kick his ass out of our house unless he got his GED. Well, he finally did, and now, he's a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces. He's stationed in Afghanistan right now, one of the last Canadian soldiers still helping the American forces with peacekeeping until the Arabs learn to protect their own countrymen from the fucking Taliban. I speak to my brother via Skype at least once a week, just to make sure he's alright, and I always tell him that I'm proud of him. A lot of Somalis get mad at me for supporting my brother serving the government of Canada as a soldier in Afghanistan, because they think us Somalis, being mostly Muslim and all, shouldn't help NATO fight against Afghan insurgents. I got no love for the Arabs so I always wish my brother happy hunting at the end of our conversations on Skype.
Yeah, like I said, I don't come from the most stable family environment but my mom does her best with us boys. I wish she would divorce my dad and kick his sorry ass out of our house but she refuses. Mom is really traditional and believes divorce to be haram or dirty. Back home, when women marry, it's for life. I tell my mom that Canada isn't Somaliland. Women's rights are defended and upheld in Canada, as a matter of law. My mom doesn't like my pro-Western mindset or my agnostic lifestyle. She still bugs me about going to mosque even though I made it abundantly clear to her that I wasn't Muslim. I don't follow organized religion. I'm a proud agnostic. Nothing wrong with having a secular lifestyle in this day and age. Millions of people around the world are embracing secularism. Religion gone amok can be a terrible thing. Just look at what it's done to places like northern Nigeria and Somalia, along with all of them Arab Gulf countries.