Gently I kissed Wajiha Fahim on the lips as we stood inside the quiet, secluded park in Vanier, Ontario. I've wanted to do this for so long, I told her breathlessly. Wajiha smiled and kissed me back, hugging me fiercely. There we were, just a couple of young people in love, hanging out in a park at night. It was raining quite a bit, kind of unusual for the Capital region of Canada in late June but hey, global warming is causing temperatures around the world to be bipolar. I could care less about the weather when I'm around my beloved. Hand in hand we made our way to my apartment on Donnelly street, giggling like a pair of clowns.
My name is Ali Abdullah, and I'm madly in love with this young woman. Wajiha is the one for me. I've known this since the first time I laid eyes on her on the quad at Carleton University in the City of Nepean, Ontario. She's the one for me. The only snag? Her family strongly disagrees. I'm Somali and she's Afghan. Apparently, we can't be together. You see, there's a lot of racism in the Muslim world. Although the Koran states that all Muslims should care for their brothers and sisters in Islam regardless of race or background, that isn't always the case. The Arabs see themselves as first-class citizens in the Islamic world while everyone else is below them. If asked about it, they'll deny it till kingdom come. Another inconvenient truth in our faith, eh?
As a Muslim, I know this implicitly. You see, I was born in the City of Perth, Ontario, to a Lebanese father and Somali mother. I know all about Arab racism because I used to feel it myself. You see, a lot of mixed Muslim brats with Arab fathers and Black mothers tend to embrace the Arabian side of their heritage. That's what I did for the first few years of my life. My father might be married to a Black woman, but that doesn't mean he likes Black people. He has nothing but disdain for the Black race, especially Black men. At our family table he referred to Black men using the N-word, and my mother kept her mouth shut. What an awesome household I was raised in!
I stayed away from anything Black because that's not how I was raised to see myself. All that changed when I left the town of Perth and moved to the City of Ottawa for school. Carleton University was much bigger than any of the schools in or near the town of Perth. I was unprepared for its sheer size. I met so many students of African descent there it's not even funny. Haitians. Nigerians. Jamaicans. Mauritanians. Somalis. Afro-Brazilians. Ethiopians. Afro-Cubans. African-Americans. They were lively and friendly, not at all what I expected. I made so many friends among them. Slowly they changed how I looked at the world, and at myself. I could finally see that there is beauty in Black people and Black culture, something I wasn't allowed to see in the house I grew up in.
I stand six feet two inches tall, broad-shouldered and muscular, with light brown skin, curly Black hair and hazel eyes. People say I look like Hollywood actor Lee Thompson Young, only a bit taller. When people asked me about my ethnicity and heritage back then, I used to tell them that I was Arab. Now I tell people that I am Black. I don't say mixed or biracial. I am a Black man. Like Obama. Like Kobe Bryant. Like Malcolm X. Like Reggie Bush. I came to Carleton to study criminology, but I also took African Cultural Studies as an elective because I wanted to find out more about my heritage. I befriended a Somali student named Mohammed Hassan, and we became best buddies. He introduced me to his mother Choukry and his younger sister Fatima. They were so nice. I would visit Mohammed on weekends and we'd hang out together. In many ways Mohammed Hassan was the brother I never had but always wanted.
