A few months ago, I met this cute gal at Wal-Mart, and I decided to make her mine. Samira was her name, and this tall, curvaceous and deliciously big-bottomed Arab cutie looked simply gorgeous in a modest Hijab coupled with dark pants, and the drab blue uniform that all Wal-Mart workers are required to wear. I see pretty girls of all hues and faiths in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, but this one, well, there was something different about her.
The name is Salomon Duchene, though I go by Suleiman, since I converted to Islam. I was born on the island of Haiti and raised in the City of Boston, Massachusetts. I moved to the City of Ottawa a few years ago, after winning a coveted international scholarship at Carleton University. I hate this boring little town with a passion, but until I complete my MBA, I'm stuck here. I can't go back to Boston empty-handed. My uptight Haitian parents would have a field day with me. Thanks but no thanks.
You see, my parents, Paul Duchene and Marianne Jean-Duchene moved to Boston from the island of Haiti in the mid-1990s. I was only a few months old at the time, and have basically lived my entire life in Massachusetts. I went to Emerson College, where I got my bachelor's degree in business. I tried to get into Suffolk University, my parents alma mater, but apparently my grades weren't good enough for their MBA program.
The thing about Boston is that it's an uppity town, no matter how racially diverse and friendly they came to me. Sure, Boston is the town where Deval Patrick, our first State's African-American Governor, got elected, but there is a pecking order in this vast metropolis. I graduated from Emerson College with honors. Small school, to be sure, but I had a great time there.
Now, I definitely should have been able to get into Suffolk University. These fools rejected me. I felt disgusted with myself, and my parents disappointment only made things worse. I just wanted out of Boston, after a while. Boston is the home of America's intellectual elite, but I felt trapped there. So I left, and moved far away. That's how I ended up in Ottawa.
So, I went to Wal-Mart to buy a few things after a long day at the call center where I work. Answering people's dim-witted questions about credit cards all day for sixteen bucks per hour isn't easy, but someone has to do it. I walked into the store, and went straight to the grocery aisle, and bought a few TV dinners, a couple of gallons of orange juice, and then got ready to skip out of there.
As I reached the checkout counter, I noticed one of the cashiers, a plump middle-aged Black lady, in idle conversation with a skinny older White guy. Never one to interrupt folks for no reason, I went to the next cashier. It's the polite Haitian in me, I guess. I looked at the tall, curvy Arab beauty behind the counter and smiled. For some reason, my heart skipped a beat. I looked at the gal and she looked at me, and I smiled.
I looked at the pretty Arab gal's nametag and read the name "Samira" out loud, and she smiled at me. I don't usually flirt with random ladies, but I smiled at Samira and told her my name. Ahem, my Muslim name, that is. Suleiman is a good, strong name. I chose it partly because it's the Arabic form of my francophone name Salomon, and also because I had a good friend named Suleiman, whom I worked with as a contractor at the National Gallery of Canada a few years ago.