In late 2017, the modern world reacted with horror upon discovering that African migrants trying to get to Europe by boat got kidnapped on the high seas and brought to the shores of Libya, where they were sold off as slaves to the highest bidder. When the news hit CNN, RDI and other major news outlets, a lot of people were shocked, but Alia Sammad, a woman in whose veins both Libyan and African blood flowed, wasn't one of them.
Hatred of Africans is alive and well in many parts of the Arab world, and North Africa is definitely no exception. From Morocco to Tunisia and Libya, dark-skinned people are treated poorly for no other reason than their skin color. This really shouldn't have surprised anyone. Long before Europeans began the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and forcibly brought scores of Africans into the New World, Arabs made slaves of Africans.
The African male slaves were often castrated and turned into eunuchs, and used as farm laborers, builders, and sometimes soldiers. The African female slaves were often turned into concubines, existing sorely for their Arab masters pleasure. The Afro-Arabian populations found all over the Middle East and Africa owe their existence to the dalliance of Arab masters and African female slaves. That's the ugly legacy of Arabian colonialism in Africa, and it's not exactly something that's discussed by many.
In places like Libya, Mauritania, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a few others, people of African descent are still kept in slave-like conditions by the Arabs. When CNN exposed these barbaric practices, the Arab world got in an uproar, and this sheer hypocrisy made a certain cynical biracial Muslim woman chuckle. I wish they'd get over themselves and admit their wrongdoing, Alia thought bitterly.
Alia Sammad has met a lot of people and lived in many places in her thirty seven years upon this earth. Born in the City of Al Moukalla, Yemen, to a Yemeni Arab Muslim father and an Afro-Libyan mother, Alia learned at an early age that the world was unkind to those who were different from the majority. While Yemen was very close to the African nation of Somalia, interracial couples were still the subject of scorn, thanks to many close-minded souls.
Verily, the fact that Alia's mother Yasmin Sammad was half black and half Arab did not sit well with some of the Yemeni Arab ladies in their hometown of Al Moukalla. These ladies saw Yasmin as a half-breed foreigner who bewitched and stole one of their precious Yemeni Arab men. Alia's father Hamid tried his best to protect his wife and daughter from a hostile world, but there was only so much he could do. Anti-black racism was alive and well in all corners of the Islamic world...
Alia Sammad grew up to be six feet tall, and very voluptuous, having inherited long curly dark hair, dark bronze skin, and almond-shaped golden brown eyes from her Afro-Libyan mother and Yemeni Arab father. In the Republic of Yemen, Alia was considered exotically beautiful by some, and an anomaly by others. When her parents moved to the City of Ottawa, Ontario, Alia experienced a whole new world, one far different from anything she could have imagined...
Living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, forever changed Alia Sammad's outlook on life. In Canada, Alia saw policewomen, and female soldiers, and female politicians, and was thrilled to be living in a world where women could do anything that men did. For a pious, Hijab-wearing young Muslim woman who grew up in a world where the sexes spent a lot of time apart, and a large number of women were housewives, this was truly a defining moment.
Alia Sammad enrolled at the University of Ottawa, where she studied business management, and after graduating she began working for KPMG. It wasn't easy for her as a Hijab-wearing Muslim gal, in a lily-white, overtly friendly and covertly hostile workplace with a lot of hidden pitfalls, but Alia persevered. That's why she rose to the level of upper management.
At the age of thirty, Alia's parents began pressuring her to get married. They were getting old and wanted to see their only daughter become a wife and mother. At a company event, Alia met a Palestinian guy named Farouk Ali, and they had a whirlwind romance and got hitched. Their marriage lasted seven years, ended in divorce, and produced nothing but headaches and a pile of debt for Alia. She'd just about given up on the male of the species, especially the ones from the Islamic world, until she met a most wonderful and unusual man...
"Cultural differences can sometimes be more of a problem than racial ones, take me, for example, my father Hamid was from Yemen and my mother Yasmin is from Libya, both of them Muslims but from two very different cultures, and I think that's part of the reason why they divorced," Alia Sammad said, and the tall, bronze-skinned and raven-haired gal looked at her student, and smiled wistfully. If only this one knew what he was in for, Alia thought, almost bitterly.
"Differences are only a problem if you let them become a problem, at the end of the day, we're all human," Abraham "Ibrahim" Stanwood replied, and the young Jamaican Muslim stroked his goateed chin and looked at Alia thoughtfully. A while ago, the two of them met at SNMC, the Islamic community center located in the City of Barrhaven, Ontario. At the time, Ibrahim was a newcomer to Islam, having converted from a Jamaican Catholic background. Thus they met, and later forged a friendship that nothing could ever break...
"Ever the optimist, Habibi," Alia replied, smiling at Ibrahim while shaking her head. Ever since Alia first laid eyes on the tall, dark-skinned and dreadlocked young Jamaican Muslim, she knew that he was one of a kind. The brother walked into the Islamic community center with a confident stride, addressing men and women alike with respect, but absolutely no fear. Ibrahim intrigued Alia, and that was part of the reason why she agreed to teach him Arabic...
That's how it all began, the relationship, for lack of a better term, which changed Alia's life. Alia did a lot of volunteering at SNMC, and teaching Arabic to new converts was one of her duties. Why did she agree to do some one-on-one tutoring with Ibrahim? I have my reasons and they have little to do with the faith, Alia thought with a wicked smile as she looked at the sexy piece of chocolate sitting opposite her, inside Bridgehead in downtown Ottawa.
