Man, every time I ran into her, the song "She's So High Above Me" starts in my head. I hope I'm not going crazy or anything. My name is Jalil Akbar. For most of my life, I've seen myself as the son of two worlds. My father Mohammed Abdul Akbar was born and raised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And my mother Aisha Tabaan hails from the great nation of Somaliland. They met while studying at the University of Montreal in the Quebec region of Canada. One fine day in March of 1984. They got married shortly after graduation and had little old me. I am as Canadian as maple syrup, and forever proud of my Somali and Saudi heritage. I'm half Black and half Arab, and embrace both. It hasn't always been easy, though. However, a wise man once said nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Welcome to my life.
These days, I study business administration at Carleton University in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario. And I am madly in love with a young woman named Cleopatra Johnson. C.J. to her friends. Cleopatra and I met during orientation day at Carleton University. I've never met anyone like her before, or since. I mean, how many six-foot-tall, blonde-haired and green-eyed American women named Cleopatra do you know? Folks, I'm madly in love with my Cleopatra. And I recently asked her to marry me. For her, I have converted to Christianity, forever alienating myself from my family and friends. There are many Muslims in the Confederation of Canada, hailing from places like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Senegal and Tunisia. And Ottawa has a particularly high concentration of them. My father Mohammed is a successful real estate mogul and the Imam of the largest Mosque in the metropolis of Montreal. He's far from thrilled with my conversion to Christianity.
If only my parents could see in Cleopatra what I see. Now, I know a lot of Black guys in North America simply go crazy for White women. I'm not one of those guys. For most of my life, I mainly dated Black women and the occasional Persian woman. I didn't really like dating Muslim women because they're not very easy to deal with. I know this might seem surprising from the son of an Imam, but it's true. I don't like living my life according to rigid religious rules based on self-denial. For all of their claims of parallel vision and destination, Christians and Muslims are exactly the same in my eyes. Both believe that restraint from one's true passions lead to enlightenment. Well, it's not a viewpoint I happen to share. I just want to live my life. Why can't people understand?
My father has never approved of my life for as long as I can remember. He doesn't like the fact that my best friend Joseph, a Haitian guy I met in Montreal-Nord, happens to be gay and a staunch atheist. I don't have a problem with Joseph's gayness or his views on organized religion. To me, he's simply my best friend. The guy I've known for most of my life. My father hates gay people, especially the ones from the minority communities. He feels that Canada is too tolerant toward immigrants, even though he's an immigrant himself. Yeah, my pops is a weird guy at times. As for my mother, although I hate to admit it, she's the quintessential Muslim wife. Never questioning her husband's God-given authority. She never backs me up in any argument I have with my father. For that reason and many others, I've always been self-reliant. As far as I can remember, my only backup is me. Way to foster an independent streak in a young man, eh?
When I met Cleopatra Johnson, I was smitten with her. The tall, decidedly Teutonic-looking American woman simply took my breath away. After mustering the courage to approach her, I grew even more fascinated. It's not every day that you meet a tall, beautiful young woman with looks a model or Hollywood starlet would envy, the kind of booty that a video vixen would kill for, and the brains of an Einstein. Yeah, she was all that and then some. Cleopatra was the daughter of Clifford Johnson, a multimillionaire businessman from the City of Boston, Massachusetts. He was one of the new managers of the Sienna Corporation which bought up part of Nortel, the biggest corporation in Canadian history. Cleopatra used to attend the University of Massachusetts in Boston. As it happens, my aunt Aamina Tabaan lived in Boston with her husband, a Jamaican guy named Theodore Jenkins. My mother doesn't get along with her sister because Aunt Aamina married a guy who wasn't Muslim. And she stopped practicing the Islamic religion after moving to the United States to be with the guy she loved. I visited Aunt Aamina and Uncle Theodore last summer. I was smitten with them and the beautiful City of Boston. It's so lively and lovely. Americans are really something else.
To hear my father talk you would believe all Americans were mean and ruthless, that they hated Muslim folk and walked the streets of their cities and towns nearly naked. Bostonians weren't anything like that. From knowing and befriending Cleopatra Johnson, I learned a lot about Americans and about myself as well. Cleopatra was so open and friendly. And she seemed genuinely interested in respectfully learning about other cultures. I've known many Muslims who were very intolerant in their views of Christians whom they labeled infidels. By sharp contrast, Cleopatra was a very liberal-minded young woman who respected those different from her regardless of color, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Man, I was starting to honestly fall for her. I loved her Boston accent. It's so damn charming. It's amazing how having a woman in your life can change you, man. Before long, much of my free time revolved around hanging out with Cleopatra Johnson.
