If a Muslim man can date or even marry a Christian woman or a Jewish woman, why can't a Muslim woman do the same thing with a Christian man or a Jewish man? Aren't they "People of the Book" too, according to Islam? That's the question Mona Wahid asked herself for the thousandth time as she walked through the crowded hallways of Carleton University in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. The tall, bronze-skinned and dark-eyed Palestinian gal absentmindedly gazed at a beautiful, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Christian chick who flirted with a bearded Arab male inside the campus library. Yeah, Muslim get to have all the fun, she told herself. And Muslim girls were supposed to just sit pretty until they made up their minds to get married and start families.
Suddenly feeling dizzy, Mona walked out of the library and into the quad. It was early April and while a bit cool, the temperature outside wasn't unpleasant. The young Arab woman sat on a nearby bench, and wrapped her old Lincoln Catholic Academy letterman jacket tightly around herself. All her life she'd been a tomboy. The first hijab-wearing Arab female rugby player on the all-male rugby team at Lincoln Catholic Academy in the South End of Ottawa, Ontario. Yeah, she made headlines that year. How she loved playing rugby. It had been a while since she played, and even longer since she wore the hijab regularly. These days, she didn't feel like wearing it regularly, she only had it on because she just came from mosque, and nothing her parents Abdul and Fatima Wahid could say would frighten her into submission. She was a grown woman now. Her life, her rules.
The injustices of the conservative Muslim community in which she was born never ceased to amaze or rattle Mona. At the age of twenty two, she stood five feet eleven inches tall, curvy but pretty, with long Black hair and pale brown eyes. The daughter of a Palestinian father and Pakistani mother, Mona considered herself a proud Canadian. After all, she was born in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. In a delivery room inside Civic Hospital. On the first day of February. Her best friend Stacey, a feisty Jamaican chick from Toronto, told her that as an Aquarius, she was bold and headstrong. Mona didn't put too much stock in astrology though it was fun to read in the Ottawa Sun Newspaper which was delivered at the door of her Vanier apartment every morning. The young woman caught sight of a tall Somali guy walking around with a plump white chick. Yeah, another Muslim guy with a Christian chick. Yet Muslim women were forbidden to marry outside their religion. Many Muslim women took this gender-biased rule to seriously that they never even dated men who weren't Muslim because they didn't see a future there. This, at a time when ninety percent of Muslim men under the age of thirty living in Canada found Muslim girls boring and preferred to date non-Muslim women.
Mona Wahid was so absorbed in thought that she barely noticed her friend Louis when he silently sat next to her. He said hello, startling her. Mona almost cried out in surprise. Louis laughed. She laughed too, and playfully smacked him on the shoulder. Louis pretended to flinch. At six-foot-four and 250 pounds, Louis Guillaume was one of the biggest guys at Carleton University. Born and raised in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Louis Guillaume was as Haitian-American as a Wyclef Jean song. His mother Bernice was of French Canadian descent. The tall, red-haired and green-eyed, alabaster-skinned artist had been visiting the City of Cap-Haitien in the island of Haiti when she met Alec Guillaume, Louis father. Alec Guillaume, who was in the process of moving to America at the time. They became fast friends, and even lived together in the States. Eventually they got married and had little Louis. After growing up in Massachusetts, Louis found himself curious about his mother's homeland of Canada. So he opted to study at Carleton University for a couple of years when he found college life in Boston to be boring.
