From Lebanon with Love

Always thank the Creator for His blessings instead of complaining. I think if more people remembered to do that daily, their lives would be better. My name is Elijah Montoya-Stephens, and I’m a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I am happily married to a wonderful woman, Isabelle Marwah-Stephens and we have a son together, our little angel Michael. I recently earned my MBA from Suffolk University and I am a managing partner at Sandstone Realty. We have locations in Brockton, Randolph, Boston, Bridgewater and as of last month, Plymouth. Life is good, but once upon a time, things were really murky and chaotic in my life.

I was born in the City of Brockton, Massachusetts, to a Puerto Rican mother and African-American father. My mother, Elisabeth Montoya, initially raised me on her own because my father, Brockton Police patrolman Elroy Stephens died on the line of duty six months after I was born. My life is one packed with tragedies. Always has been from the get-go. That’s just my lot in life and I’ve long since learned to accept it. You’ve got to roll with the punches, ladies and gentlemen.

Statistics would have you believe terrible things about young men from certain ethnic backgrounds who grew up without their fathers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Especially since I had the most wonderful father figure anyone could ever have. I’m talking of course about UPS driver Michael Jenkins, my stepfather. He moved to New England from his hometown of Bethel Town, Jamaica, ten years before he came into our lives. A more loving man and father figure couldn’t be found anywhere. Michael Jenkins raised me as though I were his own. He married my mother two years after we were first introduced. When my twin half-sisters Jacqueline and Roxana were born a year later, our family was complete.

In 2008, I graduated from Brockton High School and won an academic scholarship to Northeastern University in Boston. That’s when everything started to go wrong. You see, I’d grown up in a fairly protective environment. School and the library along with the YMCA during the week, church on weekends. That’s what filled my days back in high school. Once I set foot on the Northeastern University campus, I experienced a brand new world. A world of parties, hot girls, NCAA basketball games, and more parties. While on campus, I met this lovely young woman named Zainab Hassan, and she took my breath away.

At first glance I thought Zainab was a Latina, one of my mother’s people. You should have seen her, man. Five feet eleven inches tall, curvy and oh-so fine, with light bronze skin, curly black hair and almond-shaped golden brown eyes. Yes, this lady was definitely easy on the eyes. Would you believe that she walked up to ME? Now, I’m a decent-looking guy, but typically, girls as hot as her don’t just walk up to me. I’m five-foot-nine, which is decent height for a guy, I guess, but I’ve often wished I were bigger and taller. I’m only a hundred and fifty eight pounds. That’s not good. In high school, I took up wrestling, which was cool. It definitely helped me with my confidence. Still, the fact that I’ve always liked tall girls and they tend to go for taller guys also vexes me but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I was nervous when Zainab Hassan approached me, and spoke to me in Arabic. I mean, I was in the food court, eating lunch solo and she just walked up to me and started talking…in a language I didn’t understand. Sorry ma’am I don’t understand you, I managed to squeak out with a polite if nervous smile. Sorry I thought you were Moroccan, the ravishing brunette said. I’m half black and half Hispanic, so people are often asking me about my ethnicity. I’ve been mistaken for a lot of things, never Moroccan, though.

Where is this chick from? That’s what I wondered. Oh, well. Only one way to find out, isn’t it? I looked at her, smiled and introduced myself. After a brief hesitation, she shook my hand and told me her name. Thus I was introduced to Zainab Hassan, an international student from the City of Jounieh, somewhere in the Republic of Lebanon. That’s really cool, I said, looking at her while nodding as if I knew zip about her country of origin.

I was smitten with Zainab at first sight, as you can imagine. Especially since she joined me for lunch. Everyone looked at us. Yup, that’s right, the tall, gorgeous Arab woman is sitting with the skinny brother in the tracksuit. We learned quite a bit about each other that day. Zainab was new to the States, that much I guessed by her accent. Oh, and the lady wasn’t just a pretty face. She had brains up the Yin Yang. Zainab came to Northeastern to study business administration, and she’s the recipient of a scholarship by the Lebanese Ministry of Education which sponsors talented Lebanese students abroad. Brains, beauty and booty. Looks like I hit the Jackpot without even trying, eh?

Zainab and I began hanging out, on the NEU campus and later, we hung out off-campus. The gal was curious about Boston and since I’d been here my whole life, I set out to show her the best of what the Bean had to offer. I took her to watch the Celtics play, and we were together the night they defeated the Los Angeles Lakers and became NBA champions. Zainab devoured everything American life had to offer, and she told me she was falling in love with Boston. That’s okay, because a certain Bostonian had fallen in love with her. Me. Zainab liked me, that much I could tell.

Although shy and reticent at first, Zainab grew more comfortable with me as the year rolled on. We walked through Boston Common together, hand in hand. We went to the movies and restaurants together. I even introduced her to my family. My folks were smitten with her. My twin sisters Jacqueline and Roxana typically don’t like the girls I date ( I went through a phase when I was really into ghetto chicks ) but they liked Zainab. I liked Zainab, and she liked me. So what’s wrong?

Don’t ask me how but I sensed some reluctance on Zainab’s part. As if she was holding back somehow. I asked her about it repeatedly and she kept telling me everything was fine. We had no barriers between us. We stayed overnight in each other’s dorms, and made passionate love. I knew every inch of that fantastic body of hers. I love the smell and taste of Zainab first thing in the morning. I would lick and kiss her over, flicking my tongue over the areolas of her tits while fingering her hairy, sweet pussy.

I loved making love to Zainab, my desert queen, my Arabian wild flower as I called her in some of my drunken-love moments. The passion in that woman simply amazed me. Sometimes, as we made love, I felt like she was trying to kill using sex. I mean, Zainab would suck my dick like there was no tomorrow, greedily swallowing the whole thing. Sometimes she even fingered my ass. I delighted in putting her on all fours and spanking her thick, shapely Lebanese booty while slamming my dick into her. Oh, yeah. We shared some passionate nights together, Zainab and I.

Sadly, all the passion in the world can’t salvage a relationship based on lies or half-truths. Zainab and I come from different worlds but we’d been lying to ourselves from the beginning. We told ourselves that our differences didn’t matter. Many interracial and interfaith couples run into those same problems. You can’t run from the truth. Either you face it head on and overcome the adversities that come your way, or you fall apart. The end came sooner than I expected. One day, Zainab sat me down in our favorite little restaurant, Au Bon Pain in Boston’s Back Bay, and told me the awful truth.

Zainab looked me in the eyes and told me that she felt like our relationship couldn’t go anywhere. When I asked her why, she told me that she’s Muslim, and her family wouldn’t approve of her dating a Christian, especially one of even partial African descent. Oh, and typically, the Arabs aren’t in love with us Americans. The entire Middle East has a negative view of the United States of America. They see us as the indefatigable backers of Israel, their Zionist oppressor. Why are you with me? I asked Zainab, point-blank. I took her hand in mine, and squeezed it. I love you Elijah but we can’t be together, Zainab said, pulling her hand out of mine. Then she got up and walked away. I sat there, completely numb. Dude, what the hell just happened? That’s what I wanted to know.

You know the song “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”? Totally applies to my life. After Zainab left me, I spiraled into a very dark period of my life. I stopped going to class and started drinking. I partied all the time with the few friends I had, trying to kill the pain with liquor, music, and anonymous sex with campus girls whom I wouldn’t even recognize the next day. It got to the point that my GPA hit a new low, and both my parents and my academic advisor got worried. I ignored these people, whose only concern was my well-being, and I continued with my self-destructive lifestyle.

That’s how I ended at the Sandy Hill Rehabilitation Center, after a drunk driving episode which ( mercifully ) only resulted in my getting hurt and nobody else. I had hit rock bottom and there was nowhere to go but up. The judge had been mercifully lenient, since it was my first time in trouble with the law. He could have thrown the book at me but he didn’t. While in rehab, I had a lot of time to think about all the things I’ve done. I thought about how I hurt my family, how I jeopardized my studies at Northeastern University, and my life itself. I had fallen far but was it too late to get back up?

While in rehab, I met a young woman named Isabelle Marwah, and we became friends. Just under six feet tall and slender, with light bronze skin, short spiky black hair and lime-green eyes. As it turns out, Isabelle was a fellow university student who’d fallen on hard times. A first-year student at Suffolk, this gal had done a lot of wild things in a short amount of time and was in over her head. The daughter of Lebanese Christian immigrants, Isabelle Marwah grew up in a restrictive household and went wild while at Boston University.

Sex, drugs and Rock N Roll, the reasons why Isabelle ended up in rehab. Did I mention that she’s also an orphan whose parents left her a small fortune? Rehab, man, it attracts all kinds. In this most unlikely of places, two people as dissimilar as Isabelle Marwah and I became friends. We totally bonded, actually. Patients aren’t supposed to get too close while in rehab but Isabelle and I found ways around that rule. We spent a lot of time in each other’s rooms, if you know what I mean. I exited rehab sixty one days after entering it, and walked out a brand new man.

Also going home that day was my pal Isabelle. We walked out, arm in arm, and were greeted by my parents. As you can imagine, my mom and dad weren’t thrilled to see me all chummy with a fellow rehab, um, person. Still, Isabelle had no one in the world. Her only surviving relative was her paternal uncle Louis Marwah, and he was too busy with his wife and family in the City of Dearborn, Michigan, to bother coming to distant Milton, Massachusetts to help his wayward niece. Isabelle was alone in the world. I’ve done some foolish things but at least I’ve got my stepfather, my mother and my sisters to support me. Let us be your family my dear, my mother said, hugging Isabelle while staring at me. I smiled and nodded. Yes, mom, apparently I’ve got a thing for Arab girls but lucky for us, this one is a fellow Christian. This was the beginning of new and better times for all of us…

Isabelle Marwah and I returned to our lives, or what’s left of them. Honestly, at first I just wanted to get back to Northeastern University and forget everything about rehab. I also felt like getting away from Isabelle at times, because she reminded me of a time of my life I’d rather forget. And yet there was something compelling about her. I found her very attractive, and like me, she had troubled soul written all over her. We became part of each other’s support network, encouraging one another to stay away from drugs and alcohol. Lord knows we’d lost enough to these vices…

I found out from my old advisor at Northeastern University that my antics got my scholarship revoked. In order words, NEU was kicking me out. I still wanted to continue with my education. So what’s a fella to do? At Isabelle’s suggestion, I applied to Suffolk University. I got accepted, and resumed my studies, with Isabelle by my side. One day, while walking through campus together, we were approached by two well-dressed gentlemen, a Latino guy named Enrico and a black guy named Leonard. They were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

We talked to them, and then agreed to visit their church. Truth be told, I hadn’t gone to church in a long time and Isabelle considered herself an Agnostic. When we visited the church, we found it very friendly and welcoming. We started going regularly, for the membership was diverse. Lots of African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics. Lots of people in their twenties, young professionals and students living either in Boston or the outlying areas such as Milton, Randolph, Brockton, etc. We began studying both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and both appealed to us. If any couple out there needs structure and discipline, along with God’s help, it’s Isabelle and I. In many ways, the church was just what we needed.

Our lives changed after we became members. My family was initially worried about Isabelle and I joining the Mormon faith, which they regarded as kooky, but eventually they grew to accept us, especially after noticing the changes in us. I haven’t had a drink in years. And I feel good. My grades at Suffolk University improved, and I graduated with honors with a business degree in 2012. Isabelle Marwah graduated with honors with a degree in psychology that same year. We got married in the summer of 2012, in a ceremony attended by our family and friends. A son was born to us in 2013, little Michael. Life is good, wouldn’t you say? Good day, and may the Maker bless you.