Whenever I tell people that I am married to a beautiful, wonderful man of African descent, they find this strange. Especially once they find out what my background is. My name is Lilah Afzal. I was born in the town of Antoura in a mountainous region of the Republic of Lebanon, but my parents, Joseph and Miriam Afzal moved to the town of Montreal in the Quebec region of Canada shortly after my birth. I grew up in beautiful Montreal, and consider myself a Canadian of Lebanese heritage more than anything else. Canada is a complicated country where racial, religious and nationalistic politics are becoming a source of conflict, even though we're all hiding our heads under the umbrella of multiculturalism.
My parents adjusted to life in Canada nicely enough, for they were in their early twenties when they came here. Dad went back to school and became an accountant, eventually becoming a branch manager with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. As for my mother, she runs a small bookstore in Montreal's north end. There is a sizeable population of Arabs in the City of Montreal, although we kind of stood out since we were Maronite Christians from old Lebanon. My parents are devout Christians who attend church twice a week, but I considered myself a lapsed Christian until I met a man who changed my life. I was in my third year in the Criminology program at McGill University when I met Julian Samson, a newcomer to Montreal from the island of Haiti, somewhere in the Caribbean.
I bumped into Julian Samson while visiting my girlfriend Amelia Muhammad at the University of Montreal. Amelia and I have been best friends for many years, although we couldn't be more different. Amelia and I are the same age, and we're both Lebanese Christians but that's where the similarities end. She's short, barely five-foot-four, slim, with spiky Black hair, light bronze skin and pale green eyes. I'm tall, maybe one inch over six feet while barefoot, and I'm a bit chubby, to put it mildly. I don't know where I get it from since the women in my family are short, slim and pale but my body is curvy, my hips are wide and my ass is big. I tried to get rid of it but it stubbornly hung on. I have long Black hair that stays curly and unruly no matter what I do with it, and my skin is dark bronze. My father told me that his grandfather was of partial Berber heritage, which might explain his dark bronze skin and mine. I don't look a thing like my mother, who often gets mistaken for White because of her reddish brown hair, porcelain skin and emerald eyes. My mother is Lebanese through and true, but with some European and Turkish roots as well. She's small and slender while I'm almost WNBA tall. I am tough, quirky and athletic. At Saint Marguerite Academy in Montreal, I played soccer, rugby and I was also a varsity wrestler. The definition of tomboy in the dictionary should have a picture of me attached to it.
Anyhow, where was I? Sorry, folks, but I get distracted sometimes and my mind tends to wander. I went to the University of Montreal library to meet with Amelia so she could introduce me to her new boyfriend, a handsome Egyptian guy named Jacob Funsani Mokhtar, the guy she wouldn't stop raving about. From all the things she said about him, I felt like I knew him already. Jacob was Coptic, hailing originally from the City of Damietta in the Republic of Egypt. He was taking up civil engineering at the University of Montreal. When Amelia introduced us, I wasn't disappointed. He was tall, easily six-foot-three, bronze-skinned, Black-haired and handsome.
Amelia forgot one tiny detail in her rants about Jacob, if you ask me. The dude was built like a professional wrestler. Amelia wasn't exaggerating when she said he was easy on the eyes. Amelia held his hand the whole time the three of us sat inside a Tim Horton's restaurant near the campus library. I could tell she was smitten with him. What an odd pair they made. Jacob played soccer for the University of Montreal and Amelia abhorred anything related to sports. I pointed that out to her and she shot me an evil look. She flashed Jacob a big smile and told him how much she loved soccer. I chuckled softly. Ah, the things we do for love.
