"Hmm, what if I skipped work today?" Sam Camara asked himself as he rode the 95 Cambrian bus leaving the suburb of Barrhaven, Ontario, for the east end of Ottawa. After the recent changes in the bus lines and schedules, this latest bus now stopped right in front of his townhouse. Even this early in the morning, the bus was packed with all kinds of folks going to work. Sam seriously wished he had the courage to ditch work and do whatever...
Sam was born in the City of Chicago, Illinois, to a Senegalese Muslim immigrant father, Samir Camara, and a White American mother, Rose Dawson. The young biracial man had a devil of a time adjusting to life in metropolitan Chicago, one of the most storied (and dangerous) cities in all of North America. When Sam's parents got divorced while he was in high school, his mother moved to Ontario, Canada, to take a tech support job with Nortel.
Long after Nortel Networks went bust, Sam and his mother were still doing well. Rose Dawson got remarried, to a Nigerian-born Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable named William Agbaje, and they bought a house in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. Sam found life in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, much simpler if duller than life in the City of Chicago, Illinois. He enrolled at Carleton University, where he studied business administration with a minor in political science. After graduation, Sam sought work in the government sector and ended up working for C.I.C.
"Sam, why do you like us Pakistani women so much? Oh, and not only that, but you seem to mainly like the older ones, instead of young ladies your own age, this is really peculiar," said Madina Agarwal, and Sam paused, and considered his next words carefully. The tall, burly, twentysomething young African American pursed his lips, then smiled before answering the lady's urgent missive. Certain questions, even among friends, definitely require careful handling...
Sam Camara has known his good friend and co-worker Madina Agarwal for some time. They'd gotten hired at the same time by the downtown Ottawa branch of Citizenship & Immigration Canada during the reign, ahem, the administration of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, demigod of the Conservatives and hater of minorities. Not an easy time to be a minority employee of the immigration bureau, which the Harper government saw as the ultimate safeguard, designed to keep unwanted minorities out of Canada.
Sam Camara and Madina Agarwal had been through it all, and then some. Along the way, they forged a friendship that endured. Once upon a time, they were the only non-White faces working on the third floor of the building, where busy Canadian government workers decided the fate of countless minorities who came in, day in and day out, in search of better lives. Lambs walking into the very headquarters of the wolves, it would seem...
Everywhere Sam Camara and Madina Agarwal went inside the C.I.C. offices, they were the recipient of sometimes hostile stares and weird comments. What a pair the two of them made. The tall, athletic, American-flavored, light-skinned young biracial man with the Afro and the dapper style, and the short (Madina was only five-foot-six), curvy, brown-skinned and ever-smiling young South Asian Muslim woman who wore the Hijab on a part-time basis, read Cosmo and raved about The Walking Dead. They were part of the new, more diverse Canada. In Conservative-ruled Canada, they were exceptions with a Capital E.
"Honestly, my dear lady, I haven't a clue, Pakistanis and people of African descent typically don't mesh, but I like what I like, I remember this gal named Pooja whom I dated during my freshman year of college, she was cute but her mother, who disapproved of us, was much hotter with a much bigger ass," Sam replied. Sighing, he stood there, smiling at the memory, and Madina nudged him with her elbow. Sam did have a bad habit of daydreaming, and Madina was always happy to help him snap out of it, usually through physical contact...
"Stop daydreaming, Sam," Madina chastised him, and Sam grinned, and shrugged. They were sitting inside the C.D. Howe Building in downtown Ottawa, on a snowy day. Earlier, Sam had a tough but ultimately worthwhile time dealing with a Muslim immigrant family from the City of Eldoret, Kenya, which came to their permanent residency hearing with only about seventy five percent of the required papers.
Always a pleasure to deal with the ill-prepared, Sam grumbled inwardly, knowing he had his work cut out for him. Working for the immigration branch of the Canadian government meant doing the dull work of processing and verification, but it also meant that the workers had to toe the line. The Conservative government was cracking down on immigrants from non-European nations, putting Liberal-minded government workers like Sam Camara in a tight spot.
"I was just thinking about work," Sam replied, and Madina rolled her eyes, clearly not believing him. Sam smiled, as he remembered how he accepted the Kenyan Muslim family's expired work permits as part of their identity documents, and, along with their blessedly up-to-date passports, he was able to grant them permanent residency in Canada. They hugged one another quite happily, the tall, burly, dark-skinned father, Omar Odinga, the curvy mother Fatima, and the chubby son Ibrahim with the buzz cut and Spiderman T-shirt.
At a time when the Harper-led Canadian government was deporting Africans, Arabs and South Asian immigrants in droves, Sam did his best to help those poor souls. While most of his colleagues, White males and White females galore, prided themselves on denying permanent residency to seventy percent of the claimants who came to them, Sam did just the opposite. He granted permanent residency to any minority who came before him, as long as they lacked a criminal record and any link to terror. That was his biggest pet peeve. Sam accepted everyone, except the worst of the worst...
