It's often been said that you find out not who or what you think you want but that which you need when you least expect it. I find this to be true, mainly because it happened to me. The name is Khadra Al-Jubeir and I was born in the City of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to a Saudi Arabian father and a Somali immigrant mother. As a Muslim immigrant woman living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, there are certain things I simply cannot escape. I wear the hijab and traditional clothing, and the Western gaze is always upon me. I mystify them, it seems.
My parents, Mahmoud and Hodan Al-Jubeir moved to Ontario, Canada, in 1995. I was four years old at the time and barely remember anything about Saudi Arabia, though I hold dual Saudi/Canadian citizenship. I've always been proud of my heritage, and the reasons are many. When you're a minority in a world that's constantly putting you down, your best self-defence is to uphold and celebrate that which makes you different. What they try to make you feel bad about is something that repels them because they fear it at an almost cellular level. Use it against them.
In the United States, around the time of the Civil Rights Movement and afterwards, black Americans defied white racism by saying 'black is beautiful.' Although I've never been to the U.S. I studied its history, especially the part about their treatment of African-Americans, and I learned from them. There's a reason why men like Barack Obama and Deval Patrick got elected President of the U.S.A. and Governor of Massachusetts, respectively. In the U.S. black people are outspoken in the face of both interpersonal and systemic racism. In Canada, we're all asleep, blissfully unaware, when it comes to race issues.
As the daughter of an interracial couple, I simply cannot escape racism. I stand five feet eleven inches tall, and like all tall women, I tend to attract the male gaze. My skin is dark bronze, my hair is black and somewhat kinky, and my eyes are brown. In spite of my attempts at dieting, my body remains curvaceous, wide-hipped and big-bottomed. My mom told me to stop fighting my African genes. I jokingly told her that I desperately need a smaller ass. Seriously. I've been mistaken for everything from Puerto Rican to Brazilian and even Moroccan. I always tell people that I am biracial, born of Saudi Arabia, the Heartland of Islam, and Somalia, an indefatigable nation that neither Western colonialism nor Islamism have been able to break. I've been told that I'm too dark by some Arabs and too light by certain Somalis. I always tell them that I am simply the way Allah made me. They tend to grow quiet after that, for in the Holy Quran, the Prophet Mohammed, the Last Messenger of Allah, denounced racism and proclaimed that all men, from the Black to the Arab and the White, and everyone in between, are creations of God and thusly equal. Who can argue with that?
I live in the Kanata area of Ottawa, and it's a very nice, if somewhat pricy, neighborhood. My father works as a branch manager at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce or C.I.B.C. and my mother teaches Arabic and Art History at La Cite Collegiale, a French-language community college in Ottawa. My older brother Djohar is at the University of Ottawa, studying medicine. He recently married a young woman named Madeleine Cartier, a French Canadian woman who converted to Islam a few years before they met. They have a son together, my darling little nephew Nasser.
My sister Jamila is at York University, studying anthropology. She's engaged to a guy named Ibrahim, an architecture student from Morocco. As you can see, my family has done fairly well for itself in Canada. We're fiercely proud of our Muslim faith, and uphold it as best we can. One aspect of my culture I don't much care for is that we're under pressure to get married. My parents always tease me about bringing home a nice young man to introduce them to. My mother in particular is fond of lamenting the fact that her youngest daughter ( that's me ) has always shown zero interest in the opposite sex.
The truth is that I've never been what most guys consider particularly attractive or approachable. I'm a tall, somewhat large woman of color sporting the hijab and a long skirt in a world built to worship pale, skinny girls in revealing outfits. Most of the guys I meet at Muslim community events don't light my fire because I find them boring, dull, and utterly predictable. Sometimes I honestly wondered if there was something wrong with me because, well, I found myself lonely. This world isn't for singles, it's a couples world. Don't believe me? Look at tax forms sometime and notice how biased they are in favor of couples, especially those with offspring. See what I mean? It's a couples world and as a perennially single young woman, I felt the pressure. Especially since a lot of the girls at my school, Carleton University, started getting married and getting pregnant left and right.
I learned to politely decline invitations to bridal showers and baby showers. I was always ' too busy'. I work at a Call Center in downtown Ottawa. The job pays eighteen dollars per hour, and in the summer, I work forty-hour weeks. Since I work from seven in the morning till three in the afternoon, I was usually free but I wasn't about to let my marriage-and-baby-obsessed family and friends find that out. Being single isn't a disease, dammit, so why is everyone hell-bent on curing it? Sheesh! Pardon my French but leave me the fuck alone, eh?
On Tuesdays, my ritual involved going to the Silver City movie theater in Ottawa's east end ( I cannot stand the Kanata movie theater, it sucks ) and catch a movie. Just because I make relatively decent money doesn't mean I like to spend. My rent costs four hundred dollars a month and in this economy, I'm not taking chances. I'm a year away from obtaining my bachelor's degree in business administration from Carleton University, and since I didn't qualify for OSAP, I'm paying for the whole thing myself. With that many burdens on my shoulders, you'll forgive me for being a penny pincher.
Anyways, I went to the theater that day and watched the new Spiderman movie, the one with Jamie Foxx as Electro. Surprisingly, for the noon show, there were very few people in the theater. I figured all the fan guys and gals and the Comic Con types would be there but they weren't. Hmmm. I sat alone in the middle of my row, eating a pizza I bought at the Blair Mall food court because I wasn't about to pay the exorbitant prices that movie theaters charge for the grub. Imagine my surprise when this black dude wearing a sports coat and hat came in just as the previews were ending and for some reason, he got the urge to sit right next to me.
Um, what the fuck? I thought, smiling politely at the bozo who just invaded my personal space. Hi Miss K, he said cheerfully, and I almost bolted out of my seat. How do you know my name? I asked politely, feeling a bit alarmed. In the dark, he smiled, showing pearly white teeth. We go way back I'm a friend of your brother's, he said confidently. As I pressed him for more details, the dude had the nerve to shush me. Shhh the movie's starting, he said. Fuming, I pondered if I should get up and switch seats, this white couple came and sat one seat down from us. Immediately they began canoodling and making out. Great, I thought.
I sat there, uncomfortable as can be, and just as the movie began, the black dude next to me gently elbowed me. Miss K I'm getting a drink do you want something? he asked earnestly. I'm cool, I said, clutching my half-eaten pizza almost defensively. He smiled again, and got up. As he made his way down the aisle, dude totally struck my knee with his long frigging legs. My bad sister I'm sorry, he said, laughing as he left. I took a deep breath. You can leave this place, I told myself. Bad enough this bozo sat next to me but the white couple was seriously pushing the boundaries of decency as they made out. I mean, the dude had his hand up his girlfriend's shirt and I don't even want to tell you where her hands were. Westerners, I thought, disgustedly.
Two minutes later, the bozo came back. I'm back Miss K, he said triumphantly, carrying a brown box containing pizzas and drinks. Yippee, I said with admirable false enthusiasm. He resumed his seat next to me, and ate noisily. I closed my eyes, hard. Please keep it down, I said, through gritted teeth. You're still so bossy la petite Cherie, he said, laughing. I stared at him. What did you just say? I asked, now beginning to get seriously angry. That's when the white couple next to us chimed in. Would you guys mind keeping it down? The white guy said.
Mind your fucking business, the bozo said, glaring at them and clutching his pop can angrily. That did it, the couple got up and went to sit further down. I breathed a sigh of relief. Involuntarily I smiled. Thank you for that, I said, looking at the bozo with something approaching gratitude. De rien Khadra, he said, nodding graciously before popping a huge slice of pizza into his mouth. I plopped down in my seat, and tried my best to enjoy the rest of the movie. Spiderman kind of sucked, in part because the British guy simply can't fill Toby Maguire's shoes, but Jamie Foxx made for a charismatic and sympathetic villain as Electro. As the lights came on and I got ready to leave, the bozo got up and winked at me. That was fun, he said, belching loudly and stretching.
I shook my head, amazed that someone this charmingly uncouth could exist in today's world. What is your name? I asked. Jamal James Lafleur at your service, he said, taking off his Boston Red Sox baseball cap for good measure. He extended his hand for me to shake. I looked at him dubiously before shaking his hand. You know my brother? I asked. Jamal ( if that's his name ) smiled. Indeed I met you three years ago when I joined your family for Eid feast, he said confidently, as we exited the theater.
Oh, I said, vaguely remembering my brother Djohar inviting one of his American friends to the Eid feast with us a while back. Suddenly I remembered a particularly obnoxious American who criticized all things Canadian, declared Dunkin Donuts superior to Tim Horton's ( hell no ) and even said the U.S. should have annexed us a long time ago. I got so mad I called him an asshole. You must be J.J. from Boston, I said, recalling the one guy who got under my skin so much that I wanted to smack him as he insulted my country while dining with my family and I under our roof.
