Summer has finally come to the City of Ottawa, Ontario, after the coldest winter ever. Personally, while everyone is complaining about the blistering heat which chokes the Canadian Capital, I am loving every moment of it. I absolutely love the heat, and I wish them White folks would shut the hell up and enjoy the bright sunlight. Can't be winter forever, dammit!
My name is Samira Ibrahim and I'm a young Muslim woman of Somali and Moroccan descent living in the Vanier sector. Everyone talks bad about Vanier like it's the hood, full of drug dealers and prostitutes. The truth is that it's actually a nice place full of hard-working people. It's not all crime and bullshit. Vanier is a working-class neighborhood if you ask me.
Perhaps I have a bias because I'm a Francophone and no spot in the City of Ottawa is more French-friendly than Vanier. I was born in the City of Montreal, Quebec, and love my francophone roots. I miss la belle province but for now, the City of Ottawa is home. I'm in the MBA program at Carleton University and I'm not leaving the province of Ontario until I complete my degree. Color me ambitious, I guess.
Clad in a bright red and blue T-shirt featuring the Montreal Canadiens logo, a long Black skirt and a modest ebony Hijab, I looked damn good and I absolutely knew it. My father, Yousef Ibrahim is originally from the City of Mogadishu, Somalia, and met my mother, Mariam Fakri, while studying at the University of Montreal in the 1980s. My mother was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, and moved to Quebec for University studies. They hit it off, got married and had little old me.
I've often been told that I stand out in a crowd, and it's largely due to my great height. I stand six feet two inches tall, with light brown skin and almond-shaped golden brown eyes. My features are a beautiful blend of Northeast African and Arabian, thanks to my truly unique parentage. You don't often see Somali men with Moroccan women, or Arab women of any nationality, for that matter. That's a peculiar thing in the Muslim world.
Lots of Muslim men, from places like the Arab world, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia often marry African Muslim women but those same men don't like when women from their communities get with African Muslim men. My father told me that when he met with my mother's Moroccan parents, they were less than thrilled to see their precious daughter in love with a Somali guy. Even though the Holy Koran states that Muslims of all colors should marry one another and form one gloriously diverse Islamic community or Ummah.
When I'm out with my parents, we get stared at a lot. For the most part, it's White Canadians staring at us but Muslims of all shades look at us as well. We are different with a capital T. The interracial Muslim couple with their awkwardly tall daughter. Welcome to my life. I ignore the bozos who stare at me and my family. Since us Muslims tend to have larger families than White Canadians, and our reproductive rate is second to none, someday we'll be the majority in Canada. Just you wait and see.
That fine Sunday morning, I went for a walk from my spot off of Overbrook all the way to Prince Albert Street, before making my way to this quaint little Haitian restaurant called Soleil Des Iles. In French, it means "Sun of the Islands". I absolutely love Haitian food, and Soleil Des Iles is one of the best. There's another reason why I like going there, and it has to do with Jean-Claude, one of the regulars.
Six months ago, I was walking down Mac Arthur Avenue after doing some shopping at Loblaw's supermarket one late evening when something real bad happened. You see, Vanier used to be a mostly White, French Canadian town, until a lot of us visible minorities started arriving in the 1990s. We came from Somalia, Morocco, Algeria, Djibouti, and a bunch of other countries. Slowly, we spread until we became the majority. Now Vanier is a mostly minority area, and lots of White folks don't like it.
