Can you be a Hijab-wearing pious Muslim woman and still love BDSM? That's partially what this story is about, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Haifa Osman and I'm a young Arab woman living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. I was born in the City of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and have been in Canada since 1999. I am twenty two years old, and study accounting at Algonquin College. I also work part-time as a cashier at Bayshore Mall. Life is pretty boring for me, that's why I make my own fun.
Recently, I got a lecture from my older sister Fatoumatta when she saw me in a YouTube video, talking about sex and BDSM while still wearing my hijab and some tight-ass jeans. Even though I had sunglasses on, my sister still recognized me. And she warned me that if our parents found out, I'd be in deep shit. Damn. Just what I frigging need. That's the thing with Saudi families, they refuse to evolve! As far as I know, ninety nine percent of all Saudis are Muslim, though there is a growing Christian minority back in Saudi Arabia and nearby Qatar. We're a conservative bunch in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to say the least.
Even though there are lots of Saudi guys and Saudi chicks doing freaky shit behind closed doors, sex remains a taboo subject in our community. My cousin Hassan is gay, and left his wife Hamidah and their daughter Khadija to live with his Jamaican boyfriend Theodore Morrison. He left Ottawa for the bright lights of Toronto. Our family curses the day he was born. I don't hate my cousin Hassan. He's the only guy in the family who isn't a jerk or a control freak. There are gay men, lesbians, bisexual women and bisexual men in the Saudi Canadian community but such matters aren't discussed. Saudis like to pretend that LGBT people don't exist in our families and communities. The truth is that they're in the Masjid with us every frigging Friday night.
Long before my cousin Hassan decided to divorce his wife Aisha he confided in me about what he was going through, and I encouraged him to be honest with himself and his wife. In the end, when Aisha flipped out after Hassan confessed his sexual secrets, divorce became inevitable. Muslims worldwide aren't known for their tolerance of sexual minorities and the Saudi community puts the H in homophobic. Honestly, Hassan is lucky he's still alive. We're still friends on Facebook and Twitter. I went to visit him in Toronto and spent a weekend at the house he shares with his partner. Theodore Morrison is a tall, good-looking black guy built like a football player. He's a patrol officer with the Toronto Police Service, if you can believe that. Like Hassan, he was married once before, to a white woman named Valerie with whom he has two sons, Timmy and Joshua. I am cool with Theo, as Hassan calls him, as long as he makes my cousin happy. Live and let live, that's what I say. It is my belief that Allah created all of us and we have no right to judge anyone simply because they're different from us. Amen.
While hanging out in the Algonquin College library, I checked out how many hits my YouTube videos got that day. I was smiling when I saw that my video titled "female domination, Islam and BDSM" had gotten more than sixty thousand hits in five days. That's when someone sat next to me and asked me what I was looking at. I rolled my eyes when I saw who it was. None other than Stephen Rousseau, this tall, slightly chubby black guy who's like obsessed with me. He's originally from Haiti and we've had a couple of classes together. Hello Haifa, he said with a grin, pulling a chair and sitting at the computer terminal next to mine. I offered him a cold smile, and resumed what I was doing. I honestly hoped Stephen would get the hint and stop gawking at my computer screen. No such luck.
Stephen's eyes were riveted on my screen in typical nosy Haitian fashion and the bozo smiled when he recognized me. So you like BDSM, he said with a smirk. It wasn't a question. I looked at him and cocked an eyebrow. So what? I asked him defiantly. Stephen grinned, licked his lips then asked me if I was dominant or submissive. I'm bossy, I said with emphasis. The grin on his face widened. I'm submissive, he said with a shrug. I looked Stephen up and down. The cross-wearing, red-and-blue clad Haitian dude who'd been pestering me like Steve Urkel once pestered Laura Winslow on Family Matters was into BDSM? Damn. Will wonders never cease?