"Joseph, I have to warn you, if you keep hanging around me, you're going to convert to Islam," Wafa "Wawa" Ali said, and the curvy, bronze-skinned and raven-haired young Saudi Arabian Muslim woman smiled coyly at her friend and classmate, Joseph Berry. The tall, slender, Afro-sporting, brown-skinned young man, originally from the City of London, U.K. looked at her and shook his head. Fat chance of that happening, Joseph thought with a smirk.
As much as Joseph liked Wawa, who was turning out to be quite different from what he expected, especially given her nationality and religion, Joseph had no desire to enter her rather complicated and mystifying world. Besides, he met Wawa at a very peculiar time in his life. His relationship with a certain big-bottomed Jamaican beauty named Carole Hawthorne had ended, and he was bored, restless, semi-depressed, and, as befitting a young man of his years, ever horny...
"Nope, Wawa, you're tripping, my friend," Joseph replied, and upon hearing his response, Wawa simply smiled at him, and winked confidently. The two of them sat inside the Brighton University library, one dour Sunday evening in late November. For a London lad like Joseph, southern England was boring as can be, and not for the first time he regretted the fact that his parents, Luther Berry and Julianne Brinkley-Berry sent him there. He was having too wild a time at Cambridge, and they banished him to this third-rate school, where he was surrounded by rural types...
"Joseph, habibi, Saudi Arabian women like myself are addictive," Wawa said, and with that, she licked her full lips, a gesture which registered with a certain part of Joseph's anatomy. The young biracial man shifted in his seat, and crossed his legs, and Wawa, noticing his discomfort, flashed him a smile a shark would recognize. They were supposed to be working on their assignment, Death Penalty In England, for their political science class, but they were too busy flirting instead...
"Wawa, if I keep listening to you, I might actually fail this class," Joseph replied, and Wawa laughed and playfully slapped his arm. Joseph chuckled softly. It was astonishing how familiar they'd become with one another. Boundaries such as religion and cultural quickly fell out the window once he and Wawa got to know each other. All that remained, once the smoke cleared, was the two of them, a taciturn man and an incredibly feisty woman...
Joseph met Wawa a couple of months ago, while working as a tour guide for the Brighton University Office of International Students. That's where he met the twenty-something, seemingly reserved, Hijab-wearing and outwardly pious newcomer from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The one with the lovely brown eyes and coy smile. Joseph, a prim and proper English lad, felt a stir in certain parts of himself when Wawa looked at him. Puzzled, he felt drawn to this mysterious woman...
As fate and luck would have it, Joseph and Wawa ended up in the same political science class, and aside from the contract instructor, Mr. Raj Singh, they were the only non-whites there. In this small town, barely two hours away from the City of London proper, Joseph and Wawa felt like a couple of aliens. The people of Brighton weren't used to dealing with Africans, Arabs, Asians and others. And they didn't mind showing it to such people, in various ways, when they encountered them...
For these and many other reasons, Joseph and Wawa began hanging out together, as ethnic oddities in a largely homogenous English town. They bonded over shared stories of uncomfortable moments spent dealing with these rural English folk, who weren't shy about telling them to go back to the city. The two strangers became close friends, united by adversity, like soldiers hunkering in the same bunker, with bombs falling all around them...
"Joseph, habibi, the Creator made mankind strong, but He also made womankind both strong and wise, you should do as I say," Wawa said and Joseph nodded, and then looked out the window pensively. Wawa fell silent, having a pretty clear guess as to where Joseph's thoughts went. He's thinking about his ex-girlfriend again, Wawa thought, and for some reason, her heart winced.
"I've made some foolish decisions recently that's for sure, especially when it comes to women," Joseph said, and when he looked at Wawa, and saw the concern on her lovely face, he flashed her a meek smile and shrugged. He acted as though nothing bothered him, but his lady friend knew better. Wawa drew closer to Joseph, and all the concern and affection that she felt for this annoyingly charming, or charmingly annoying, taciturn young infidel bubbled to the surface.
"Joseph, I know your pain, Wallahi, believe me, I left behind a country, and a husband who mistreated me, and had to start from scratch, believe me, you can get over a lot of things," Wawa said, and Joseph looked at her, and he could have sworn her lovely brown eyes looked moist. Wawa smiled, sniffed, and then gently laid her hand on his shoulder, then got up and gave him a meaningful look before walking away.
Joseph sat there and watched Wawa walk away, and for a brief moment, he was struck by something which should have occurred to him a long time ago. Wawa is amazing, and she cares about me, Joseph thought with a start. In that moment, Joseph stopped thinking about his ex, and his eyes, mind and soul focused on a certain short, curvy, big-bottomed, Hijab-wearing cutie who was soon vanishing from his line of sight...
"I always end up with the wrong man," Wawa said to herself as she hurried back to her on-campus residence, and she bit back a sob. She thought of her old life in Dammam, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Ten years ago, nineteen-year-old Wawa married Hafiz Alharbi, the son of a wealthy Saudi family from Medina. At first, Hafiz seemed charming, but later, he turned out to be abusive and controlling. In the end, their relationship proved unbearable for Wawa, and they got divorced.
That was a long time ago, and Wawa was a different person back then. Following her divorce, Wawa left Saudi Arabia and lived in Canada for a time, studying business at Concordia University in the City of Montreal, Quebec. After graduating with her business degree, Wawa returned to Saudi Arabia and worked as a money keeper for Bin Hassan, one of the biggest financial institutions in her country. Feeling unsatisfied, Wawa left Saudi Arabia, this time for the United Kingdom.
After applying to London's Cambridge University and getting rejected, Wawa opted for her second choice, Brighton University, where she met a most remarkable young man...one with smoldering eyes who made her heart go pitter-patter. Wawa surprised herself when she started to develop feelings for Joseph, who was pretty charming when he wanted to be...
Wawa smiled to herself as she recalled those times when she walked around the Stratford City Mall in London with Joseph. Arm in arm, they walked through various stores, in the world-class city featured in so many movies and novels. Joseph, a native Londoner, showed his hometown to Wawa, taking her to malls, movie theaters, restaurants, museums and the like, and in time, she fell in love with London...and with him. Sadly, the lad couldn't shut up about what's-her-face. Sheesh!
Joseph sat there, and watched Wawa walk away, and that's when it hit him like a ton of bricks. Wawa really does care about me, underneath all the sarcasm, and I've been blathering on about my ex like an idiot, Joseph thought, and he grinned and shook his head. By the time he got to his feet, however, a certain curvy, short and gorgeous Saudi gal was well on her way out of the Brighton University library...
Wawa went to her on-campus flat, and once there, she took a shower. Her one-bedroom apartment was nothing fancy, especially since she was paying half the rent, the other half was paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Education. Wawa signed a deal with them that she would come back to Saudi Arabia with her new British university degree, and put it to work for the economic and social well-being of her country. Well, that was the plan anyway...
If Wawa were honest with herself, she would have to admit that she'd grown fond of life outside Saudi Arabia. She loved her homeland, but felt very little attachment to it these days. Her parents were dead, and her ex-husband and his family cursed her very existence. Wawa always dreamed of starting a new life in the West somewhere, but these days, people in places like Canada, America, Australia and the United Kingdom seemed to hate Muslims...
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia seemed like a prison for women, at least that's how many western feminists described it. Wawa loved her homeland, and she remembered her parents, Wahid and Noor Ali quite fondly. They were wonderful and loving people. Wawa also remembered her neighbors, and her first love, a young Sudanese worker named Mahfouz. This had been her first exposure to men of African descent, and it was an experience which changed Wawa's life...
When Wawa Ali met Joseph Berry at Brighton University, she'd been astonished at how much the twenty-one-year-old Londoner, born of a Jamaican immigrant father and a white British mother, resembled her lost love, Mahfouz. They were indeed very different men, of course. Mahfouz was a free spirit while Joseph was no-nonsense, too moody and serious for his own good. Wawa remembered the passionate nights she spent with Mahfouz, during that last summer before she was made to marry that idiot Alharbi.
Sitting on the couch, watching The Great British Bake-Off on Channel 4, Wafa thought of her lost love Mahfouz. She smiled to herself as she recalled how she felt in Mahfouz's arms. The tall, bearded, dark-skinned and strongly built Afro-Arabian brother kissed her passionately, as if he would never kiss her again, as they embraced in a backroom inside her parents villa...