"In my Islamic faith, it's considered perfectly okay for the men to marry women of other faiths, other cultures and other backgrounds, since it's up to the man to spread the faith, but the women are prevented from doing so, it's simply the norm," Wahida Salman said with a casual shrug. The young woman looked at her good friend and classmate, then shrugged fatalistically.
"Wahida, don't you think that's an ugly double standard?" Floyd Mayberry asked, and the tall, dark and handsome, bald-headed African American scholar stroked his goateed chin and looked at Wahida thoughtfully. The two of them were seated inside the lounge located not far from the University of Calgary library. It was a cold day in mid-November, and snow blanketed the bulk of provincial Alberta, drowning the landscape in whiteness.
Even after living in the City of Calgary for four years, Floyd Mayberry was still getting used to Alberta's rigorous winters. The place was nothing like his stomping grounds of metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. The southern winters were mild compared to the Albertan ones. Floyd moved to Alberta after graduating from Morehouse College with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and ended up working for GAM Tech, the rising technology giant that was taking Alberta by storm.
Floyd initially impressed the Canadian tech giant with his programming skills, and ended getting a mid-level management with them. In order to stay sharp, Floyd enrolled at the University of Calgary to get his MBA, and along the way he met Wahida Salman, a beautiful international student originally from El Bagour, northern Egypt. The two of them struck an unlikely friendship, and had been in each other's lives ever since.
Floyd had grown to care deeply for Wahida, and the short, curvy, raven-haired and bronze-skinned Egyptian beauty amazed him with her charm and wit. Wahida completely shattered Floyd's initial assumptions about Middle-Eastern women, and people from the Islamic world in general. At first, during his initial interactions with Arabs and other Muslims in Calgary, Floyd thought of them as a strange, forbidden bunch.
Along came Wahida, the feisty Muslim gal destined to be his companion, and she shattered all of Floyd's misconceptions about the Islamic world. Thanks to Wahida, Floyd learned that Muslims weren't a homogenous group but a kaleidoscope of cultures, races, ethnicities, sects and nationalities. Wahida was simply the most liberal Muslim woman that Floyd had ever met. The curvy gal wore the Hijab...and also liked to chug down Alexander Keith's beer like it was nobody's business. Wahida was fun, vibrant and cool, and Floyd liked those things about her.
"Floyd, I don't make the rules, I'm just telling you that my ex, Salim, dates white girls because he can, and that's his right," Wahida replied, and there was a hollow, haunted look on the young Middle-Eastern woman's lovely face. A few weeks ago, her former boyfriend Salim Ali, a young Arab man whom she once saw herself marrying dumped her because, well, he found a better deal. Apparently, Wahida was too conservative and boring for Salim, and white girls were more fun.
