Iblis : I Bring You Hell!

Even now, sitting in the cold and uninviting interview/interrogation room with CIA agent Kristina Bellman and her diminutive Asian-Canadian counterpart, Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent Victor James Lee, I can't believe some of the things I've seen and done. The tall pretty blonde American woman in the smart business suit fixes her steely blue eyes on me, as if boring straight into my skull. Oh, I see someone's got their game face on today. Sorry, lady. After the things I've seen, nothing on this earth can scare me, least of all you. I've looked into the eyes of true evil, and unless it's stopped, Allah have mercy on all of our souls. My name is Saladin Reginald Osman and I approve this message. These sorry excuses for international spies want to know what I've been up to. Well, I'm going to do the most outrageous thing I can think of. I'm going to tell them the truth.

When I look back at the twists and turns that my life has taken, it makes me almost believe in fate though I'd like to think that we make our own destinies. A little backstory about me, if you will. I was born in the City of Edmonton, Alberta, to a secular Somali immigrant father and Syrian Christian mother. I know, it's definitely not the kind of pairing you hear about every day. When my dad, Hussein Osman, met my mother, Regina Khaddam at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in September 1985, it was love at first sight I guess. As you can imagine, their respective families were less than thrilled once they found out about their relationship. To this day I've never met or had any dealings with my maternal grandparents or anyone from my mother's side of the family.

Anyhow, I came into the world on February 7, 1989. The only son of a truly unique couple, I was destined to a life of adventure and strife, but I didn't know it at the time. By and large, I had a happy childhood. My dad worked as a civil engineer for Bal-Comp Engineering Limited, one of the best companies in the province of Alberta. My mother worked as a corrections officer, opting for a career in law enforcement after getting fired by the Hydroponics supplier for which she worked. With Alberta fast becoming a very attractive destination for scores of African, Arab, south Asian and Latin American immigrants, the province definitely needs more police and corrections officer. Not that immigrants mean trouble of course but one never knows.

In 2007, I enrolled at the University of Calgary, where I studied criminal justice. While doing my undergrad, I met two people I shall never forget until the day I die. Viola Darwin, a tall, curvy and big-bottomed, absolutely gorgeous young Black woman of Jamaican descent who became the first woman I fell in love with, and Rudolph "Rudy" Giovanni, a tall, fine-looking brother of Italian and Ghanaian descent who introduced me to the pleasures of male bisexuality. I met these two unforgettable individuals during my freshman year at the University of Calgary. Small wonder I didn't get much studying done. I was too busy exploring my sexuality, jumping from Viola's bed to that of Rudolph.

I remember some of our wilder episodes to this day. Like the time I came to my dorm to find Viola waiting for me, naked under the covers. Man, I think I broke a world record by how quickly I undressed and joined her! I love a Black woman's body, folks, nothing like it in the whole wide world. I kissed Viola passionately, then suckled on her tits while fingering her hairy, wet pussy. I kissed a path from her tits to her pussy, and took my sweet time as I went down on her, licking and probing her gentle folds. I love licking pussy. Some guys act like it's a chore to get out of the way but not me. I love the taste of pussy on my tongue! I had Viola writhing and moaning on the bed, crying out my name as I spent the better part of an hour fingering and licking that sweet pussy of hers.

Once I had Viola all worked up and ready, I rolled a condom on my seven-inch rod, and slid inside of her. Viola is a really freaky chick who likes to claw my back during sex and I love that about her. I pumped my dick into her snatch, loving the way her pussy tightly gripped my cock. Wasn't long before I gave it up. Melanie and I rested on the bed, nestled in each other's arms. I really cared for her and there are times, even today, when I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't moved to the City of Toronto, Ontario, and left me all by my lonesome in cold-ass Calgary. I begged her not to go but she insisted that the University of Toronto was a better place for her due to its higher ranking. Well, I wasn't completely alone. Rudy helped me pass the time, I guess.

Yeah, Rudy definitely helped me get over Viola. The tall, handsome mixed brother born to a Ghanaian immigrant mother and Italian-Canadian father was easy on the eyes and terrific company. At the time we were having our fun, he was dating a tall, pretty Arab Christian chick named Rosalind Alkhani. He introduced me to her and I found the petite, curvy Arab chick with the unruly black hair and light bronze skin charming. Rosalind had a really nice ass and Rudy assured me he tapped it every chance he got. Dude's unreal! She of course had no idea that Rudy swung both ways and that he and I were more than friends. We got our freak on in the bedroom of the apartment the two of them shared, when she wasn't around of course. Rudy could suck a mean dick and he knew how to serve it up right. Sometimes he would pound my ass so hard with his nine-inch monster cock that I had tears in my eyes by the time we were done. I always had a good time with him, always!

Even when we weren't fucking, Rudy was terrific company. The guy knew just about everyone at the University of Calgary campus and he was mister popular everywhere he went. And he was good to me. Rudy often took me to the movies, restaurants and other cool places. For the next three years Rudy and I kept on seeing each other. I dated other women and had sex with them but nothing serious. I guess I had feelings for him. Rudy broke it off with me by the end of my junior year at the University of Calgary, citing his desire to marry Rosalind Alkhani and start a family with her. Heartbroken, I was forced to move on.

I graduated in 2011 with a bachelor's degree, and worked as an administrative assistant for the law offices of Sherman & Oakes in downtown Calgary as a way of making my rent and also paying for Law school. In the summer of 2011, my dad and I went to visit his long-lost brother Ibrahim in the City of Mogadishu, Somalia. Long have I dreamed of visiting Somalia, the land of my forefathers. There is a sizeable Somali community in the cities of Edmonton and Calgary but I've never really fit in with them. I mix a lot of English words with the Somali language when I speak it, and people are always asking me if I'm Mauritanian because of how I look.

When I explain my origins to them, they're almost always shocked. I guess I'm something that shouldn't exist, like a unicorn. I'm the son of a Black father and Arabian mother. I guess that makes me biracial though I've always identified as Black. My parents aren't very religious. Indeed, my father, who was born and raised Muslim, would let me go caroling with the neighborhood brats and their parents during the Christmas season. I once attended a private Catholic school and honestly, I was more familiar with Christianity than with Islam when I first set foot in Somalia. Of course, that was destined to change.

My first visit to Somalia changed me in ways I hadn't expected. Here was the hot, dusty land of my ancestors, and I felt like a stranger there. Dad and I wore the traditional clothing of the Somali clan in which he was born, the Darod clan, in tribute to its legendary founder Abdirahman Bin Ismail Al-Jabarti. This famous founder was a ferocious Somali warrior from the old days and a descendant of Aqeel Ibn Abi Talib, protector of the Prophet Muhammad. Somalia in 2011 was a land just starting to get back on its feet after decades of civil war and general strife. I found the place beautiful. So many pretty Somali ladies walking the streets of Mogadishu, with their long robes and colorful hijabs.

I would look at them and wave while smiling and my father would shake his head. Sharia Law has been woven into Somali tribal law and culture for over a thousand years, and the women in Somalia tend to be guarded in their dealings with men. They're even more conservative than the hijab-wearing Somali immigrant women I'd seen at school or at the mall in Edmonton or Calgary. I was friends with a pretty Somali gal named Halima at the University of Calgary. Even though she was a conservatively dressed sister with the hijab and all, we did hang out. Like a lot of Somalis, she was stunned to discover that it's my mother who is Arab and not my father.

Why is that? You see, in the Muslim world, lots of Arab men marry African women but the Arabs don't let their daughters marry African men. It's a rare Arab woman who will marry a Black man, whether at home or abroad. Arab Christian women are a bit more open-minded in their dating practices than Arab Muslim women but still, Arabs as a whole tend to be a racist bunch, at least when dealing with us Black folks. My mother's family disowned her for loving my father, a Black man. As for my father's side of the family, they had mixed feelings about us. Hey, racism cuts both ways, as does cultural prejudice! My paternal grandmother, Granny Mouna, still chides my dad for marrying a Christian woman and for sending me to a Christian school. What can I say? Some people are real sticklers for tradition!

Anyhow, I was just starting to acclimate to life in Mogadishu in our third week there when something horrible happened. A car bomb went off near the Canadian Embassy in Mogadishu, killing five people and wounding dozens of others. One of the wounded men was my father. We rushed him to the hospital, and the doctors assured me they did everything they could. He died three days later. I had come to the land of my forefathers only to lose my father. The car bomb which killed him was done by Al-Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that seeks to cleanse Somali society of Western influences and establish the absolutely strictest interpretation of Sharia law throughout Somali society. To the world at large, they're a terrorist group that aspires to be like Al Qaeda. To me, they're the bastards who killed my dad. And I swore revenge.

That's why I decided to stay in Somalia. I wouldn't leave until I avenged my father. I ignored the Canadian Embassy's urgings for me to leave. Foreign-born Somalis are targeted by kidnappers for ransom while vising the homeland. These unscrupulous thugs figured that any Somali from America, Canada or Europe must have money so they're worth ransoming. I bought a house in the east end of Mogadishu, and transferred about three thousand dollars from my Royal Bank of Canada account and found myself a wealthy man by Somali standards. Three thousand Canadian dollars equals four point three million Somali shillings! Living lavishly wasn't my intent, however. I used my wealth to get connections and, with my uncle Ibrahim as my guide, I began looking for the supporters of Al Shabab, the men responsible for my father's death.

Even in a country where ordinary men and women fear Islamist terrorists, money talks. My uncle warned me that my quest for revenge would likely end in my death, but I told him that he owed me. Besides, if I don't avenge my dad, who will do it? uncle Ibrahim is in his early sixties and lame at that. Thus, I went on the hunt for Al Shabab, one of the most fearsome terrorist groups in history. The thing about terrorists is that they never look the way you think they do. The stereotype would have you believe they're a bunch of guys with guns hanging out in the desert. Well, that's totally inaccurate. Those are just the terrorists on television. The real ones hang out in your hometown, in your shopping centers and places of worship, at your video game arcades and internet cafes. They're everywhere. The desert as a terrorist hangout is fixed in the western mindset. In Somalia I learned how truly inaccurate that was.

The terrorists don't live far away, they're your friends and neighbors. Doesn't matter if you're a denizen of Mogadishu, Somalia, or a resident of suburban America. Also, going around asking questions to the wrong people is a sure fire way to get yourself killed. It's only in the movies that James Bond can find whoever he's looking for just by asking some random guy in a bar who's incredibly well-connected. In real life it doesn't work like that. A foreigner like myself going around Mogadishu asking about Al Shabab did not go unnoticed. One Friday night, as I sat in my living room, reading a copy of Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris, when gunfire erupted. Instinctively I leapt to the floor, as the barrage of gunshots hit the TV, the wall, and pretty much riddled the house with bullets. The gunmen came in to make sure I was dead. I tried to flee, but they shot me. I lay there, bleeding and dying. How ironic, the same people who killed my father had killed me as I sought to avenge him. The last thing I remember before closing my eyes is my uncle Ibrahim storming into the house, leading the gunmen...

As I hovered between life and death, I didn't see my life flashing before my eyes. I stood above my own body, and watched my uncle and the gunmen from Al Shabab ransack the house, taking all my money. My body they left there as a warning to others. Betrayed by my father's brother, of all people. How sad, tragic and ironic. I kind of hovered there, waiting for the Angel of Death or whatever to come claim me. The entity who showed up was not what I expected. A young woman with charcoal skin, raven-dark hair and bright red eyes appeared before me, and I sensed at once that this was a malevolent entity. She introduced herself as Marid, Princess of the Djinn.

I looked at her, then at my bullet-riddled, soon-to-be corpse on the floor. Marid smiled at me and told me that I had Djinn blood in my family, that's why I wasn't dead yet. The human part of you makes you weak, she said tersely. I looked at her, wondering what this broad was talking about. The Imam at the mosque my father once brought me said that the souls of all men and women lie still in wormy earth awaiting the Day of Judgement when Allah shall summon all of us to stand before Him and answer for our sins. The Chaplain at the Catholic school I once attended said that when we die, an Angel carries the good people to Heaven and the wicked people to Hell. So far I wasn't lying still in wormy earth and Marid, whatever manner of being she is, was a far cry from an Angel.

Looking Marid in the eyes, I boldly told her that I wanted to know what she expected of me. The female Djinn smiled, and licked her lips with a forked tongue. Then she told me what she expected of me. The Djinn, immortal creatures from before the time of Man had been doomed to roam the world by Allah, who gave man and woman the planet Earth to rule. Iblis, the leader of the Djinn was granted respite by Allah until the Day of Judgement. Until that day came, it was every Djinn's duty to torment man. Sometimes the Djinn went around in human form and occasionally had offspring with humans. One of those half-human, half-Djinn hybrids was my ancestor, a man named Nasnas, according to Marid. Thanks to him, I'm about ninety nine point nine percent human and point one percent Djinn. How do you like them apples? The descendants of Nasnas were different from other humans. They could perform extraordinary feats, if properly imbued with magic.

I looked at Marid, considering what she was saying. The demon Princess was offering me a second chance at life, along with powers beyond imagining. Gladly I accepted, and was at once returned to my body. With a single poke of her fingertip Marid healed me, and brought me back to life. I took a deep breath, and felt my heart beating in my chest. I'm alive! Thank God! Marid shook her head, and reminded that I was alive only thanks to the power of the Djinn. I nodded, and she told me what she wanted. From now on, I would do the Djinn's bidding. The world was not run by man but by Iblis, the Lord of the Djinn, Master of Demons. His influence reached deep into the corridors of power. His acolytes infiltrated the Vatican, Wall Street, the United Nations, the Arab League, the Muslim Brotherhood, and various other powerful socio-political entities.

The Djinn were busy spreading chaos and political strife around the world, encouraging people to fight one another in the name of race, religion, nationality and all that jazz. Iblis was working overtime to drag as many human souls into Hell with him as he could come the Day of Judgement. Most of the time, the Djinn used their human acolytes to 'spread the gospel of evil' but sometimes, they needed something a little stronger. Something like me. Something neither fully human nor Djinn. For the Djinn can only appear in physical form in our world for a limited time, as a native of this world even after being altered magically, I have no such limitation. The magical alterations done to me by the Djinn Princess granted me superhuman strength and durability, and an accelerated healing ability. The Djinn made me powerful, but is a life as a supernatural lackey what fate had in store for me?

Never mind that for now. Marid was all set for whisking me away but I asked her for a three-day reprieve. I wanted revenge on the men from Al Shabab, the creeps who murdered my father and I. Marid granted me that reprieve and wished me happy hunting. Revenge is a commendable sentiment in the eyes of the Djinn, after all. Over the next three days, I hunted down and killed all of the Al Shabab supporters I could find in Mogadishu. Male or female, young or old, I didn't discriminate. I killed them all and I liked it. I saved my uncle Ibrahim for last. You should have seen the look on his face when I knocked down his door, and grabbed him by the neck. I wanted him to suffer for betraying my father and me. So I dragged him to the yard, tied him up to a tree, poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. I stood there and watched him burn. I sure hope it hurt the fucker.

My thirst for vengeance sated, I happily returned to Canada, as per Marid's orders. Now, if you're a person with an Arabic name and you're a citizen of a Western country who spends a lot of time in "unsafe" ( read Muslim ) countries, your name and address tends to go on a watch list. After 9/11 the world kind of went paranoid. Not that I blame them. There's a reason why my father raised me in a secular fashion. A lot of young men from Muslim backgrounds are easily lured into terrorism by the words of radical Imams. I guess I went the opposite way. I'm the son of a secular Muslim man who just killed a hell of a lot of Islamic terrorists and their supporters in Somalia. Of course, I couldn't very well reveal that to the RCMP, the CSIS, the FBI, the CIA and Interpol now, could I?

At the airport, my mother greeted me with tears of joy and pain. As I held her in my arms, I realized how much I missed her but also how much I've changed. A month in Mogadishu changed me. I went to Somalia as an innocent youth, full of hope and wonder at finally visiting the land of my forefathers. I returned as a battle-scarred man who is no longer fully human. Fate, what have you done to me? I returned home, and during the drive back to our house, my mother alternately sobbed and smiled. She lost her husband and regained her son. Guilt shot through me as I recalled the day my father died. I was with him and I could do nothing! I was utterly useless when my father needed me the most!

Silently, I swore to myself that I'd protect my mother no matter what. I just didn't know how to deal with her grief. It seemed that the transformation Marid triggered in me was more than physical. I missed my father, and cared for my mother, but my feelings for either of them lacked intensity. It's as if my ability to feel genuine emotion was diminishing. When I tried to recall happy moments with my father, I remembered them but without the emotion normally attached to them. When I thought of Marid, and of my uncle Ibrahim roasted alive, I felt...well, as close to happiness as I can, I guess. What in hell did this demonic bitch Marid do to me? Twenty four hours after my return to Calgary, Marid appeared to me with my first assignment. University of Alberta student Samantha Ribeiro was elected President of an Interfaith Alliance between Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist students. One of her plans was a trip to Israel in support of the Palestinian nation.