Arab Lady Marries Black Man

The wild look in her eyes absolutely thrilled me as I leaned in to kiss her. Everyone around us stopped and stared. Yes, that's me. A tall, dark-skinned and strongly built young Black man kissing a hijab-wearing, hazel-eyed Arab woman in a long-sleeved aquamarine T-shirt featuring Jay-Z and tight blue jeans. I looked into Atifah's eyes and smiled. She smiled at me and gently licked her lips. I shrugged and linked my arm with hers. Together we made our way up the stairs inside the Carleton University student center. I guess couples like us weren't an everyday sight on this populous campus located in the heart of Ottawa, Ontario. Oh, well. Times, they are a-changing. Get used to it, people.

In case you're wondering who this is, my name is Jonathan Harper. I was born in the City of Detroit, State of Michigan, and raised all over the place. Two years ago I moved to the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario, mainly because a lot of motherfuckers in the Detroit metropolitan area wanted my Black ass dead. Long story, it involves a woman, like most interesting stories usually do. I met this tall and fine-looking, half white and half Jamaican chick named June Anderson and we totally clicked. We began seeing each other and having fun together. June neglected to tell me that she had a man, and that her man was none other than Rico, leader of a Puerto Rican gang that's muscling in on the Black gangs of Detroit.

Upon finding out that a Black guy had a taste of his girlfriend June's delicious Jamaican patty, Rico flipped out. He ordered a bounty on the head of the negro responsible, yours truly. That's what amazes me about these Spanish cats, man. They love Black pussy but they get mad when the Black man gets one of their women. Sorry, Rico. I guess for the first time in your life, you weren't dark enough. Your biracial chickadee likes Black guys. Get over it. Dude wanted me dead and after a shoot-out at my favorite barbershop, I decided to leave Detroit. Rico was crazy, man. Detroit is a mostly African-American town, even after the Recession and the gentrification that followed. Spanish dudes are outnumbered by the brothers by such a wide margin that it's not even funny. Yet this crazy yellow punk dared to do a drive-by in the hood. Dude must be crazy. The thing about crazy guys is that quite often they don't care if they live or die. If a guy like that is after you, watch your ass. For real.

Anyhow, it was decided by fate that I would leave the City of Detroit for a little bit and go hide out in the one place where nobody would ever think of looking for a brother. All-white and uptight Canada. I came to the City of Ottawa in the summer of 2010, and I was in for a surprise. I thought I'd be the only Black person in town because when you're watching movies about Canada, you never see any people of color. It's all hockey and mounted policemen in red jackets and all that shit. I thought I'd be solo negro in the Canadian capital but I was wrong. I saw all kinds of people there. Lots of Africans, Arabs, Chinese people, Indians and some ethnic groups I couldn't readily identify. Damn. Canada was certainly changing. Even though the City of Ottawa was boring as hell, I began to adjust. Maybe I could make a life for myself here until it's safe to go back to Detroit, you know?

Now, before that punk Rico went crazy over my banging his girlfriend June, I was enrolled at Wayne County Community College. I was studying Criminal Justice because I wanted to become a police officer. I never knew my real parents because I was adopted, but the middle-class white couple that raised me, Lucy and Thurston Harper, they worked in law enforcement. My adoptive father worked for the Michigan State Department of Corrections and my adoptive mother was a police officer. Yeah, I guess you could say it ran in the family. My adoptive brother, Liam, a tall red-haired white dude, graduated from Wayne State University with a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice and went on to join the Michigan State Police. Liam is a dick but he's family and I love him. Being forced to leave my family, my school and my city hurt, man. For real. All this because of a piece of ass. Damn.

While living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, I decided to continue with my education. Yes, education matters in the lives of young Black men. Don't believe in what CNN tells you about us. We're not all athletes, rappers and criminals. Many of us want to make something of ourselves beyond those categories, thank you very much. I applied to Carleton University as an international student through the Ontario Universities Application Center and I got in. What I needed to do was find a way to pay for it all. They wanted to charge me three times what they charged a Canadian student because I came from the States. That's really unfair, man. I applied for a work permit and got it. As soon as I received my work permit and social insurance card in the mail, I looked for a job. For a while I worked at HMV, it's like the Canadian version of Radio Shack. I lasted three weeks there until I got fired for yelling at a racist little old white lady who called me a monkey to my face. I'm not sorry for cussing out that cunt. No way. While leaving the store, I ran into my buddy Barry, one of the security guys. He told me his company, Securitas Canada, was hiring. I smiled. Sounds good to me.

I trained for two weeks, got my security licence and began working as a floater. I made eight hundred and sixty bucks in two weeks. Not bad. I only pulled seven hundred and eighty five working for the same amount of time at HMV. I worked my ass off, and managed to pay for my five-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment in the east end of Ottawa. I also saved for school. I saved three thousand and five hundred dollars and signed up for two courses in the Criminology program at Carleton University. At long last, I was back in school. My first day at Carleton University, I was lost. The campus is BIG. Like a small town or something. Also, people aren't too friendly. Doesn't matter if you're dealing with Africans, Asians, Hispanics or Arabs, or even White people. They're always in a hurry and some send you a mile in the wrong direction...on purpose. Idiots! One person stopped to help me, though. A tall Arab chick in a white hijab. Man, she was HOT. She walked with me from the university center ( also known as the student center ) to the Loeb building where my first class was. Wow.

When we arrived there, I thanked my benefactor. Now, I'd only been in Canada for a few months and didn't much about the Arab customs. I'd been to the City of Dearborn, Michigan, a town full of Arabs but Arab-Americans drink, party and sleep around like normal people while Arab-Canadians live as though they were still in the Middle East. Weirdoes. When I offered the Arab chick my hand to shake, I didn't know anything about her people and their customs. She smiled, and shook my hand anyway. At the time, I didn't know that it was a big deal. She introduced herself as Atifah Sharif. Born of in the City of Cairo, Egypt, to an Egyptian father and Afghan mother. Raised in Canada. Okay, lady, I felt like telling her I didn't need to know all that but I smiled and told her my name. Jonathan Harper, a brother from Detroit stuck in Ottawa by fate's whims. She laughed at that and told me God/Allah had a purpose for all of us. I smiled and told her I was a staunch atheist. She seemed taken aback, but smiled and wished me a good day. I watched her walk away. Hot damn. That Arab chick had a BIG butt underneath all those overflowing traditional clothes she wore. Nice!

I couldn't know it at the time but I had just ran into someone destined to change my life forever. I would later run into Atifah in the campus pub, Oliver. There she sat with two of her friends, a pair of hijab-wearing Black chicks I guessed had to be from either Djibouti or Somalia. We got a lot of them at Carleton University. They seemed surprised that I wanted to join them but I only had eyes for Atifah, and she seemed to welcome my presence. I sat across from her, smiling politely at her friends Zainab and Asmaa but ignoring them for the rest of the conversation. Atifah seemed curious to know why a Black man from America would come study in Canada. I told her that fate liked to kick my ass from time to time. With a smile and a knowing look on her pretty face, Atifah told me that God/Allah had plans for me. I tried not to roll my eyes but failed miserably. Her plump Somali friend, Asmaa, sharply asked me what my religion was. I smiled at her through gritted teeth and told her that I had no religion. I believe in science and logic, not mysticism and all that shit. That seemed to surprise the Somali ladies. They muttered something among themselves, but Atifah told them in English that judging others was not God/Allah's way.

I learned a bit more about Atifah. She was in the MBA program here at Carleton University, and she was fluent in many languages, from Arabic to the guttural Somali tongue, and she also spoke Mandarin, Russian, German, French and Greek. Apparently her family had lived all over the world. I was impressed. When Atifah took out her cell and asked me for my number, I don't know who was more surprised, me or her Somali girlfriends. Nevertheless, I told her my digits and she sent me a text right away. Wow. I should have known then that this Arab chick was not like the others. Yes, she wears the hijab but she has a mind of her own. She's not somebody's puppet. I accepted her offer of friendship, and she introduced me to a whole new world. The following Thursday, she asked me if I wanted to see a movie. What do you think I said? We went to the Blair movie theater in the east end of Ottawa and saw the movie Daybreakers. We both enjoyed it. As it turns out, Atifah is a fan of vampire movies. Everything from Dracula to Dracula 2000, the Blade trilogy and the Underworld movies. I mean, the gal had a wallpaper of Wesley Snipes battling Dominic Purcell on her laptop screen! Wow.

Yeah, I was fast becoming fascinated by Atifah Sharif, the lovely young Middle-Eastern woman who was changing my life and introducing me to a whole new world. She never once pressured me to join her belief system. Rather, she insisted that with so many people putting their faith in God, whether they called themselves Christians, Jews or Muslims, one simply couldn't be atheist. I told her that while religious people made up the bulk of the world, atheists had never done what people have done in the name of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Atheists don't blow up planes. Atheists don't launch crusades. Atheists don't kill themselves in the name of a belief system. Her face darkened when I said that, and I apologized. She told me that the God she prayed to was a God of love, only those men who claimed to speak for Him were evil, not the Almighty Himself. Hmmm. Sounds like a cop out but alright.

Atifah and I continued to hang out. She really wasn't what I was expecting. The concept of a hijab-wearing Muslim chick who listens to hardcore rap music, smokes cigarettes, worships Jay-Z, happens to be addicted to video games and loves horror movies, now that was definitely a new one for me. Honestly, I thought all chicks like her did was pray, obey the control freak guys of their religion/culture and make babies, for real. Atifah is a passionate fan of the Canadian Football League and follows the Toronto Argonauts the same way I follow the Detroit Lions. Hot damn. She took me to my first Canadian football game in Toronto and I had a blast. Yeah, this chick was surprising me more and more daily. Unfortunately, our growing closeness hadn't gone unnoticed. Especially by her cousin Mohammed Sharif.

What can be said about that guy? Mohammed Sharif is a fellow Carleton University. He's the son of Atifah's father's cousin. Born and raised in Afghanistan, he wasn't adjusting too well to life in Canada. Oh, and he had a crush on Atifah, if you can believe that. Now, since Mohammed has certain mental health issues, such as bipolar disorder and mild schizophrenia, his family doesn't consider him one of their best. He got passed up for a lot of things in this life and it's made him bitter and resentful. I didn't know that he was stalking Atifah and didn't approve of her friendship with me. One night, we were walking out of the Blair movie theater and the dude approached us and shot me. Yep, he put three bullets into me before taking off. I fell to the ground, dying. A frantic Atifah clutched me in her arms and called for help. I closed my eyes, believing quite frankly that I was done for.

When I came to, I was at the hospital. Surrounded by friends from school, among them my dear Atifah. The doctor, a tall Indian guy, told me I was lucky to be alive. The bullets should have killed me. I looked at him, then at my friends gathered around me, and finally at Atifah. Gently I squeezed her hand. Then I looked at the sky and thanked God for saving my miserable life. Atifah smiled and nodded. I was lucky to be alive, but I wasn't out of the woods yet. Atifah quietly told me that her cousin Mohammed had been shot by the police while trying to escape. My heart bleeds. It took three more months before I was out of the hospital, and although I wasn't paralyzed, the doctors and physiotherapists told me that I might limp for the rest of my days. Between having a slight limp and being in a wheelchair, I'll take the limp every time. Atifah was with me every step of the way as I went to physiotherapy to relearn to do certain things no man should ever have to relearn. During that time, I got to know her much better, and her faith as well. She told me how frightened she was the day I got shot, and how she realized that I meant more to her than she was previously ready to admit.

Atifah held my hand in hers and told me that she'd fallen in love with me. I smiled and looked at her, then I told her that I loved her too. A woman like her loving a guy like me. If that's not proof for my atheist ass to believe that there is a God, I don't know what is. Atifah and I met each other's parents, and I told them how I found a new life, and purpose in Canada. Oh, and I found love too. As can be expected, Atifah's parents, Abdul and Bashirah Sharif, were surprised to meet me, to say the least. However, when they heard about my miraculous transformation from hardcore atheist and distruster of all things non-American to fledgling Muslim, they embraced me. Her father gave his consent, and Atifah and I got married in a little mosque in the east end of Ottawa.

Yeah, my life has definitely changed since those days when I just met the lovely Atifah. Now, I'm not the most religious guy in the world. Atifah and I aren't the most conservative Muslim couple out there. Sometimes she wears the hijab and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she goes out wearing a short skirt and a rap T-shirt and that's fine too. What she wears is up to her. It isn't up to me or any man. We love going out and we like to dance. There are some cool clubs in Ottawa and we enjoy the nightlife. We go to rap concerts in Toronto and Montreal too. I took her to Mooney's Bay beach a while back and she wowed everyone in her swimsuit. Yeah, we're a young couple and we like to have fun. We have a little Jack Russell terrier named Marquis, and although she was reluctant at first, Atifah has grown to love him. He has to sleep in our basement, though.

See? Love and marriage are all about compromise. So, although I converted to Islam from Atheism, I'm still me. Jonathan Harper of Detroit, Michigan. I'm still a patriotic American, die-hard supporter of Obama and a fan of the Detroit Lions football team. I do firmly believe that there is a God, or Allah, as people in my new faith call Him. How do I know there is a God? I look at my new life in Canada, the friends I have, and the wonderful woman who loves me. I'm doing good in school, I have a new, better-paying job and I'm happy, truly happy, for the first time in years. Yeah, only through God could any of this be possible. That's how I know God exists. Peace be unto you my brothers and sisters.