Ayaan The Somali Cleaning Bitch

There are certain things I just cannot tolerate, and the everyday racism of older white Canadians toward immigrants of color like myself is one of them. My name is Ayaan Ismail and I'm a young Somali-Canadian Muslim woman living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. I attend Algonquin College and work as a cleaner part-time at one of Ottawa's university campuses.

A lot of people think that cleaners and security guards are a lower form of life, that people in such lines of work don't deserve the basic respect owed to all human beings. I hate people who think like that. Seriously, a human being's worth isn't determined by his or her education level or how much money they make. We're all human at the end of the day. People need to remember that!

The other day, I was walking around the university campus after hours, cleaning the vast complex floor by floor, room by room. There are dozens of us cleaners, mostly people of African, Latino and Caribbean descent. The guy in charge is an old white dude named Fergus, who's got back problems and a really nasty attitude. I hate this little creep with a fiery passion, and the condescending, disrespectful way in which he speaks to the cleaning crew irks the hell out of me.

So here I was, pushing a cart and walking around the southernmost building on this vast university campus, when I felt a presence. I turned around, and lo and behold, there stood Fergus, leering at me like only a creepy old white dude can. I glared at Fergus and asked him what he was looking at. The old bozo smiled wickedly and then told me that in his day, women knew their place and that I had quite a mouth on him. As I stared at him indignantly, Fergus crept closer to me, until we were inches from each other.

That's when the creepy old white dude called me a towel head to my face, and asked me if my hair was nappy under my Hijab. Oh, and then Fergus laid a hand on my shoulder. When he did that, I lost it. I didn't even think about it. I simply reacted. Translation? I slapped the hell out of Fergus, and the old white bozo stopped smirking, and pressed his hand against his reddening face. There was surprise and anger on his face. I looked at him with haughtiness and defiance, and then walked away. The last thing I needed was to waste any more time dealing with this creep, or the likes of him.

That day, I walked off the work site, after telling my immediate supervisor, an old black dude named Farley, what Fergus had done. What do you think Farley said? The loser made excuses for Fergus bad behavior, and told me not to make a fuss about it. I called Farley a coward, then walked away. I left everything there, and caught the bus leaving the university campus. It was eleven seventeen in the evening, and I was scheduled to leave the school around seven in the morning, along with the rest of the overnight cleaning crew. Nope, I just headed home.

I made it to my place around midnight, and went straight to bed. I felt like showering because I felt unclean, but try as I might, I couldn't stop crying as I lay in bed. I kept thinking about Fergus words to me and his behavior. I knew exactly how this would play out. The guy in charge of the maintenance crew at the university, Fergus boss, is an old white dude named Connor or something and he would definitely side with Fergus. These bigoted old white dudes tend to stick together, especially in the City of Ottawa. What's a brown gal to do in such a situation?

When I woke up the next morning, I did my morning prayers, and asked Allah, the one true God, for guidance and fortitude in the day ahead. I had eleven messages on my Blackberry, most of them from work. I only replied to one message. The one from my beloved boyfriend, Adam Stephens, the biracial stud who stole my heart. I smiled and told Adam that everything was alright, and since it was Tuesday, I went to the movies with him later that day.

Adam Stephens is my lifeline in this topsy-turvy world that I live in. I'm frustrated with my studies at Algonquin College because I want to be done with school, get my degree and start working for either the Canadian government or the private sector. Whichever will actually hire me first. One of my friends, Fatoumatta Hassan, graduated from Algonquin College with a bachelor's degree in applied business in 2013 and still can't find work in her field. That really angers and bugs me.

Fatoumatta Hassan has a business degree from an accredited Canadian school, to me, a person with such a degree ought to be able to find just about anywhere. The gal is originally from Djibouti and speaks English and French fluently. Oh, and she's a Canadian citizen, just in case the cynics among you are wondering. Why isn't anyone in Ottawa hiring Fatoumatta? Gee, could it because she's a tall brown chick with a Hijab? Heaven knows lots of businesses in the Canadian Capital offer jobs to white chicks with credentials far inferior to my good friend Fatoumatta Hassan's. Yeah, girls who wear the Hijab make white folks in Ottawa uncomfortable and they discriminate against us at work, at school and pretty much everywhere else. As you can see, I hate these fuckers.

I went to the movies with Adam Stephens, and my boo and I watched the flick Into The Woods at the Silver City movie theater in the east end of Ottawa. It's our favorite theater, after all. Throughout the movie, Adam kept asking me if everything was alright, and I kept nodding and smiling at him. Try as I might, I couldn't forget about the incident last night. That's why I decided to fight back against Fergus and the racist establishment that allows creepy old white guys like him to mistreat those different from themselves, people like me.

After the movie, I went to the university campus, and marched into the office of Connor, the guy in charge of the maintenance crew. I sat down and told him what Fergus had done, and informed him that my next stop would be to go to the Ottawa police station on Elgin Street and file a sexual assault claim against Fergus...if the university campus refused to take action against the creep.

The old white dude looked paler than usual, and told me he'd deal with Fergus personally. I got Fergus racist ass fired, and obtained a restraining order against him from the Ottawa police. Not bad, eh? For those of you who think Hijab-wearing Muslim girls are soft and sweet or helpless, don't fuck with us. We fight back with a vengeance when we're wronged.