"There goes another one," Mariam Akkad said to herself, sighing as she read the Metro newspaper. The lengthy article on the front page described a fatal encounter between a mentally ill Somali man and members of the Ottawa police. According to the article, a certain civilian oversight authority was investigating the case to decide whether or not the officers involved should face charges. I hope those bastards don't get away with it, Mariam thought darkly.
Sitting on the OC Transpo bus leaving the suburb of Barrhaven for downtown Ottawa, the young woman repressed a shudder. Anger boiled inside Mariam, and for a brief moment, her gray eyes met those of a well-dressed middle-aged white lady who sat across from her. The woman smiled, and then resumed clicking away on her cell phone. Mariam briefly returned her smile, mostly out of politeness, though she felt like smacking the woman. And she couldn't figure out why...
Clad in a stylish dark gray pantsuit, with her long, curly black hair tucked away under a modest ebony Hijab, Mariam Akkad looked like she meant business and she knew it. At five-foot-ten, curvy but fit, with golden brown skin and almond-shaped gray eyes, Mariam Akkad would be considered beautiful by almost anyone's standards. Educated at the University of Toronto, Mariam Akkad came to the City of Ottawa with her business administration degree, and for the past sixteen months, she'd been working at the local CIBC.
The way that most people looked at Mariam Akkad while walking into the downtown branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce made the young woman uneasy at first, but then she got used to it. As much as Ottawa liked to call itself a multicultural town, there was a whole slew of its citizens that had issue with its growing diversity. In cosmopolitan places like Toronto and Montreal, a young woman wearing a Hijab at work is a common sight. In the City of Ottawa, some apparently feel bothered by the presence of Mariam and those of her faith.
"Hot day today, eh? I'm Barry, I'm Canadian, where are you from?" said the middle-aged white guy with the bad comb-over and faded gray suit sitting next to her, a jolly smile on his wrinkled, overly tanned face. Mariam briefly glanced from side to side, wondering who the doddering old fool was talking to, and upon realizing that he was actually addressing her, the young woman chuckled softly, then shook her head. Oh yeah, she knew where this was going, and decided to nip it in the bud...
"Well, Barry, I'm as Canadian as you are," Mariam retorted, and then she resumed reading the Metro newspaper. Barry stared at her, seemingly stunned. Several other passengers seated nearby smiled, though none said anything. Welcome to Ottawa, Mariam thought bitterly. Born in the City of Toronto, Ontario, to a Lebanese Muslim immigrant father and a Jamaican-Canadian mother, Mariam grew up with a foot in each world, and feeling comfortable in neither. Considered too black for the Arabs and not black enough by the Africans and Afro-Caribbean peoples, Mariam Akkad grew up feeling like an outcast, even in racially diverse Toronto. Ah, the plight of the biracial woman in North America...
At this hour of the morning, the OC Transpo bus was packed with commuters, mostly middle-aged white men and white women, government workers one and all, along with a few minorities here and there. Nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. Everyone seemed to be going about their daily business as if nothing had happened, but for Mariam, things had definitely changed. For reasons she couldn't explain, she felt a gnawing sense of dread eating away at her heart. Mariam thought of the young man she considered to be the love of her life, and didn't know what she'd do if anything ever happened to him...
"You worry too much, Bae, I'll be fine," her boyfriend Jeffrey Dumont said to her, about an hour ago, as they stood in the kitchen of their Barrhaven townhouse. Clad in bright blue boxers, his six-foot-two, muscular and chocolate-hued body glistening in the early morning sunlight wafting in from the kitchen window, Jeffrey was a vision of masculine beauty. Jeffrey gently poked Mariam in the nose, a gesture which she initially disliked but had come to love, and she smiled and rolled her eyes.