"Raul, we need to talk," Fatima Sayyid said, as she sat down at the breakfast table, and the tall, curvy older Arabian Muslim beauty looked at her lover through somber eyes. Raul James took a sip of the overly sugared coffee he was holding in a ceramic cup, and then set it down. Forcing himself to be calm, he looked at his beloved Fatima, and braced himself for whatever was to come. It's almost never a good thing when a woman says those words to a man, Raul thought nervously.
Clad in a crimson bathrobe which did little to mask her curvaceous loveliness, Fatima was an arresting sight. Voluptuous, bronze-skinned and dark-haired, sans Hijab for a change, she looked much younger than her fifty-odd years. The woman that I love, Raul thought, still marveling that he and Fatima had lasted this long. The odds had been against them from the start, due to differences in race, religion, culture, and last but not least, age.
On this particular morning, a certain tension reigned over the lovely townhouse that Raul James and Fatima Sayyid shared in the Vanier area of Ottawa, Ontario. It was an unseasonably warm day near the end of November. The sun rose, melting the leftover snow on the ground, and the weather felt more like late summer than anything resembling late fall. It was truly beautiful, but Raul was too preoccupied to appreciate such natural beauty...
Raul could sense that things were about to change between his beloved Fatima and himself. And the hard-working, smart and capable young Haitian man did not react well to unexpected change. His mind raced as he thought of one disturbing possibility after another. Was Fatima leaving him? Was there someone else? Had he fucked up without realizing it? I'll find out soon enough, Raul thought to himself.
For a while now, Raul James and Fatima Sayyid had been seeing each other, and subsequently fallen in love. What a pair they made. A tall, ruggedly handsome, dark-skinned young man originally from the island of Haiti, and a Hijab-wearing Muslim woman from the Arab world. Somehow, after Fatima became a widow, due to the timely death of her abusive ex-husband Salman Sayyid, and Raul's girlfriend Khadija leaving him, these two unique souls found solace...and more, with each other.
Of course, even in a place as racially diverse as the Capital of Canada, a lot of people weren't okay with interracial couples. In the Islamic community, where anti-black racism was ever-present, Raul and Fatima attracted their share of hostile glances and harsh words wherever they went. Nevertheless, the stalwart couple stuck it out, standing tall against the haters of all stripes that they encountered. Raul could only hope that he and Fatima were strong enough to withstand whatever bit of dire news that she felt she had to share with him...
"Babe, I'm listening," Raul replied at last, and he gently laid his hand on Fatima's, and looked into her eyes. Fatima took a deep breath, and then finally shared the news which had absolutely rocked her world, and were definitely guaranteed to rock her lover Raul's. The question is, was Raul ready to hear those news? Only one way to find out, Fatima thought to herself.
