What does a lesbian look like? In most people's minds, when they envision a lesbian, they think of a short-haired, masculine white chick in a flannel shirt. The prototypical butch lesbian citizen of Western society. Well, I am a lesbian and I definitely don't look like that. My name is Fatouma Aden, and I'm a young Somali Muslim woman living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Got one hell of a tale to share with you folks today.
Before we go any further, take a look at who you're dealing with. I'm five-foot-ten, curvy and sexy, with dark brown skin, almond-shaped chocolate eyes and long black hair which I always tuck away under my Hijab. I think I have the word Somali written on my forehead, because everyone seems to guess my ethnicity. We Somalis are among the largest minority groups in places like Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary. Do you know what major visibility is? I guess we're definitely coming up in the world.
The life of a brown-skinned Muslim woman in Canada is seldom boring, partly because endless excitement comes our way. As a Hijab-wearing woman working security in the Capital, I've experienced my share of hardship. Got no choice but to work this eleven-dollar-an-hour job, since I didn't qualify for OSAP student loans. Apparently, the Canadian government feels that my parents, Ali and Yasmina Aden make too much money for me to qualify for a government loan.
The Canadian government finds all kinds of dubious and creative ways to cheat people out of their money, folks. My father studied economics at the University of Carleton and works for the Pythian Group. My mother is a nurse at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital. We're not rich, we just get by as a family. Not according to the Canadian government. Henceforth, I've got pay for my studies at the University of Carleton my damn self. Sounds like fun, right?
The other day, I was working an overnight shift, watching contractors inside this pharmacy. You should have seen the way the workers looked at me when I got to work. It's like they'd seen a ghost or something. Construction is a mostly male and mostly white job as far as I can tell, and the older white guys I meet on this job tend to be quite hostile to us non-whites. Ottawa is changing, demographically speaking, and a lot of white Canadians seem to have a problem with us 'newcomers'.
We who are African, Arab, Hispanic, Chinese, Indian, or anything other than white bread. They don't like us, and the fact that we have more babies than all of them white couples bugs them. In tomorrow's Canada, people of color will become the majority, especially in big cities like Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. Small towns will continue to belong to whitey, but that doesn't bother me since I hate small towns anyways.
I know these things because I'm a numbers gal. I'm studying accounting at the University of Carleton, and hope to work for the CRA someday. The workforce in the government sector is aging, and within the next five to ten years, a lot of these uptight, xenophobic, middle-aged white folks will retire. I take solace in the fact that when they're crapping in their diapers in a nursing home, people like me will be running things downtown. We're just a function of natural selection, folks.
Working the overnight shift at the pharmacy sucked, because the contractors, older white guys one and all, kept looking at me as though I were an alien. I am a black woman who wears the Hijab. To them, I'm the cultural other. If you ask most white Canadians what they think of Muslims, they'd probably tell you that they don't trust us. I am a Muslim woman, and a law-abiding citizen. What random losers think of me and my religion doesn't matter to me. I believe in Allah, and if Allah is with me, who can be against me?
After that tiresome shift, I got on the OC Transpo bus and hurried my ass home. While riding the bus, guess who I saw? Nina Martinez, a young Hispanic woman I knew from my high school days. Nina used to go out with my cousin Yousef, who moved to Calgary last year. Nina and I greeted each other joyfully, and sat together. It's always good to run into old friends.