When people ask me what I am, I honestly feel like smacking the shit out of them. I'm a human being, that's my typical reply. We're in the twenty-first century, and interracial marriage are becoming more and more common. Barack Obama, the President of the United States was born to a white American mother and a Kenyan father. Hollywood actor Robert DeNiro is Italian-American and his wife Grace Hightower is Black. They're together and the world isn't ending. People need to get over this racial crap, especially in Canada.
My name is Ayaan Abbasi. I was born in the City of Mississauga, Ontario, to a Pakistani immigrant father, Malik Abbasi, and a Moroccan-Canadian mother, Maryam Suleiman. My folks met while attending the University of Toronto, got hitched after graduation and then had little old me, along with my siblings Hussein, Mona and Washim. We're just an average family living the North American dream, I guess. My mom is a Nurse and my father is a constable with the Toronto Police Service.
We're a Muslim family and our faith is important to us, but we're like every other family I swear. So what if we're a multiethnic family? That shouldn't matter in this day and age. Except that it does. We live in a two-story house in a quiet neighborhood in the east end of Mississauga, and we just live a day at a time, like everybody else.
"What do you mean by that?" I said to my new roommate Isabel Dos Santos, a pretty young Dominican gal, when she asked me what it's like to be Muslim. I fixed my gaze on Isabel, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged. I noticed that she was looking at the top of my head, and sighed. The Hijab, gets them every time, I swear.
"What's it like to be a Muslim chick and always walk around with this thing on your head?" Isabel asked, and I took a deep breath before answering her question. Now, when you're a Hijab-wearing Muslim gal, you should expect people to ask you stupid questions about your faith and your clothes at least once a day.
I'm twenty years old, and in my second year at Humber College in Toronto. A lot of people ask me why I didn't just go to U of T like my siblings did, but I just laugh at them. The busy campuses of the University of Toronto don't appeal to me. I prefer a small, friendly campus, like that of Humber College. During my first year, I got to know most of my peers in the business program, some better than others, and that's how I like it. I just wish I didn't have an idiot for a roommate, like Isabel here, but life can't be perfect.
"What's it like to be a Caribbean hussy who sluts it up every damn day?" I retorted, glaring defiantly at Isabel Dos Santos with my hands on my hips. The normally sharp-tongued Dominican Canadian chick looked angry for a moment, but she flashed me a fake smile. The type I've grown accustomed to receiving from people who don't like me.
"Kitty has claws, I see," Isabel said, smiling icily, then went back to playing on her Laptop in the small living room we shared. I went back to flipping through the pages of the book I was reading. I picked up the novel Christ The Lord : The Road to Cana by Anne Rice, that American lady famous for her vampire stories. As a Muslim woman, I take everything that Christian authors do with a grain of salt.
You see, Jesus Christ, known as Isa Al Masih in Islam, wasn't what the Christians and Jews say he was. To us Muslims, he's a prophet of Allah, the one true God. Try as I might, I can't find a passage in the Torah or the Bible where Jesus told anyone that they should worship him. I believe the Holy One told his followers that his teachings would bring them closer to God. Of course, I try to avoid having such discussions with my Christian friends. Not enough aspirin in the world.
The other day I ran into this guy named Juan Carlos Etienne, and he gave me one hell of a headache following an animated class discussion on Islam and women's rights. "Your religion oppresses women and everyone knows it," Juan Carlos, J.C. to his friends, said to me, in our sociology class.
The one elective I opted to take caused me more headache than all of my core classes combined. I looked up at Juan Carlos, a tall, brawny young man with light brown skin, chocolate eyes and an Afro, and stood my ground. I'm only five-foot-seven and weigh one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, but I refused to let anyone intimidate me.
"Juan Carlos, if you don't stop disrespecting my religion, I'll smack the shit out of you," I said defiantly, looking at Juan Carlos Etienne, who smirked and stroked his goateed chin. I swear, guys and gals from the Caribbean tend to be hot-blooded and hot-tempered, not to sound like I'm stereotyping them or anything. I've just had some bad experiences, if you consider my bitchy roommate Isabel, or Juan Carlos, here.
"Whoa, lady, no need to get violent," Juan Carlos said, grinning and holding his hands up. I could tell that the burly Caribbean dude wasn't used to people getting in his face, especially short, caramel-hued, hijab-wearing gals like myself. I stood there, hands on my hips, and waved my index finger in his face, as people passing by watched us and laughed.
"Don't stay dumb shit like that again," I said, and then walked away from Juan Carlos in a huff. I'm usually a friendly, polite and easygoing person, but I hate putting up with stupid people. Two things are guaranteed to get me riled up, seriously. My ethnicity, and my Islamic faith. I'm half Pakistani and half Moroccan. And I'm a proud Muslim. Insult either my ethnicity or my Islamic faith and I'll get in your face. Comprende?
