"I really must stop letting a nice ass gets me in trouble," Tariq Osman said to himself as he walked through the Eaton Center in the City of Toronto, Ontario. One of the largest malls in North America, the Eaton Center was busy as usual. In some ways, only certain ways, the Eaton Center reminded Tariq of the Mall of America in his hometown of Bloomington, Minnesota. Of course, Tariq was far from home, to say the least...
Canada and America are right next to each other and share some cultural similarities but the two of them couldn't be more different as far as Tariq was concerned. Americans can be rough around the edges but are fairly decent when one gets to know them, Canadians appear soft and sweet but are quite mean inside. This much became evident to Tariq during his first week in the City of Toronto, Ontario. Got to watch my back in the great white north, Tariq silently reminded himself.
Tariq walked through the throngs of shoppers, people of all hues and a hundred nations, most of whom called the City of Toronto home. In this very mall, Tariq had encountered folks from all over the world, including the United States of America. There were more Somali people in Toronto than in all of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was really saying something. Tariq, a proud Somali-American, ought to feel at home in T.O. but Canada's biggest metropolis had brought him nothing but trouble...
Tariq's parents, Habiba and Ahmed Osman were furious with their youngest son after he flunked out of the University of Minnesota, having spent his first year drinking and partying. Tariq's older Malik Osman is currently serving overseas with the United States Army and their parents wish Tariq were doing something as important with his life. What the Osman family doesn't get is that Tariq likes to do things at his own pace, and he pursues knowledge as well as pleasure while in school.
In many ways, Tariq Osman's story is fairly typical of many first-generation Muslim Americans. Tariq's parents moved to Minnesota from the Puntland region of Somalia in the 1990s, and had two sons, whom they raised as best they could in suburban Bloomington. Eldest son Malik Osman joined the U.S. Army right out of high school, while Tariq, the winner of a scholarship to the University of Minnesota, began to live like a hedonist after moving out of his folks home.
Fed up with Tariq's party-hard ways, his parents took a drastic decision. Something had to be done about Tariq's wild ways, lest he destroy himself. They wanted him to clean up his act, and sent him to stay with his uncle Ali in the City of Toronto for a bit. Tariq transferred to Ryerson University, enrolling as an international student, and he soon moved out of his uncle Ali's place. There's only so much family bullshit a brother can put up with...
Tariq found a nice place to stay in the environs of Brampton, Ontario, which made it a tough commute to Ryerson University but he could manage. Too bad the place was owned by Fariha Bhatti, the landlady from Hell. At the moment, Tariq was trying to pass his business management classes at Ryerson University while dealing with the kind of headaches that come with chasing all kinds of booty without a second thought. Tariq loves a nice ass, and doesn't care whom it's attached to, and that is a problem...