Another week, another Friday night spent solo. Sitting at the computer terminal inside the Carleton University laboratory, Ishmael Rosenberg Teshale sighed deeply. It wasn't easy being him. He'd been living in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario, for over a year and could still count his friends on one hand. Friday night and he had nothing better to do than to sit at a computer, playing games online while listening to Linkin Park songs on YouTube. Ah, the life of a genius slash recluse. Fun, as in really not. If only his parents could see him now. Theirs was a fascinating story. They'd be disappointed to see their only son tainted with ordinariness, after everything they overcame not only for their love but also to create him.

Ishmael looked at his Blackberry, and saw that his pops had called him from Boston, where his parents were spending their summer vacation. The young man sighed. Although he loved his old man, he didn't feel like talking to him tonight. His father, Ahmed Muhammad Teshale was born in the City of Alamata in northern Ethiopia and his mother Josephine Rosenberg was an American Jew originally from the City of Boston, Massachusetts, who moved to the City of Tel Aviv, Israel, in the 1980s. Ahmed Muhammad Teshale grew up in a predominantly Muslim part of Ethiopia, but he was raised in the Jewish faith. He moved to Israel in 1985 as a young man. There, he experienced a lot of discrimination because many of the European Jews living in Israel had no love for their darker-skinned cousins from eastern Africa, and they didn't exactly hide it from them.

Ishmael thought about what it must have been like for his dad to struggle through the racist Israel of the old days as a young Black Jewish man. There were so many limitations placed upon the Ethiopian Jews in Israel in the old days. In many ways, they weren't treated any better than the sub-Saharan refugees whom Israel was rounding up and detaining today in an act of xenophobia and racism masquerading as ethnic and cultural self-preservation. After obtaining Israeli citizenship, Ahmed Muhammad Teshale opted to study in the United States of America. In 1987 at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, he met a lovely young Caucasian woman named Josephine Rosenberg, the daughter of an upper-middle-class Jewish family who'd been in New England for many generations. It was love at first sight for the two of them. Ahmed had a thing for tall, athletic young white women with blonde hair and blue eyes and the six-foot-one, lanky Josephine Rosenberg was his dream woman. In spite of objection from her family, Josephine Rosenberg married Ahmed Muhammad Teshale, the handsome Ethiopian Jew, and moved to the town of Tel Aviv, Israel, to be with him. This, five years after they met.

According to the most sacred laws of Judaism, any person born of a Jewish mother could move to the State of Israel and eventually claim Israeli citizenship. It was easy for Josephine Rosenberg to move to Israel. She had always been fascinated by what life must be like in the Jewish state, and she was in love with a tall, dark and handsome stud who took her breath away. Even though she knew they'd face adversity, she was fairly confident. The young New Englander was armed with a civil engineering degree from Northeastern University and as for Ahmed Muhammad Teshale, he earned himself a Law degree from Northeastern University. They stayed in America long enough for him to earn U.S. citizenship as well.

The two of them spent half the year in Israel and the other half in America. They were passionately in love and traveled the world together. They visited Spain, Italy, Germany, and Brazil. They visited South Africa after the end of Apartheid was officially announced by president Nelson Mandela himself. The only country they didn't visit was Ahmed's homeland. For reasons the young Ethiopian would rather not go into. Ahmed swore to himself he would never return to the Republic of Ethiopia, where Ethiopian Jews were thought of derisively by both the Christian majority and the growing Muslim minority of the oldest country in the continent of Africa. Five years after they met, their son Ishmael Rosenberg Teshale came into the world. Ishmael Rosenberg Teshale was born in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, at Mass General Hospital. On the afternoon of February 5, 1989. At seven o'clock. He weighed in at seven pounds four ounces. A little brown bundle of joy with curly hair and greenish eyes.

Ishmael flipped through his family photo album on his Facebook profile. He gazed at pictures of his parents on the beach in the City of Manaus, Brazil. Shots of them at the Citadelle La Ferriere in the island of Haiti. Riding horses in the region of Camargue in France. Yeah, his parents were a fun-loving couple. They defied the odds by meeting in the first place, and then they got married, achieved their academic and professional dreams, and found lasting happiness. Oh, and along the way they had him. A six-foot-four, 250-pound young man with light brown skin, curly black hair and pale green eyes. The only son of an Ethiopian-born African-American father and Caucasian American mother. A citizen of the United States of America by birth and of the State of Israel by blood, through his father and mother, both of whom were Jewish.

Ishmael clicked out of the Facebook album, and checked his messages. He checked his messages for the tenth time that night, hoping something new had come up. Nada. Exasperated, he finally checked the one profile he told himself he wouldn't check. That of Bethlehem Melkamu. The six-foot-tall, curvy and absolutely stunning young Ethiopian woman he met in his civil engineering class at Carleton University. Bethlehem was something else. A whip-smart stunner who took his breath away. Ishmael, a lifelong nerd ( in spite of being big and tall ) surprised himself by working up the courage to approach her. And he also asked her out. Imagine his surprise when she said yes. They began officially going out.

For three months, things were wonderful between them. Then Bethlehem did the unthinkable. Yep, she dumped him out of the blue. She didn't call, didn't text, didn't do nada. All she did was send him a Facebook message telling him that they were no longer together. No explanation. That was it. This she did three days before Valentine's Day 2012. To say that Ishmael was shocked, disappointed and in deep emotional agony would be the understatement of the century. A part of him died the day he saw Bethlehem locking lips with Aziz Abdullah, a big Muslim guy from the City of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who was studying for his MBA at Carleton University. Aziz came from oil money, and he had that Arabian charisma and masculine arrogance masquerading as charm that many western women found so appealing. Bethlehem was lost to Ishmael forever.

For the rest of the semester, Ishmael shuffled through school pretty much like a zombie. His grades plummeted, and he went from being an academic superstar in the civil engineering program at Carleton University to a struggling student, barely passing his classes. His academic advisor, an old Black man named Bennett Anderson, assigned him a tutor. A graduate student named Isabel Hamid. Ishmael wasn't sure what he was expecting when his old friend mister Bennett practically forced him to go meet the graduate tutor. But what he found surprised him. Isabel Hamid was six-foot-tall, vivacious and curvy, with light bronze skin, long curly black hair and pale bronze eyes. Born in the City of Zahle in the Republic of Lebanon, Isabel Hamid moved to Ontario, Canada, with her family in the early 1990s. Her parents, Paul Hamid and Myriam Abdul Hamid, were Christians from the oldest religious sect in Lebanon, the Maronites. They moved to Canada in search of peace and prosperity after the nightmare of the Lebanese Civil War.

Blessed with brains and beauty, as well as her parents fierce determination to succeed, Isabel Hamid graduated with honors from the undergraduate civil engineering program at Carleton University, then stayed for her graduate degree. To make ends meet, she worked both as a teacher's assistant and as a paid tutor at school. She was a year away from obtaining her graduate degree when she was assigned a particularly difficult student to tutor. A "wonder boy" named Ishmael Rosenberg Teshale. An American, if you can believe that. When she first met Ishmael, she thought he was handsome. Then he opened his mouth. The guy was so convinced of his own intellectual superiority that she almost gave into temptation when she felt the need to smack him on the mouth.

Isabel thought better of doing any of that, though. She held her famous temper in check, and smiled at him as he counted off the reasons why he didn't need her help academically. She rolled her eyes, called him a slacker and told him to shut up. He cocked an eyebrow. Oh, well. Now that she had his attention, she proceeded confidently with the next phase of her plan. Her old friend and mentor Bennett was a nice man who knew greatness when he saw it. If he believed that Ishmael was worth saving, then that was good enough for Isabel. Bennett wasn't just her good friend and personal mentor. He was also her father's best friend. Still, after listening to him describe Ishmael as brilliant but troubled, she wondered if this time Bennett hadn't gotten her in over her head.

Ishmael sat inside the empty classroom on the fifth floor of the South Hall building, observing Isabel as she did equations on the board. Lots of math in civil engineering. Lots of computations. Once, they made sense to him. Ishmael had never understood much about poetry, or any music that wasn't Linkin Park, but mathematics and science made sense to him. He'd always been a math geek. Then Bethlehem came along, did what she did, and fucked him up mentally. He couldn't stop thinking about her. The thought of her with that Arab bozo bothered him deeply. She was dating a Saudi. As in one of those super conservative Muslim guys who didn't believe women should be able to drive, go anywhere without male permission, or leave the house without a burka on. He thought Bethlehem was smarter than that. Apparently not. Maybe she wanted to be dominated? If so she should have told him as much, and he would have happily tried what she wanted. Instead, she did what he did. And he hadn't been the same since.

Watching Isabel explaining stuff that he half understood, Ishmael's mind wandered. For once, it didn't wonder about the one who got away. It wondered about the woman who stood ten paces from him. The tall, sexy young Lebanese Canadian woman who had a big round ass that looked sinfully sexy in her pant suit. An ass that a Black woman would envy. Ishmael had never really been into Arab chicks. When he lived in the State of Israel, both the Arab immigrants and the Israeli natives were racist to Ethiopian Jews. The Jewish women in the town of Tel Aviv always stared when they saw his white mother and black father out in the open, holding hands. Proper Jewish women in the State of Israel occasionally married Arab men, which irked some Israeli men, but Jewish female/Black male relationships were strictly taboo. Especially when the Black man in question was an Ethiopian Jew. Every man felt he could date women of any race or community but disliked the thought of males from the outside coming after "his" women. Racism at its best. Hmmm. Goody.

Isabel solved the equation, and turned to look at Ishmael. Pausing for a moment with her hands on her hips, she asked him if he understood. He looked at her with a distracted expression on his face and nodded absentmindedly. Isabel rolled her eyes, and told him to solve the next one. Ishmael smiled, and got up. He went to the board, and solved one equation after another. Isabel grinned. So his brains weren't totally rotten after all. Who knew? Ishmael grinned, and for once, managed to look humble. He thanked her for her help. Isabel smiled and shrugged. For a moment, Ishmael was distracted by how pretty she was. Isabel was quite lovely. And unlike the other Arab girls he knew who avoided Black men like the plague, she was genuinely friendly. She was smiling back at him and he was about to say something when his stomach rumbled loudly. Isabel laughed. Ishmael grinned sheepishly. It was three o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast that morning.

Ishmael looked at his gorgeous tutor, and thanked her for her help. Thanks to her, he had a chance of passing his summer course so he'd be on track to graduate with his bachelor's degree in civil engineering next year. Isabel smiled, and told him that he was plenty smart, when he wasn't in the clouds. Upon hearing that, Ishmael looked pained. When he was 'in the clouds' as she said, he was usually thinking about Bethlehem, and the hairy Arab dude she left him for. A Saudi. Out of all the men she could possibly date, why one of them? Saudis made the other Arabs look liberal by comparison. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a prison for the female sex. Women had no rights whatsoever over there. Maybe Bethlehem's Saudi lothario Abdullah ought to take her to his desert home, and stuff her in a burka while he was at it, after confiscating both her passport and her driver's licence. Maybe she'd enjoy that!

Enough! Ishmael Rosenberg Teshale banished such dark thoughts from his consciousness, and smiled beatifically at Isabel Hamid. Here was a beautiful young woman who clearly believed in him and wanted to help him. She was putting him back together after that witch Bethlehem tore him apart. Why not appreciate her instead of obsessing over a chick who could care less whether he lived or died? Ishmael looked Isabel in the eyes and asked her how she felt about dinner. Isabel cocked an eyebrow. Ishmael smiled and asked her to join him at the Shawarma King restaurant in downtown Ottawa. Isabel looked him in the eyes. There was something different in his eyes right now. Gone was the self-involved and deeply introverted, cynical brooder she'd gotten used to these past few weeks. Before her stood a very handsome, very cool guy. She smiled at him and said yes. Ishmael smiled.

They took the elevator down from South Hall, walked past the Carleton University library whose front entrance was fucked up due to expensive renovations, and headed for the parking lot in front of the University Center. Isabel smiled at Ishmael as they made their way toward a bright red Buick. She apologized because her car was messy. Ishmael, who was a neat freak almost as bad as TV's very own Detective Adrian Monk, smiled at her as she brushed away empty bags from MacDonald's, and tossed away an empty Tim Horton's cup, before opening the passenger door for him. He sat next to her, buckled his seatbelt and away they went.

Driving from Carleton University to Shawarma Kingdom on Rideau Street near the big shopping center took about ten minutes. Once they got to the restaurant, he asked her what she wanted, then ordered two mixed chicken and beef plates for them, complete with rice covered with hummus and two Pepsis. They sat in a corner of the crowded restaurant, the one facing the window. The clientele was quite diverse, for many Asians, Blacks and Caucasians residing in the City of Ottawa were fond of Lebanese cuisine. While sipping his Pepsi, Ishmael had himself a look at Isabel. The young Lebanese woman was quite lovely, and he was just starting to notice. She was going on and on about how amazed she was at the progress he made. He didn't really listen. He sensed that she wanted to get personal, and for once he was down with that.

Isabel looked at Ishmael, who sat across from her with a strange look on his handsome face. He was looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. Looking at him, sitting there all confident without being smug, she wondered what could have shaken a man like him to the point that he lost sight of what truly mattered to him. She couldn't stand not knowing, so she asked him that most personal of questions. Why did a genius like him lose his mind this past semester? Ishmael blinked, and for a moment Isabel thought she might have gone too far. Ishmael smiled and told her he'd been waiting for her to ask him that question. Leaning back in his chair, he quietly told her about the day a young lady named Bethlehem Melkamu wrecked his world...

Ishmael looked Isabel in the eyes as he gave her the cliffs notes version of what went down between him and Bethlehem. Their initial meeting in class, the whirlwind romance that followed, and of course, their breakup when she left him for a Saudi guy with big money and brash manners. Isabel looked at Ishmael, and crossed her arms. Licking her lips, she asked him if he had something against Arab men. Ishmael smiled wryly and shook his head. Without sounding defensive, he told her that while he wasn't racist, he nevertheless disliked Arab men for having their cake and eating it too. They could date or marry women of any race or religion but got mad when they saw Arab women with men of other backgrounds. Ishmael told Isabel that he hadn't been in Ottawa long but Somali male friends of his told him horror stories of the racist behavior of Arab males when they saw Black Muslim men with Arab women in the City. Even though any Muslim man could marry any Muslim woman regardless of color according to the rules of Islam itself...

Yeah, looks like the Arabs had trouble following their own rules. Ishmael smiled smugly after saying that, and Isabel bit her lips. Oh, no. Her favorite biracial Ethiopian-American Jew did not just say those words about Arab men in a the middle of a Lebanese restaurant. When he spoke, a couple of Arab guys dining with two white women nearby shot him dirty looks. Ishmael looked at them challengingly, and Isabel rolled her eyes. One of the Arab guys, a hairy bronze-skinned guy with a Tunisian flag T-shirt, walked up to them. He glared at Ishmael and asked him if he had a problem. Ishmael rose to his feet, and squared his shoulders, meeting the Arab man's stare. Coldly, he told him he wasn't impressed by desert hoodlums. The Arab guy shoved Ishmael, who laughed, then decked him squarely with a swift fist to the chin. The Arab guy stumbled, but his buddy leapt to his rescue. And he was followed by another Arab guy. Pretty soon Ishmael found himself surrounded by every Arab male inside the Shawarma Kingdom restaurant.

Ishmael bellowed like a bear and seized the table, stunning both Isabel and his attackers by lifting it clear above his head. Shouting loudly, he told them that he wouldn't go down alone. Glaring angrily at the Arabs, Ishmael told them that at least one of them was going to get his seventy virgins tonight. The Arabs hesitated, for Ishmael looked like he meant business. Isabel looked at Ishmael, stunned by his behavior. In Lebanese Arabic she pleaded with his assailants to back down, and promised them she'd pay for the damages and get Ishmael to apologize, if only they'd let him go. The burly Arab guy whom Ishmael first decked spat on the floor, pointed his finger at Isabel and called her a dirty whore for associating with an Adib ( Arabic for slave ). Isabel's eyes blazed with anger. Ishmael looked at her, and dared the Arab guy to repeat what he said. When he did, Ishmael threw the heavy table into the mass of Arab men...

The afternoon, which started out peacefully enough inside a computer lab at Carleton University ended with five members of the Ottawa Police Service being summoned to the Shawarma Kingdom restaurant near the Rideau shopping center in downtown Ottawa to break up what a frantic caller called the fight of the century. Apparently, a gigantic Black man was tearing the place up, knocking down Arab guys left and right. When sergeant Melanie Dusoleil of the Ottawa Police Service arrived on the scene, flanked by patrol officers Michael Adewale, Timothy Chang, Ethel Rosenthal and Lucy Anwar, she couldn't believe her eyes. The entire restaurant was laid waste. There were unconscious bodies strewn about. Lying unconscious, his head and neck supported by a disheveled young woman was quite possibly the biggest Black man whom she had ever laid eyes upon.
Sergeant Melanie Dusoleil took a deep breath. Before moving to the town of Ottawa, Ontario, a decade ago, she lived in the City of Montreal, Quebec. She'd dealt with many gangs in the roughneck area of Montreal-Nord, where she grew up. They were real bad asses. Haitians, Jamaicans, Italians and others. Tough as nails and armed to the teeth. The worst that Canada had to offer. And this big Black guy in the corner looked like he could mop the floor with them. She asked dispatch to send in an ambulance. This was going to be a long night. The young woman holding onto her unconscious boyfriend looked at her with tears in her eyes. She pleaded with the policewoman for help, saying over and over that Ishmael was only defending himself. Sergeant Melanie Dusoleil sighed. That's what they all said....

Ishmael came to in a plain white room in the mental health wing inside Ottawa's very own General Hospital. He looked around, unsure of his surroundings. For a moment, his mind was a complete blank. Slowly it all came back to him. He was at a hospital. A tall, slender young Black man in a Capital Security uniform stood outside his room, standing watch. Ishmael didn't pay him any mind. He was rewinding his memory. Dinner with Isabel at the Lebanese restaurant... the Arab guys....the fight. Oh, man. What had he done? Oh, man. It was all coming to him now. He totaled the Lebanese restaurant. Now every Arab in Ottawa would be gunning for him. Interestingly, that didn't bother him half as much as what Isabel Hamid would think of him. Isabel...she stayed with him till the end, bravely shielding him with her body when the Arab assailants overwhelmed him with numbers. What a woman. When the nurse came, his first words were about her. Where was she? Was she alright?

The only visitor that Ishmael received through the seventy two hours he spent inside the Ottawa General Hospital was Isabel Hamid. The moment she walked through the door, Ishmael's spirits soared. Isabel looked fantastic in a bright red T-shirt and blue jeans. Her long, luscious ebony hair was pulled in a bun. Ishmael noticed that her eyes were red from crying, and her normally bronze skin looked quite pale. He asked her what was wrong. Isabel looked at Ishmael and took a deep breath. There he was. The handsome, brilliant young man who caused so much trouble. His rampage at the Shawarma Kingdom restaurant put seven men in the hospital. He lay on the bed, managing to look almost small and vulnerable in spite of his bulk. Those pale eyes of his looked at hers, radiating both warmth and worry. In a concerned voice, he asked her if she was alright.

When he said that, her heart wrenched. For he sounded like his old self. The funny, quirky genius whom she spent much of the summer tutoring in civil engineering. Yet clearly there was another side to him. A side to him that she never knew. Isabel's mind flashed back to the sight of Ishmael, bellowing like a bear as he lifted a heavy wooden table that three men couldn't budge clearly above his head before tossing it at a group of Arab men whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ishmael was dangerous. No doubt about it. He seemed meek and harmless, kind of introverted and self-involved when she met him. Yet underneath it all he was dangerous. So dangerous. Well, of course he was. He was a Jew, wasn't he? Always innocuous and innocent-looking, and they'd been kicking the collective asses of the Arab world's mightiest nations since the late 1940s. Yeah, he was dangerous and she had to stay away from him. He'd hurt her fellow Arabs, and although she liked him, she couldn't simply overlook that.

Ishmael looked at Isabel, whose beautiful face was filled with conflicting emotions. He swallowed hard, sensing what she came here to do. She no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. He'd hurt her, and her people. God, why did he always screw up everything even remotely good in his life? He loved Bethlehem once, passionately and almost possessively. She left him for the rich Saudi guy, and a part of him died. Now, months later, he ruined another burgeoning friendship/relationship with another woman. Isabel Hamid. The beautiful Lebanese Christian woman who believed he was worth saving. Except that she was wrong, and he wasn't worth shit, he told himself. Having a high IQ and internationally famous and wealthy parents didn't excuse him for being a poor excuse for a human being. He always thought of himself. His needs. His wants. His pride. Well, it ends tonight.

Ishmael looked at Isabel, and apologized for hurting her and the Arab men at the Shawarma Kingdom restaurant. Looking her in the eyes, he told her that he understood if she didn't want to talk to him again. Or have anything to do with him. Isabel looked at Ishmael, saw the pain in his eyes and sighed. She came to the hospital to tell him to get lost. All his kind ever did was hurt her people. Maronite Christian or not, she was an Arab woman at heart. She wouldn't betray her people, Christian or Muslim, for the likes of him. He was just like the others. The Israeli Army attacked the Republic of Lebanon without provocation in the mid-2000s, forcing both Lebanese Christians and Lebanese Muslims to unite to repel them. Ishmael, a solitary Ethiopian-American Jew attacked a group of Arab men of various nationalities inside a Lebanese restaurant, putting eight of them in the hospital. She should tell him to get lost. She should....but she couldn't.

Looking heavenward, Isabel quietly sobbed. She looked at Ishmael and told him she couldn't do this right now. Then she left. Ishmael sighed. His heart felt like it had just been wrenched from his chest cavity. Still, he told himself what Isabel did was for the best. She was better off without him. Just like the Angel of Death in Christian, Jewish and Islamic lore, everything he touched turned to dust. Over the next couple of days, Ishmael was assessed by various doctors and spoke to several police officers, including sergeant Melanie Dusoleil of the Ottawa Police Service. The good news was that the local police bought his self-defence story and they weren't pressing charges against him.

The bad news was that the Arab men he victimized were likely to seek revenge. They might sue him in court for damages done to the restaurant as well as their own persons. He should be hearing from their attorneys real soon. Ishmael was told that he'd be discharged from the hospital soon. Oh, and one last thing. There was a restraining order against him and he wasn't supposed to go anywhere near the Shawarma Kingdom restaurant, either at its Rideau Street location or the one on Bank Street. Ishmael absorbed all that in silence. He didn't really listen. All that mattered to him in all this was Isabel Hamid, the beautiful Arab woman who believed he was worth anything. And he lost her due to his foolishness....

Thankfully, the administrators at Carleton University never got wind of the debacle that went on at Shawarma Kingdom, and Ishmael still had both a school and a place to stay. As was his custom, he went to the library, walked around Ottawa, went to the movies solo and then went to the lab to work on the mysteries of civil engineering. He sat at the computer terminal, browsing through Facebook while listening to Linkin Park songs on YouTube. Again and again he looked at Isabel Hamid's profile on Facebook. Amazingly, she didn't remove him as a friend. In fact, there was a "get well soon" message on his wall from her. The message was four days old. He sat there, pondering what to do. Suddenly, he felt sick of the lab, which stirred so many memories of times when he worked, laughed and chilled with Isabel. It was too...familiar. Grunting in frustration and anguish, he went out. He walked all over the City of Ottawa. For about an hour and a half. Somehow, he ended up in the Vanier sector of Ottawa. In a neighborhood full of Haitians, Arabs, Somalis and Chinese people. The immigrant sector.

Ishmael sat on a bench outside the Saint Maron Church in Vanier, waiting for the number eighteen bus to swing by. It was nighttime, yet the neighborhood was abuzz. There were people coming in and out of the Saint Maron Church. Suddenly filled with inspiration, Ishmael walked inside. The church was vast, bigger than he thought it would be. There were people all around him, and with a shudder he realized that they were Arabs and not the Italians he thought they were. They seemed to be preparing for some sort of holiday, for there were women and men putting decorations all over the church. Great. Nevertheless, he walked through the throngs of Arab Christians, making his way toward the altar. He'd only been to church a few times in his life, on account of being Jewish and all. Ishmael accidentally bumped into someone, and hastily apologized. The guy shot him a look, and Ishmael realized that he looked kind of familiar. The guy, a tall and slender Arab male with a goatee and a crucifix hanging over his Jay-Z and Beyonce T-shirt, shot Ishmael a look. Ishmael noticed that he was sporting a black eye, and bandages on his left arm.

The guy looked at Ishmael balefully, and verbally chastised him for coming into an Arab community establishment after what he'd done. There was much anger and pain in the guy's eyes, and Ishmael thought he was going to hit him. The guy scoffed, told Ishmael he wasn't a bigot, then walked away, limping slightly. Ishmael watched him go. He looked at the bishop before the altar, an older bearded Arab man, who spoke in Arabic to a young woman with blond hair and a dark-haired, burly Arab male. Ishmael walked up to the bishop, and asked him if he had a minute. The bishop looked at Ishmael. Who was this weird-looking young man? The bishop wondered silently. Nevertheless, after decades spent preaching the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ in both Arab and Western nations, bishop Jacob Akbar of the Saint Maron Church of Ottawa knew a wayward soul when he saw one...and as a good Christian, he couldn't turn him away.

Ishmael walked up to the bishop. Respectfully he bowed his head, affording this patriarch of the Lebanese Christian Church the same respect he would afford a Rabbi of the Jewish faith or an Imam of the Islamic faith. Just like his father taught him in Israel, so long ago. All of God's believers should respect one another. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all came from the same region. The fate of all three faiths were intertwined. At the time, Ishmael hadn't believed what his father said, for he'd grown disillusioned at the thought of peace between Christians, Jews and Muslims after seeing terrorism both in Israel and the United States. Still, that was then and this is now. Now he realized the error of his ways. In a soft voice, Ishmael told the bishop what he'd done, and asked for forgiveness. The bishop looked at Ishmael, and told him that God only forgave those who were truly sorry. Ishmael swallowed hard. He understood what he had to do. Standing before the altar, he asked for everyone's attention.

Ishmael's heart thundered in his chest, and he wondered if he knew what he was doing. Oh, well. He'd have to wing it. Too late to turn back now. He identified himself to the congregation of the Saint Maron Church. Ishmael Rosenberg Teshale. Son of an Ethiopian father and Caucasian mother. American by birth and brought up in the Jewish faith. He told them what he'd done at the restaurant, and how sorry he was. The guilt which plagued him, and how bad he felt because his foolish pride and prejudice cost him the friendship of the only woman who ever made him feel like he might be more than an arrogant piece of crap with a know-it-all complex....yeah. She believed in him, risked much to save him from his worst self, and in return, he hurt her. Some piece of work he was...

Isabel Hamid was applying her lipstick in the ladies room in the church basement, catching a break after putting up decorations for the Lebanese Heritage Festival. That's precisely when her friend Wanda Hassan came barging in, saying that there was a weird Black guy at the church, talking with bishop Jonathan Suleiman and causing quite a commotion. This was definitely not your standard Friday night at Saint Maron Church, one of three Arab Christian churches in the City of Ottawa. When Wanda mentioned a strange Black guy, Isabel's heart skipped a beat. No, it couldn't be. Surely he couldn't be that crazy. Besides, he was Jewish. What could he possibly be doing in a church? Nevertheless, filled with a sickening presentiment, Isabel followed her friend Wanda upstairs. For once, she hoped her hunches were wrong, but they seldom were...

Ishmael looked at the crowd of Lebanese Christians. He definitely had their attention alright. All eyes were on him. Shaking his head, he sighed. This was foolish. No way they'd forgive him. All he'd done was make a fool out of himself. Again. His eyes wandered from one end of the church to the other, scanning the sea of Arabian faces. Suddenly, his eyes widened in shock as he beheld a most unexpected sight. Isabel Hamid. There she was, his Isabel. She was making her way to the front of the church, toward the altar. Ishmael watched her make her way to him. She stopped a few meters away from him, hands on her hips. In a voice filled with emotion, she asked him what he was doing. Ishmael looked at her, and his heart sank. Overcome with emotion, he fell to his knees. The bishop laid a firm hand on his shoulder, looked at Isabel, and told her that this young man had come to do the right thing. He came seeking forgiveness from the community whose members he wronged.

Isabel Hamid looked at bishop Jonathan Suleiman, the man who officiated at her first communion, her parents friend since they first came to Ottawa, Ontario. She looked from him to the kneeling Ishmael, who looked at her with the eyes of a supplicant. Ishmael looked at Isabel with tear-filled eyes, and told her that he was sorry. Shaking her head, Isabel looked heavenward. All of the anger and frustration she felt toward this arrogant, confusing, sweet and strange Ethiopian-American Jew vanished like ice in the sun. She threw herself into his arms. Ishmael almost fell over when Isabel threw herself into his arms. Before he could react, she hugged him tightly and kissed him fiercely. Bishop Jonathan Suleiman looked at the pair and smiled. Looking at the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross, he shook his head. Wow. A Jew born of both Africa and America coming into a Lebanese Christian church in the Canadian capital during Friday night vespers to ask for forgiveness and embracing a young Arab woman from his flock. He did not see that one coming. Will the wonders of God never cease? The old man stroked his beard. Oh, well. He could already hear the wedding bells....