As I walk through the halls of the University of Ottawa in the Canadian Capital, I see a lot of Arab guys with White girls. I shake my head, and shudder. Why am I doing this? Am I some of racist? Am I intolerant? Far from it. In fact, I could tell you a thing or two about real intolerance. My name is Mona Bagis, and I'm a Turkish Christian woman who recently...
I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this is a work of fiction or non-fiction. For those of you who have been to Turkey I'm sure you will guess correctly. Gayle, my wife, and I were into our second week of a 2 week holiday in Marmaris. We'd seen the sights at Ephesus, Pammukale, Turkish villages and enjoyed the obligatory gulet trips to Turtle Beach and...
Note to Reader: This story centers on mother and daughter, the daughter name is Asya and the mother name is Funda. The story is told primarily after the First World War during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the Turkish Republic. Both women are beautiful in their own right, Funda with her blonde hair and hazel eyes and Asya with her black hair...
How in hell did a brother from the island of Haiti end up on lockdown in the City of Istanbul, the famous and age-old Capital of Turkey? Well, it all has to do with a middle-aged Turkish man named Mehmet Melen, whom I met at the University of Notre Dame in the Capital of Haiti, and the fact that he not only taught me about Islam, but also charged me with del...
If you want to get out of a bad situation, the only thing to do is to just do it, regardless of consequences. That's what I told myself as I walked out of the Carleton University library, holding hands with my boyfriend Jean-Pierre Moineau in public for the first time. It was a cold, windy day in February, and Ottawa was blanketed with snow. Nevertheless, I...
Part I. Tellak We arrived at our hotel at 4 pm. It was very hot. They say July and August are not the best months to visit the Mediterranean and they are right. Nonetheless, Sonya and I were excited to come to Turkey on this beach holiday. It was the first time since our honey moon twenty years ago that just the two of us were going to spend 7 nights in a r...
Erik: "Mmmmm..you want to be a bad girl, ha? Should a Turkish Muslim girl be with a German guy? Do you like uncircumcised guys?" I don't know why Erik says this every time he is horny? I do find this degrading and a little bit racist, doesn't he know I'm as German, as he is? How am I Turkish or Muslim? I drink, eat pork and listen to metal music how much mo...
Her Husband had taken her to a Turkish restaurant but had forgotten his chequebook... The restaurant wasn't equipped to take credit cards... He thought he would pay with his wife's body... The idea excited them but they knew he would nip out to the bank at the end of the meal and get some cash, leaving her a while to pretend. She was, in fact, the only...
According to the most sacred of Islamic teachings, all mankind stem from Adam and Eve, father and mother of the entire human race. We all come from them, without exception. From the darkest African to the white man, the Arab, and all the races in between. It's a beautiful sentiment, too bad my fellow Muslims forget it all too often. How else would you expl...
I was the advisor of the Model United Nations club at the elite Turkish high school where I was teaching English, and I was the chaperone on our big annual trip to Boston for the prestigious Harvard MUN conference. Some of the top students at our school were among the eight chosen to go, most of them seniors. For me one student stood out. Her name was Aish...