A Journey into Conversion - Part VII

Continued from Part VI

This is a true story – mine. This is the seventh part of many.

A Journey into Conversion
Part VII

After my son left Joe had the idea that I should continue receiving mother’s allowance benefits. He had a rationale that made sense to me and I accepted it (I still do). If people living in a society have to steal just to eat and have shelter then there is something wrong with that society. This may work very well in his culture where the family unit takes care of their relatives, but it doesn’t work here unless you’re a politician. In those cases survival of the fittest isn’t about food or shelter, it’s about power and how best you can abuse it without getting caught.

The heartache of giving up custody of my son was made worse when I heard his voice. The anxiety dreams were frequent. I didn’t call my son for long periods of time because it was unbearable to listen to his sweet voice without crying into the phone. Instead I tried to cover up the feelings of remorse and distract myself from the guilt from collecting cheques for a ghost child by putting my energy into studying.

His dad called me one evening to ask me what was going on, why hadn’t I called? He told me that our son had woken up screaming that he wanted his mummy, he thought he would never see me again. This did it. If there was ever a lament, this was it. I broke down into a gush of tears from gut wrenching guilt. To do this day I don’t remember the exact words that my son called out to his father. I know that I have made myself forget them because the pain of remembering was too much without experiencing the same response as the day his father relayed them to me. It’s still hard to talk about this time in my life without tearing up or just dropping the subject altogether. My son refuses to talk about it and I don’t blame him.


***

Ramadan and Christmas were approaching. Joe had helped me pass out candy on Halloween, which he enjoyed thoroughly. He loved how the kids dressed up. As we stood on the porch watching the kids, he said, “look, an Arab!” and pointed to a kid with a white robe and headdress with a black band around his forehead. It made us wonder if kids over in Lebanon dressed like the R.C.M.P or something distinctly Canadian on Halloween. He thought this was very funny because of the irony, since he liked dressing up himself.

He laughed reminiscing about an uncle who used to dress in woman’s clothing to make his party guests laugh in a sort of Lebanese La Cage au Folles way. One day in the summer Joe had come out of my bedroom wearing my bathing suit and sun hat and paraded around my dining room. I smiled shook my head and told him to go take them off, I didn’t want my bathing suit stretched out so I couldn’t wear it again.

I spent my first Ramadan with Helen and her family. Joe’s visits were becoming less frequent and he spent less time at Helen’s place. The neighbourhood was filled with excitement as food was brought over by visitors in the evenings after sunset prayer. The Muslims in the neighbourhood would go to Mosque for taraweyah prayers. These were long sessions of prayer where a certain number of chapters in the Quran were chanted. The idea was to recite the full Quran during the month of Ramadan.

I was asked to watch the neighbour’s kids as they spent a good two hours at Mosque. I enjoyed staying with them; they were happy, well behaved and beautiful. They were easy to adore and fall in love with and showed the same admiration with me. I loved it when the women who came to visit my landlord or the Helen’s kids and ask me if I wanted to see their hair. It was like a special treat.

One girl (even though she was young, she was not so much a girl) asked my son and I if we wanted to see her hair. We said yes. With her veil on she was very plain looking. But when she took it off I have never seen such beautiful hair in my life. It was very long, black and silky. Her face sprang to life and she was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined her having seen her with her veil on for so long. My son was speechless. I’m sure he was as moved as I was.

I decided I was going to attempt to fast with Helen. I didn’t eat but I drank throughout the day. Joe told me I was cheating, that I wasn’t supposed to eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset, but that was ok with me. It was my first attempt at starving myself. Since I went swimming almost everyday, I lost 16 kilograms by the end of Ramadan. Joe was very proud as I guess my weight was at issue with him and his aunt, although she herself could have stood to lose some kilos in the double digits. Joe told her this and she sheepishly lowered her eyes but smiled anyway.

***

By Christmas time Helen had set up a tree. Her younger kids were excited about celebrating Christmas just as I had been about celebrating Ramadan. Helen’s kids were very close to my son as they were like brothers and sister. The girl, I’ll call Sally had written notes to send him with my packages in the mail. We’d send cards, photos, drawings, gummy rats or squeaky rats so he wouldn’t forget our apartment in Windsor. If he wasn’t able to hear my voice, (I used to read and sing to him every night before he fell asleep) he was getting all kinds of stuff to remind him of us.

At Christmas my son came to visit. It was this Christmas he learned from Helen’s kids that there was no Santa even though I begged them not to tell him. Joe had decided that he was going to dress up as Santa for my son and his cousin and give them some gifts he bought both of them. Joe had a Santa suit. I asked him how he was going to cover up without the kids knowing who he was. He said not to worry, he would have a beard and put white powder on his face, the kids would never know it was him.

When the time came for Santa’s arrival the doorbell rang. My son ran downstairs to answer it and let Santa in. As he was running back upstairs he said nonchalantly, “mum it’s Joe”. He ran into the living room to join the other kids as the apartment filled with laughter and children’s chatter. When Joe got to the top of the stairs he said in a low voice “How’d he know it was me?” You could see Joe’s dark mustache under his white Santa beard and his dark and distinct eyebrows covered in white powered. You couldn’t help but know him by his eyes. I shrugged and said “I dunno” and started to laugh.