Boreal
FAREWELL POSTINGS
Part 3
RISKING THE WRATH OF THE ENEMY WITHIN
January 14, 2025
Hizb ut-Tahrir Cancels Pro-Caliphate Event in Canada Middle East Forum Jan. 14, 2025
Islamism is commonly expressed as the desire to enforce a version of Shari’ah as law… An Islamist attempts to impose his version of Islam on society, and a jihadist is an Islamist who attempts to do so by force… Political Islamists seek to impose their views through the ballot box, biding their time until they can infiltrate the institutions of society from within.
Maajid Nawaz, author of Radical, My Journey out of Islamist Extremism Labels
We know how jihadists intend to bring about the Caliphate the hard way. Political Islamists wanted to hold a conference during which they would inform their fans how they indent to do it. Instead of threats to get them to cancel, the government should have insisted that the Canadian media be allowed to report on the proceeding, then we would all be the wiser.
“Know your enemy” to quote Sun Tzu, and later Clausewitz, is the key to victory, starting with the enemy within. Should the enemy within want to take exception to whatever I wrote and put me out of my misery, here is a recent picture that will appear on the cover of Farewell Postings.
THE ENEMY WITHIN
(Abbreviated excerpt from Remembering Uzza, Boreal Books)
Uzza: Could I have an adult drink now, please. They are not coming back tonight. If anything, they are waiting somewhere to teach me a lesson. Archie, do you mind? (extends her empty glass of apple juice.)
Archie: When you came in you said you wanted a beer. How about a nice glass of white wine? On the house.
Uzza: Just like in heaven.
Archie: What do you mean?
Uzza: In Paradise there are rivers of wine in which the believers can dip their cups and toast Allah − and, for the privileged class, special wines aged in some kind of container sealed with musk.
Archie: Why would Allah outlaw wines here but allow them in heaven?
Uzza: There was a time when Allah bragged about wine being one of the signs of His Beneficence. Then wine became a sin in which there was some benefit. Then no benefits at all; wine became an abomination, something the devil concocted.
Archie: You haven’t answered my question.
Uzza: A drunk and disorderly believer could have embarrassed Muhammad without intending to and could not be trusted to carry out his orders without fail. Reason enough, I think, for Allah to make sure that didn’t happen.
Archie: Then, why all the pussyfooting?
Uzza: Allah does not pussyfoot, if that is even a word. He may have wanted to wait until Muhammad was strong enough to enforce His decree before making wine an abomination. I do not know. And, can I give you back this damn veil? It only empowers women to do what men want them to do. Where is the fun in that?
Archie: No, but you can take it off and keep it close by. And you must promise to put it back on if you see someone come up the stairs.
Uzza: I promise.
Gerry: And don't worry, I will walk you home or to your car, if you want.
Uzza: Thank you, but my being seen with a man other than a husband or close relative will only make it worse.
Gerry, Johnny, Bob: [raising their glasses] Cheers!
Uzza: [does not raise her glass, nor does she take a sip, but stares straight ahead.]
Johnny: Anything wrong?
Uzza: You let in them in.
Bob: I thought Archie let them in.
Archie: You're not talking about those people, are you?
Uzza: Not just them, all of them. People like that should never have been allowed in our country.
Archie: But, they are your people?
Uzza: No, they are not. They are from another century.
Archie: And what century would that be?
Uzza: The 7th century. They consider Western civilization a mistake that must be rectified by a return to what they consider the good old days when Muhammad and what he said was the Will of God was the law, the only law, the Sharia. You let in those for whom the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, reason itself is a blasphemy.
Archie: That explains a lot; the craziness, I mean.
Uzza: You let in those who did not come seeking our way of life but to change it thinking you would change them, and Muslims who came here to escape the shackles of the Sharia are paying the price of your arrogance, a price you will all have to pay sooner rather than later.
Archie: I’m paying right now.
Uzza: You welcomed this Islamic population into my grandfather's adopted country, you fed them, you housed them, you gave them benefits that others had worked for, you bent over backwards to appease them, you forced everyone to tolerate them, and you encouraged their religion to thrive.
Archie: We did that, alright. Maybe we’re the crazy ones.
Uzza: You gave them economics opportunities not available to more upstanding citizens which allowed them to fund what my father warned was a hidden agenda. They lied to you, they told you they were peaceful and wanted nothing else but to be fine, upstanding citizens and abide by your laws. They accepted your food, your housing, your benefits, your kindness but they never accepted your culture which they viewed as weak and immoral, nor your beliefs which they equated as being anti-Islam. They now secretly hide and protect the bombers and beheaders within their communities, the so-called Islamic Municipalities into which the authorities dare not venture. They grew strong on your misplaced generosity and tolerance. One day in the not-too-distant future they will receive the call, in Arabic, from the Muslim hate preachers of the mosques you have so generously allowed them to build so they can preach their Islamic bile and rise up and finish what you started when you let them in[28].
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[28] Dialogue beginning with "You welcome this Islamic population" adapted from a response by an individual who goes by the pseudonym Haïm Ittah to an Ottawa Citizen story about the Nice truck attack which killed 84 people including 10 children.
A GOD-FREE DEATH AND THE END OF SHELTERS
FROM THE BOMBARDMENT OF HIS WORD
January 23, 2025
Lucette declined her ordained cousin’s offer to give her the last rites.
“Faith,” Mark Twain said, “is believing in something that you know to be untrue.” Even with the end just moments away Lucette did not seek comfort in what was for her, a lie. She did not need it. The last words she wanted to hear were from the man who loved her and did his best to alleviate her pain, not, if you believe in God, from the sadist responsible for her discomfort.
I doubt if a person’s right to a God-free death will ever be denied, but then again, I never expected during my lifetime to see the obliteration in English-Canada of a young person’s right to a God-free education.
Supreme Court reaffirms religious liberty in Canada (but not Quebec). Court upholds the right of Muslim students to pray at Calgary private school National Post, March 28, 2024
This was after two Muslim students deliberately enrolled in a private nondenominational school then appealed the school’s decision to stand by its Charter and not make an exception for the uber religion and provide them with “a space to pray.”
61:9 It is He Who sent His Messenger forth with the guidance and the religion of truth, to make it triumph over every religion.
Islam had only been moderately successful in English-Canada—Toronto area schools mostly—in using prayers as a battering ram to breach the wall that used to exist between Church and State in Canada’s public school system until the Supreme Court of Canada stepped in with its superior powers and completely obliterated it on its behalf (recommended: Chapter “Getting the Kids Hooked on the Irrational”, Fade to Black – Triumph of the Irrational, Boreal Book).
The Supreme Court's refusal to hear an appeal from Weber Academy against a lower court ruling that required all schools, both public and private nondenominational, to provide “a space to pray.”
Allah will not listen to a believer’s prayer if he has not performed wudu, i.e., ritual washing of feet, hands, forearms, ears, nose and hair prior to getting down on his hands and knees to pray.
The Supreme Court’s calamitous refusal to even hear arguments in defence of a God-free education means non-Muslim students, outside the province of Québec, may not be safe from the bombardment of the word of God even in school washrooms where believers will make the mandatory declaration before doing their wudu that what they are about to do is In the Name of God the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, and upon completion make a declaration of faith that accentuates their separateness.
I testify that there is no god but Allah, and I also testify that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.
O Allah, make me among those who seek repentance and make me among those who purify themselves.
Believers are also bound to be asked by the perplexed why they are washing their feet in the sink, blowing water out of their nose, cleaning out their ears, etc., only to be lectured about god and worship.
It will also become the subject of conversation outside the lavatory in whatever space Muhammad’s prayer choreography is performed as the marketing genius intended.
Supreme Court of Canada will hear legal challenge on Quebec secularism law (Bill 21) CBC Jan. 23, 2025
Having made a mockery of the secular public school system in English Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada will now attempt to do the same to Québec's secular public school system. Bill 21 prohibits public officials in position of authority, such as judges, police officers and teachers, from flaunting their religious affiliation while on the job. Teachers, in particular, who insist on wearing ostentatious religious attire in front of a captive audience of children, are in a position to do irreparable harm to future generations.
A successful challenge by opponents of a God-free education is bound to lead to prayers in schools like in English-Canada.
CHILDREN UNDER SIEGE
(From Teach Your Children Well - The Future as a Truism and a Cliché, Boreal Books)
Teach your children well
Children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston
Lyrics by Michael Masser and Linda Creed
It is both a truism and a cliché that children are the future, and that future will be shaped in the classroom. The public non-denominational school system in Canada is both the strength and the Achilles’ heel of our democratic collective. The strength can be found in schools where children are still taught that the human journey is a journey in the pursuit of knowledge through scientific inquiry and critical thinking; each generation responsible for taking that additional step in the direction of an elusive, ultimate truth, which, if ever discovered, would mean the end of the human journey as we know it.
The empirical pursuit of knowledge about our universe and our place in it, a gift from the Greeks of antiquity rediscovered during the Renaissance and the period known as the Enlightenment, is facing a serious challenge from those who believe that this wrong-headed pursuit ended thousands of years ago when the shaper of the universe himself revealed all we need to know about everything to a favoured few.
Any study beside that of the Quran is a distraction, except the Hadiths and jurisprudence in the religion. Knowledge is what He [Muhammad] narrated to us, and anything other than that is the whispering of the Satan. Al-Qaeda.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018
They would have us now simply sit back and wait for the promised reward of a make-believe afterlife for our uncritical acceptance of what these self-proclaimed mouthpieces for the alleged creator of everything insist are immutable truths.
The followers of these ancient questionable transmitters of revealed truths, those of the Prophet Muhammad being the most vocal, have successfully attacked the Achilles’ heel of the public school system: its openness to any subject of enquiry.
Most, if not all, religions would like nothing better than to transform classrooms into centres of religious indoctrination instead of education. Provincial governments across Canada appear more and more willing to support these faith-based initiatives that seek to eliminate a child’s last refuge from the incessant bombardment of the word of God: the public school system.
The secular public school system, in the main, teaches children and young people to think for themselves. The private faith-based system teaches children and young people to let a god do much of their thinking for them. Can democracy, let alone humanity, survive generations raised to blindly accept specious conclusions as to the meaning of life and to follow egotistical instructions as to what we must do to gain access to a purported Paradise in the sky contained in competing texts of questionable authenticity communicated by the self-proclaimed creator of a narrowly-focused universe to flesh-and-blood favourites thousands of years ago?
If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure (italics his) God wrote some of our books, then we need only to count the days to Armageddon—because God has given us many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.
Sam Harris, The End of Faith - Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 35.
If children are not exposed to and learn to appreciate the values inherent in a secular, democratic society free from religion’s nefarious influence, then religion will return with a vengeance and all we be lost.
It has cost countless lives over hundreds of years to wrestle the freedoms and liberty we now enjoy from tyrants of both the secular and religious kind. Will these hard-won rights to make our own informed, reasoned choices now be carelessly cast aside within a few generations because religion wants to market its dogma to a captive audience of children.
Organized religion is not unlike a modern corporation that wants to successfully market a product. Just like modern business leaders, from sneaker salesmen to sugared water peddlers, religious leaders know that the best time to get the consumer to buy into their message, their product, is to get them hooked on their brand while that consumer is still a child or an adolescent in an environment that will make them more receptive, indeed captive, to their advertising.
The American and French Revolutions brought some measure of protection for children from adults wishing to bring their conflicting religious ideologies into the classroom by banning most religious instruction in public schools.
After more than a hundred years of relative calm in Western classrooms, with a focus on learning and the development of critical thought (religion’s nemesis), religion wants back in, spurred on by a burgeoning Faith that will not take “no” for an answer and whose apparel is literally an article of faith, an advertisement for their preference for revealed truths, as opposed to those discovered through scientific inquiry and supported by empirical evidence that they want to parade in front children who, because of their age, cannot help but look up to them and ask questions.
Bill 21 does away with passive proselytising to a captive, receptive audience of school children in an ostensibly secular learning environment. Both passive and active pedagogical proselytisers seek the same outcome: getting the kids hooked on their religion before they know any better. You cannot be an advocate of one and an opponent of the other. In any event, passive classroom proselytisers cannot avoid becoming the active kind when they are inevitably asked by naturally curious children why they don't show their hair, not to mention their face.
(From Remembering Uzza – If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub, Boreal Books)
Archie: When a god, if you believe it was a god, with a religion to sell chose a salesman to get it done, He obviously knew what He was doing.
Uzza: Muhammad was not a salesman; he was a merchant!
Archie: Same diff!
Uzza: It was this inspired choice of a person who knew how to take advantage of humanity’s cupidity and fears that ensured Islam would be the success that it is today. Muhammad, before he discovered that he had been chosen to speak on God’s behalf and implement His agenda, was a merchant, a very successful merchant. He and his Mentor understood advertising before advertising as we know it was understood. They understood how you create brand loyalty and how you get your brand out there; from using women as the equivalent of billboards to houses of worship as imposing monuments to the awesomeness of your brand, visible from almost anywhere.
Bob: By billboards, you mean by the way they dress?
Uzza: Yes.
Archie: They even allowed these billboards in schools. Teachers are role models. My daughter the other day came home from school and asked if she could wear a mask like one of her teachers because good girls cover their face and hair in public.
Bob: NO THEY DON’T!
I DREAM OF LUCETTE, HE DREAMT OF THE KORAN
February 20, 2025
More than five years after her passing I still dream about her all the time. In my dreams she is alive and well, except for last night. In last night’s dream I am looking for her in our old neighborhood, which in my dreams we have never left. A neighbour shouts “isn’t that her over there?” I walk towards to where she is pointing and a sort of billboard, not unlike like the whiteboard in my home office on which I wrote notes to myself, comes into view. As I get closer I notice that someone is pinned to that white surface, it is Lucette. As I struggle to remove her lifeless body from whatever is holding her up, I wake up.
For Muhammad dreams where not only omens but how God in Paradise communicated to him much of the content of His book, the Koran.
The Koran is all over the place as to when it was revealed. In one instance, it is during one night, the night of power (97:1); in another, it is over an entire month, the month of Ramadan (2:185); and in still another instance, it was revealed “piecemeal” (17:106). Nowhere in His Book does Allah mention revealing what He revealed of His Koran in dreams, yet this is how Muhammad’s companions remember him receiving many of God’s communications.
Narrated Safwan bin Ya'la bin Umaiya from his father who said:
"A man came to the Prophet while he was at Ji'rana. The man was wearing a cloak which had traces of Khaluq or Sufra (a kind of perfume). The man asked (the Prophet), 'What do you order me to perform in my Umra (the lesser pilgrimage)?' So, Allah inspired the Prophet divinely and he was screened by a place of cloth.
I wished to see the Prophet being divinely inspired.
Umar said to me, 'Come! Will you be pleased to look at the Prophet while Allah is inspiring him?'
I replied in the affirmative.
Umar lifted one corner of the cloth and I looked at the Prophet who was snoring. (The sub-narrator thought that he said: The snoring was like that of a camel).
When that state was over, the Prophet asked, "Where is the questioner who asked about Umra? Put off your cloak and wash away the traces of Khaluq from your body and clean the Sufra (yellow color) and perform in your Umra what you perform in your Hajj (i.e. the Tawaf round the Ka'ba and the Sa'i between Safa and Marwa)."
Bukhari 27.17
Communications from Paradise sent while Muhammad slept would explain the horrific descriptions of Judgement Day and Hell, which mere words could not have conveyed. Aisha remembered her husband receiving “the Divine Inspiration” in what she refers to as “true dreams” while he slept.
Narrated Aisha:
The commencement (of the Divine Inspiration) to Allah's Apostle was in the form of true dreams in his sleep, for he never had a dream but it turned out to be true and clear as the bright daylight. Then he began to like seclusions, so he used to go in seclusion in the cave of Hira where he used to worship Allah continuously for many nights before going back to his family to take the necessary provision (of food) for the stay.
Bukhari 60.478
Dreams, Muhammad explained, convey religious knowledge. What is the Koran, if not religious knowledge?
Narrated Ibn Umar:
I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "While I was sleeping, I was given a bowl full of milk (in a dream), and I drank of it to my fill until I noticed its wetness coming out of my nails, and then I gave the rest of it to Umar."
They (the people) asked, "What have you interpreted (about the dream) O Allah's Apostle?"
He said, "It is Religious) knowledge."
Bukhari 87.134
Why you did not dare wake up a sleeping Muhammad.
Narrated Imran:
Once we were traveling with the Prophet and we carried on traveling till the last part of the night and then we (halted at a place) and slept (deeply). There is nothing sweeter than sleep for a traveler in the last part of the night. So it was only the heat of the sun that made us to wake up and the first to wake up was so and so, then so and so and then so and so (the narrator 'Auf said that Abu Raja' had told him their names but he had forgotten them) and the fourth person to wake up was Umar bin Al-Khattab.
And whenever the Prophet used to sleep, nobody would wake him up till he himself used to get up as we did not know what was happening (being revealed) to him in his sleep.
Bukhari 7.340
It was in a dream that Muhammad was given the keys to the treasures of the Earth.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "I have been given the keys of eloquent speech and given victory with awe (cast into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping last night, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me till they were put in my hand."
Bukhari 87.127
Another hadith expressing more succinctly what inspires terror in the name of Allah to this day:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror, and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world (the booty) were brought to me and put in my hand."
Bukhari 52.220
In his dreams Muhammad was served food and drink.
Narrated Abu Sa'id:
That he had heard the Prophet saying, "Do not fast continuously (practise Al-Wisal), and if you intend to lengthen your fast, then carry it on only till the Suhur (before the following dawn)."
The people said to him, "But you practice (Al-Wisal), O Allah's Apostle!"
He replied, "I am not similar to you, for during my sleep I have One Who makes me eat and drink."
Bukhari 31.184
It was in dreams that Muhammad was first shown the baby that was destined to be his bride. Aisha was as pretty as a picture. Considering Allah and Muhammad’s aversion to lifelike reproductions of people and animals, the following hadith is quite extraordinary.
Narrated Aisha:
That the Prophet said to her, "You have been shown to me twice in my dream. I saw you pictured on a piece of silk and someone said (to me), 'This is your wife.'
When I uncovered the picture, I saw that it was yours. I said, 'If this is from Allah, it will be done.'"
Bukhari 58.235
In another hadith, it is Aisha in the flesh wrapped in silk, and the disembodied voice has been identified as that of a man.
Narrated Aisha:
Allah's Apostle said (to me), "You were shown to me twice in (my) dream. Behold, a man was carrying you in a silken piece of cloth and said to me, 'She is your wife, so uncover her,' and behold, it was you."
I would then say (to myself), "If this is from Allah, then it must happen."
Bukhari 87.139
The difference between a dream and a nightmare is its source.
Narrated Abu Qatada:
The Prophet said, "A true good dream is from Allah, and a bad dream is from Satan."
Bukhari 87.113
If that is the case, I have to wonder what Satan is trying to tell me by what He showed me last night. If I don’t live to publish Farewell Postings, you will have your answer.
MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE POSTING
February 24, 2025
I signed up for Amazon Prime for the free deliveries and now, as I spend more time in the past then in the present, or the future, it is Amazon Music that is part of the package that appreciate the most. I simply ask my Amazon speaker to play tunes from the 70s or even the 60s and it bring that past to life. Asking Alexa to play Julio Iglesias makes me feel as if she is here with me.
Lucette was mad about Julio Iglesias. He was not yet well known in Canada when she returned from a vacation in South America with some of his albums. The first time she played his songs for me—for us—I too became a fan. I did not understand a word he sang, but his melodies were captivating and he had such a beautiful voice. She said his songs were all about love and I believed her. Years later when he started recording in English the same songs I had heard in Spanish, I believed her even more.
Playing musical instruments or listening to music is 16th on Islam’s list of 50 (at this writing) greater or grave sins, sins where the transgressor will spend an eternity of fire in Allah’s Hell.
It is not a sin to listen to accapella performances, songs performed without musical accompaniment. It can be quite beguiling.
Geert Wilders, at this writing the Dutch leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), in the spirit of Theodoor van Gogh, also made a film about Islam.
***
“Theodoor van Gogh was a Dutch film director. He directed Submission: Part 1, a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticised the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film's message.”Wiki
The twenty-six-year-old Bouyeri shot van Gogh before slitting his throat as he was pleading "Mercy, mercy; we can talk about this" and pinning a five-page condemnation of Western society to his body.
***
What is most striking about Fitna is not the images of the dead and mutilated, but the lyrical and mesmerizing rendition of violent and hate-filled revelations calling for the murder of unbelievers. If you don’t understand Arabic, you can almost imagine yourself making love to Allah’s words except that, unlike those of Julio, they have next to nothing to do with love.
If the violence and hate that are contained in verses sung without instrumental accompaniment broadcast to the Islamic community in Arabic were broadcast in English on MTV for example, there would be uproar. Non-Muslims would be appalled that impressionable young minds are subjected to so much sadistic violence and hate forcefully expressed in such a captivating lyrical way.
Yesterday I was listening to a young Muslim podcaster explaining how hard it was for her to give up listening to music. Some will risk Allah’s Wrath rather than give it up, like the women and girls I wrote about so many years ago in what remains my all-time favorite posting.
MY MOST DOWNLOADED POSTING
March 4, 2025
As I stared up at a darken ceiling in the middle of the night thinking of my ultimate failure, to which this book is a testimonial, I found in remembering a disturbing posting hope that it was not all for nought.
Almost twenty years ago I posted an excerpt from Canada – The Fractured Interviews that almost immediately become my most downloaded page, and by a wide margin—and it has not relented to this day. My books contain many uncomfortable truths about Islam, but perhaps none more appalling than what was revealed about the mindset of Iran’s ruling theocracy in Ayatollah Khomeini’s published dissertation in which he advances Shia Islam’s position on sodomizing baby girls and bestiality. If Khomeini on Sodomy and Bestiality helps to bring about the downfall of his successors it will have been worthwhile.
IF NOT GOD, WHO DO YOU CALL UPON AT TIMES LIKE THESE?
March 8, 2024
There is seldom a night these days that, before I fall asleep, I don’t call on Lucette to come and get me like she used to do almost every Friday around supper time when I returned by train from Montréal.
THE BROKEN CONDOM
(Abbreviated from Love, Sex and Islam, Boreal Books)
The year was 1993. It was early in the first year of two consulting contracts that would keep me in Montréal five days a week for the next five years or so when, after more than 10 years of marriage, I had my first one-night stand. It was a one-night affair that would prove to my wife that I still loved her and loved her very much.
1993 was also the year the Montréal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup. No Canadian team has won it since. I was at one of Montréal‘s landmark bars on Crescent Street when the Canadiens hoisted the trophy symbolic of hockey supremacy. The crowd at Winnies not only erupted in cheers, but it was hugs all around. The last person I hugged, or hugged again, was a thirty-something female lawyer with whom I had gotten acquainted while watching the game.
When it was time to leave the celebrating around the corner on St. Catherine Street, Montréal’s main commercial east-west thoroughfare, had gotten out hand with looting and an overturned police car on fire. We decided to retreat to my apartment at the Chateau Royale, the only apartment hotel on Crescent Street.
She had condoms, but not very good ones, as it would turn out. Something didn’t feel right, but it felt good and she didn’t seem to mind so we continued doing what we were doing. When it was all over I noticed that the condom was rolled up like a wrinkled cellophane wrapper at the base of a drooping culprit.
The AIDS scare was at its zenith and I had just had unprotected sex, for all intents and purposes, with a stranger. It was only the second time since our wedding night that I had intimate relations with a woman other than my wife. The first indiscretion was not a one-night stand, and it left my Lucette doubting that I still loved her. A busted condom would set her mind at ease.
Needless to say, I felt a bit sheepish when she met me at the Ottawa train station that Friday around supper time. As usual, she had prepared everything for a most romantic dinner; a prelude to a special night, and often a special weekend to make up for the five days I had been away.
I was not hungry. She asked what was wrong. I told her about the condom incident and that sex was out of the question for at least ten days (from what I understood at the time was the earliest the AIDS virus could be detected) if she still wanted have sex with me.
She rose from her chair, stood next to mine and asked me to move it a little. She then sat on my lap, put her arms around my neck and kissed me. It was a lovely and totally unexpected gesture which left me wondering.
“You must really love me,” she said, “to admit having sex with another woman to protect me.”
I didn’t know what to say.
She got up and took my hand. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “We can use those leftover condoms in your night table from when Margaret used to visit you at your old place.”
....
During our time together she proved her love in tangible ways that made those other things that lovers do to express their affection for their partner pale in comparison. One of those profound, undeserved expressions of how she felt about me occurred on the Sunday following that Friday admission of infidelity.
We were in bed. I would again be leaving on an early train to Montréal the next morning. I had already put on a condom when she reached down, and instead of doing what I thought she was going to do, she pulled it off.
“I don’t think you have AIDS,” she said, “and even if you did, and I got it, it wouldn’t matter as long as we are together.”
***
During the height of the AIDS epidemic, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reported that Montréal had the dubious distinction of having a higher proportion of HIV-infected women than any other metropolitan area in all of North America. When I returned from Montréal for good, I found the time to read all three volumes of the findings of the Krever Inquiry into the contamination of the Canadian blood supply by the HIV and hepatitis C virus. What I consider my most important and pitiful non-Islam related posting was the result.