Face/Mask by Gabriel Boutros

Angels Academy her father’s pride knew no bounds and a hall was rented so that the entire community could admire and envy her. Her father, Pierre, was so busy receiving congratulations, and congratulating himself, that he took no notice of a young man named Rafik Chamseddine, the goalie on Elias’s soccer team, who floated around Sarah all evening. Marie-Eve, however, did notice this man and, as is often the case with a mother, was quite aware of the sly looks that her daughter constantly threw the young man’s way.
    That Rafik was a Muslim had never mattered to the Shaheens. They hadn’t escaped Lebanon’s sectarian violence to bring its prejudices with them to their new life. They were quite happy that Elias had befriended this pleasant young man, who was an excellent goalie by all accounts, even if his father was a dry cleaner. It was important for their sons to be open to people from all walks of life, and all religions, if they were to be good and successful Canadian citizens.
    And so, while Marie-Eve was mildly concerned about the attention her daughter and the young man were showing each other, she decided to hold her tongue. Sarah was such a beauty that it was to be expected that every young man would be captivated by her. And as a young girl who’d led a fairly sheltered life it was normal for her to feel flattered at this attention, especially as it came from a man five years her senior. The Shaheens were planning to fly to Lebanon in two weeks, where they’d spend their summer between the mountains and the sea.
    Marie-Eve thought that two months in Lebanon would be enough time for any infatuation that was growing between the youngsters to dissipate. That was before Sarah ended the night’s festivities by announcing that she was carrying Rafik’s child. She was seventeen years old and she wasn’t going on any family vacation with them, intending to move in with her one true love while her family was out of the country.
    What happened next was as sad as it was inevitable. Pierre attempted to buy off Rafik, certain that money was all that interested him, but he was quickly rebuffed. Pierre’s sons convinced him that killing the young father-to-be would hurt the family even more than the disgrace their sister was bringing on them. There were certain traditions that were better left behind in Lebanon.
    So Pierre Shaheen made the young couple the offer of their lives: he would buy them a small home in Quebec City, where nobody knew him or his family. He would open a bank account in his daughter’s name with an amount of money that was sufficient for them to live off while Rafik studied auto mechanics, his only passion other than Sarah. The money would also allow Rafik to open a small garage upon graduation.
    In return Sarah had to take her husband’s name and promise never to contact anyone in her family for as long as she lived.
    Sarah, holding tightly to her broken-hearted mother’s hand, agreed readily. She was being exiled, a refugee as her mother had once been, but she was being given a chance many others never had. She understood that her father was turning away from her forever, and it was only due to the love he had so long held for her that he was offering this aid. She let go of her mother’s hand and walked to the street corner where Rafik waited in his eight year-old Corolla.
    From that point she dedicated her life to being a wife and mother that Rafik could be proud of. She attended her first Sunni mosque with him in Lévis, just outside Quebec City. Before Rafik married her, she told him, she wanted to learn and love the god he worshipped. She was giving up the last vestiges of being a Shaheen, including Catholicism, in order to more fully re-create herself in an image that her father would never recognize.
    It was shortly before their marriage, when she was six months pregnant, that she stopped being Sarah. She was lying in Rafik’s arms, his hand resting gently on her swollen belly,