Hell is a Hot Dog

In a past life, I was a very religious six-year-old boy living in a tiny county called Essex, Canada. Very little has ever come out of Essex County so as a young child, I found myself constantly stressed with the pressures of making sure I stayed out of the hell fire that had been programmed into my nightmares.

Grasping Islam as child is tough, but grasping Islam as a child in a Christian community is nearly impossible. From the womb until my teens, I was programmed to feel superior for knowing the right truths about who brought us here. I was told that everyone around me, including my friends and teachers, were all going to hell for not believing that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammed (PBUH) is his Messenger.

The day my young world ended, I was on field day trip with my First Grade class. From my young, religious eyes, our trip was to take place in a scary sprawling Islamic Hell trap, but in retrospect it was a simple small county fair. The class was split off into different groups of five, with one parental supervisor to each group. Then we were told to leave our lunches in the tent, and encouraged to explore the fair, followed by a regrouping for lunch.

The terribly irresponsible excuse for a parent I was assigned to was totally not prepared to take care of one child, let alone five. I can't remember having any fun at the fair as the young mother (who probably should have used a contraceptives), had issues controlling her own problem child. Most of the day was spent chasing the teacher who was constantly losing a foot race with her son. We ran so much that we grew hungry fast. As the day wore on, it started getting alarmingly obvious that we were late rejoining the group for lunch.

With every passing hour, the supposed-carer slowly slipped into madness, culminating in a total mental breakdown. Admitting we were lost, the tearful, broken, supervisor gave us some money and told us to find something to eat from the food trucks. The food trucks triggered a flashback of my parents warning me not to eat khanzeer and that if I did eat a hot dog made with said khanzeer, I would spend an eternity in hell fire being punished. I hated being punished, and to my naive eyes, eternity seemed as large as the dizzying fair at the time. Scared, I asked the supervisor to come with me and ask the food truck vendor if they had “khanzeer-free” hot dogs. Confused, the supervisor kept having me repeat "khanzeer" and every time I did, it would cause her to shed further tears; lost in translation.

Alone and hungry, this small 6-year-old boy decided to take on the crowded and intimidating food trucks painted with mammoth snow cones and hot dogs. Shimmying through the long legs of the crowd, I finally reached the window. “Excuse me sir, do you know if your hot dogs have khanzeer in them?” Confused, the vendor asked me to repeat myself and every time I did a tear would cascade down my own chubby cheeks. Unclear and defeated, I made my way to every food truck, and every time my questions were left unanswered.

Teary-eyed and hungry, I found myself finally looking down at a hot dog of unknown origins. With every bite I could feel my soul being condemned to hell. There wasn't enough ketchup or mustard to hide the fact that I was compromising each bite for a lash of a burning whip of fire. Eventually, with the help of authorities, we found our way back to the group in time to catch the bus back home.