Shara Kamal is a successful real estate attorney. Omari Kamal is the CEO of his thriving business, Community Capital. In addition to their individual businesses, this husband and wife are also in partnership with African American Community Trust, a foundation they created to fund other non-profit organizations, as well as provide technical and legal support, and perform fiscal agency work.
The couple met, well kind of met, for the first time at a Chicago Urban League networking event. “She was sitting in front of me, so I couldn’t see her, but it was something about her voice that struck me,” Omari says.
In fact, he was so taken by her voice that he tells us he couldn’t focus on the rest of the event. “I was just trying to peep around and see what face went along with that voice of hers,” he says, “and she kept turning away from me as if she knew I was trying to catch a peep, and by the time I was able to get full face with her, and I was already mapping out my approach, she had grabbed her coat and was on the way out the door.”
A couple of years went by before they encountered each other again, at another business event. Their first date was at Chanz Restaurant in Hyde Park. “We didn’t think of it as a real date,” Shara says, “because we were just meeting to talk about how we could refer business to each other.” “I said something about I didn’t like the way my seat was facing,” said Omari, “and she said, ‘you look fine to me.’ That was my opening and eight months later we were married.”
Shara talked about one of the many things that attracted her to Omari. “My family is from the South,” she says, “Mom is from Arkansas, Dad is from Alabama. I have an affinity for the South, and Omari has some southern traits that I love, that warmth and respect, opening doors, saying ‘yes Ma’am.’ That’s what attracted me to him and kept me in love.”
“Shara is excellent at creating trips and travel plans,” Omari says, “She and my two younger boys get together every year and brainstorm on where we’re going to go, and she does an extraordinary job of making sure we have someplace new to go almost every year.”
One year they visited Omari’s childhood home in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Omari laughs about how Shara let out an audible gasp at the sight of his childhood home, which he calls a “shotgun house.”
“If you shoot at the front door, the bullet will come out the backdoor,” he explains. He says they went on to have a great time and it was good for her to see that part of his young life. Stories like those, he says, are what marriage and love and partnerships are about. “On any level, business or otherwise,” he says, “It’s one part romance and another part people finding the connections and nurturing them and actively seeking out those connections wherever they show up and allowing ourselves to be surprised and delighted by them, and relishing them moment, by moment, by moment.
And if you do, it can be miraculous, because it’s not a matter of if those challenges come, it’s a matter of when they come, and how you’ve done the work to gird yourself up for those storms when they arrive.” The Kamal’s have been married ten years, and they have three sons.
“My oldest son is Shara’s stepson,” Omari tells us of a lesson he taught his eight- and nine- year-old sons about honesty.
“Our boys discovered some websites that they should not have been visiting,” he tells us, “and they’re old enough to try to hide it and lie about it. So, one evening when we were getting ready for dinner, I asked them about it and immediately they went into denial. They were just lying their little faces off.” So, he tells us he had a conversation with them about truth and how it doesn’t work for families to lie to each other. Then he told them they were going to practice telling the truth right then and there and he and Shara promised that they wouldn’t get in any trouble. “And some of the things our little boys shared with us were hard to deal with. When we were their age, we had no clue about it. But they had to sit there and be able to say, ‘I’ve not wanted to admit that I’ve been watching these things and engaging in these things, but now that the truth is out, I haven’t died, they haven’t killed me, and now I’m able to have a real conversation about why these things don’t work to indulge or engage in.”
Shara says that after they were married, at first, they lived with her parents, and then they bought a house near her parents in Willow Springs. “Then our sons were accepted in the University of Chicago Lab School, and after dealing with the hour and a half commute from the Willow Springs to Chicago I finally agreed with Omari that we needed to move to Chicago.” They began looking in the Jackson Park Highlands in South Shore. “There was one home that we loved, but it wasn’t for sell,” Shara says, “and we knew people didn’t move from the Highlands.” But fate had something else in mind for the Kamals, and they received a surprise phone call from a friend telling them that the house was available. Price became an obstacle, but another part of making family work is praying together and having faith. They now live in a beautiful home of their dreams in Jackson Park Highlands.
A major challenge happened when Shara experienced a health challenged. “I experienced a level of love that I never would have experienced if I hadn’t had this health challenge,” she says.
This powerhouse couple have a message for anyone contemplating marriage. “When two people come together who have been individuals for most of their lives, it’s less like what you see in the movies and more like pledging a sorority or fraternity. You know you’re going to get your tail whipped and in the process you’ll find a kinship with the person you are with if you don’t take it personally. And that kinship and partnership and bond that you build will be way bigger and stronger. Shara agrees, “It’s about family and community, it’s about respecting each other’s individuality and being vulnerable enough to say whatever is on your mind. And as much as it hurts to hear it, as much as it hurts to say those things that are difficult to say, those moments of vulnerability are where you find the treasure in your relationship, in your marriage, and it’s tough, it’s hard, but if you keep at it, you’ll have that true connection, and that vulnerability is where that strength comes from.
That’s where the power is.”
