Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri

serve him. My father treats me the same way. Michael’s different, he always asks me things and he listens to what I have to say. My opinion matters to him. Last time we met, he asked me to pick where I want to go the next time. My brothers have never asked me to pick anything. It feels good to be treated as if I’m important.”
    “My father and brothers are just like yours. As far as they’re concerned, women don’t have brains and we’re certainly not allowed to have opinions. I hope someday I can find someone
    who treats me the way Michael treats you. It sounds wonderful. I can’t imagine it.”
    “Oh, Normie, you will. You will find someone like him. You just have to make sure that he’s spent a lot of time outside a Muslim country. Try to find someone from one of the countries Michael’s been to. He
    obviously learned those things there.” \020”Oh, that’ll be easy. I’m sure men like Michael are just running up and down the streets of Amman. All I have to do is pick one. Come on, Dalia! You could probably count the number of men in Jordan who think like Michael on the fingers of one hand. If only he was Muslim, you two could get married.”
    Then it suddenly hit home, and the euphoria subsided a bit. This was deadly serious. The way this was heading they would have to leave Jordan. I took Dalia’s hand.
    “If you ever decide that he’s the one you want to have children with, maybe we can find a way for the two of you to be together. I mean, we’ve been pretty successful so far. We make a great team. Nothing’s impossible.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    We survived that holiday season, but we barely had time to see or talk to Michael and Jehan. By now it had been almost one year since Michael and Dalia had met; yet they had really only known each other for five months. We’d spent most of our time figuring out ways for them to communicate. It had been a consuming and exhausting process, but we hoped that as time went on it would become much easier.
    Now it was nearing March, and as the last of the Muslim holidays passed, the football season went with them. Things were about to get more complicated, not easier. Mohammed would start spending more time at the salon and our brothers wouldn’t be watching games on Fridays; they’d be out in the neighbourhood. The risk of one of them spotting us getting in or out of a taxi was much greater. Michael and Dalia were desperate to spend more time together and had no interest in discussing the growing risks. But even they couldn’t ignore them, since they controlled the frequency of their dates.
    And even if Michael’s soldierly confidence led him to feel immune to defeat or damage, surely he loved Dalia enough to keep the terrible risks to her at the back of his mind. But
    Michael’s confidence and worldliness were infectious. We handled the details at this stage with a growing sense of invincibility, and I think we both felt that Michael was capable of making the big things happen including marriage, and leaving Jordan.
    Our objective was clear, and our mission defined: invent and implement a series of covert operations to make it possible for Michael and Dalia to date. We began to feel like military strategists. We started charting, on a neighbourhood street map, exactly where we thought our brothers and fathers would be during the crucial hours of the lovers’ meetings. Several weeks after the football season ended, we were nervous wrecks. After achieving every illicit Friday night date, we were a bundle of raw nerves. For the rest of the weekend and the following week, we’d hold our breath, expecting to hear some comment from one of our brothers that he’d seen us the previous Friday. The joy was turning to despair. We were going crazy and realized that we had to search for alternatives.
    “I can’t sleep for two night after every meeting. I keep thinking one of my brothers is going to say something like, “Hey, I thought I saw you and Norma yesterday