Forbidden Love (2 page)

the one that would have been created for us, and besides, we were never beyond the ever watchful eyes of our families. Dalia’s brother Mohammed, assigned as our official watchdog, walked her to work every morning from the day we opened and kept a sharp eye on us through until closing time. Nonetheless, we were convinced there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish as long as we stuck together.

After the opening, we quickly managed to develop a healthy clientele and were good at turning our referrals into regulars. Our great haircuts, we decided, were the secret to our success, along with the friendly atmosphere, and our quality customer service. Our competitors credited the shop’s popularity to the fact that it was one of Amman’s few salons owned and operated by women that served a mixed clientele. Had we known that the decision to open the door to male customers would bring us such heartbreak, I’ve wondered whether we would have done it.

I think, yes, we would. \020Five years down the line, we were still best friends. We’d kept the promise we’d made to each other years before, always stronger together than apart.

Life in Dalia’s home was basically like life in all Muslim homes in Amman, regardless of class, money, or neighbourhood. She wasn’t permitted to eat at the same table with, or at the same time as, the men in her household. She had to cook the meal and quietly serve it to them. Only when they had finished and left the room were she and her mother allowed to eat the leftovers. She was not allowed to leave her house unless she was accompanied by one of the men in her family. As if our neighbourhood wasn’t restrictive enough. Houses have been in the same families for so long that they have achieved landmark status. It was possible to hail a cab from anywhere in Amman and reach your destination in Jebel Hussein by giving no more than a family name to the driver. Some people might appreciate this kind of closeness and familiarity, but to Dalia and me it was intrusive and, at times, suffocating.

Weeks into our first year of business it became clear that our designated chaperone, Mohammed, hated the early schedule; because he was always late we began to lose clients. It took us

II

months of begging and pleading before our fathers finally allowed us to walk to the salon unaccompanied every morning. Now, Dalia would leave home no later than 8 a.m. to pick me up for work.

One morning, in March 1995, Dalia arrived ten minutes late and found me waiting on the terrace.

“Hey, ya hilweh (our joking slang for pretty or beautiful), are you ready to go or should I come up?” she shouted as she positioned herself beneath our balcony and gestured towards the stairs.

“I’m coming right down, ya gazallae,” I yelled. Ya gazallae is slang for especially attractive women those with the melting eyes of a baby deer, like Bambi. Dalia definitely fitted into that category. She had waist-length, thick, wavy tresses, perfect light olive skin, and full lips. Most of all, she had these mesmerizing dark brown eyes. Nature had put her only roundness in the proper places. I was a bit shorter than she was, with long black hair. My skin is smooth but my complexion is darker, and alas I always felt cursed with a pear-shaped body. An extra twenty or so pounds found their way to my hips when I was eighteen and refused to go away.

I knew from the time we were young that I could never be as attractive as she was, but Dalia was more than just physically gorgeous. She had a way about her that would make anyone and everyone feel comfortable and beautiful around her. She was the only one who couldn’t see it. What completed Dalia’s rare qualities was that her beauty was backed by intelligence and strength.

I bounded off the last stair, wound my arm round Dalia’s, and announced, “Let’s go.” We walked arm in arm through the winding streets of Jebel Hussein, until we reached the salon. We knew every block and building in our close

Community, and the pride most families took in their descent from the original nomadic tribes that settled there. The lack of green plants and flowers gave the area the spirit and pervasive dun colour of the old clusters of goat-hair tents in the desert.

At the salon, we usually worked side by side, handling one client after the next, from eight thirty until two thirty, with a couple of hours off for lunch and coffee. It was a good existence, but it lacked the

exhilaration we thought we’d find when we opened the salon.

That afternoon, I walked the last customer to the exit, leaned my back against the door, slowly slid to the floor, and exhaled loudly.

“Finally! Finished. I’m so tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night,” I said as I sat on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me.

Dalia turned towards me with a playfully wicked grin. “Why not? What were you doing?”

“Nothing, I just couldn’t sleep. I had too much on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I just need a holiday or something. I think I’m bored. I’m going to try to get some rest in the back.”

Dalia did not press me.

It took all my strength to stand and drag myself across the room. I paused briefly beside Dalia to sigh exaggeratedly and then continued into the break room. I sat on the arm of the couch and dumped myself onto its cushions. Memories that rose from sleepless nights filled my brain. For the past week or so I’d been restless and preoccupied. I didn’t know why, but I Was analysing every aspect of my life and craving change. Every morning, as the cold Rabeey winds beckoned me to get

up, I secretly hoped they’d brought something different of new with them.

Dalia came into the break room a few minutes later and found me lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. She slid a cigarette out of her pack and tossed it to me. “Here, maybe this will help.” In my mood, it only reinforced how pathetically shrunken our lives were that a taboo cigarette

seemed like a great adventure. But I took it.

“Are you sure we won’t get caught?” I asked as I lit the cigarette. “Relax. I locked the doors and, anyway, Mohammed took his friend Raed to the market. They should be gone for at least an hour. I asked them to pick up some fresh-squeezed carrot juice with our sandwiches. I thought that would delay them.”

She strolled over to the couch and sat beside me, her face animated.

“Remember where we first did this?” she asked, looking at the cigarette. She was fighting the urge to laugh at the thought of my red face and wide, tear-filled eyes.

“I should have known then what a bad influence you would be,” I replied.

“You were so scared.”

“I was not, I was choking!”

“Everyone chokes their first time,” Dalia said before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

“Well, you could have warned me,” I mumbled.

“Don’t tell me you’re still holding a grudge. Anyway, I did warn you in my own way,” she managed to say between bursts of laughter.

“Oh, sure,” I said, in a mocking voice.

A few minutes later, our trivial chatting suddenly turned electric.

“Did you see that guy who was in here earlier?” she asked, leaning

close enough for a whisper. \020What? In all the years I’d known her, she’d never mentioned a specific man, unless she was criticizing him. She’d always viewed men as the enemy and marriage as the ultimate defeat, since she knew she’d be forced to forfeit her few liberties, such as the salon, if she married.

“Which one?” I asked, snapping my head round to face her. “The one in the army uniform, the gorgeous one!” The gorgeous one! “I can’t believe this. You’ve never called a man gorgeous before.”

“I know, I know, but did you see him?” she asked impatiently, eyes lit by a strange new excitement.

Of course I’d seen him. The fact that he was the only client who’d come in wearing an army uniform made him easy to remember. “I’m not blind.”

“That’s the third time he’s been here in the past two weeks.” “What does he want? Who is he?”

“Each time he comes in, he says that he wants me to take a little off the ends. Then he spends the whole time talking to me. But I don’t mind. Just looking at him feels good.”

Tall, quite a bit taller than Dalia, I remembered, racking my brain to recall exactly what he looked like, this man who’d suddenly entered our intimate space, perhaps to cause trouble for my best friend. What if Dalia’s brother, Mohammed, had noticed him? Mohammed was not only our watchdog, he was our fathers’ hired, loyal informant. What if he reported it to her father Dalia flirting with a strange man?

“Dalia, you can’t let anyone else hear you say that,” I said. Broad shoulders, thick, short, dark brown hair, black eyes-an image was coming.

“I know, but I can say it to you. Anyway, all I’m doing is

looking and talking right now. But I think he likes me. I mean, come on, he’s been in for three haircuts in two weeks. Plus I’ve caught him staring at me,” she said happily.

His eyes were dark and penetrating, thick eyebrows, and long thick lashes.

“Do you like him? Do you think you could like him romantically? And WHY haven’t you told me about this sooner? I’m supposed to be your

best friend.” \020Small, straight nose, full lips, square jaw line, thin moustache. He’d look better without the moustache, but they seemed to be an Arab man’s fashion statement. I had my picture of him.

“Relax, I’ll tell you everything,” she said.

“Come on, I want all the details.” We may have been twenty-five, but we were so inexperienced that we were chatting like a pair of adolescents. But for me, this was more than girlish gossip. It felt urgent, like a police interrogation. Dalia was being driven by some inner fire that shone through her eyes.

“Norma, calm down. There’s not much to report. His name is Michael, he’s thirty-two and a major in the Royal Guard. He has three sisters and two brothers. He’s the oldest in his family. He’s intelligent, handsome, charming, polite, unlike the men in our families.” She lowered her voice. “And he’s Catholic.”

You have to be a Jordanian woman to grasp what a shock, a frightening explosive shock, those words were. My response just rushed out. “Bism il lah (Oh my God, in the name of God), Dalia! You have to forget about him, now. Nothing but trouble can come from this.” Jordanian society and law both strictly forbade relationships between people of different religions. But what chilled me as I heard this were all the stories I’d been told about the tragic endings of these relationships. They seldom reached the papers. You heard about them

as gossip, in the neighbourhood, in the salon-what award-winning gossip journalists some of our friends and customers would have made. Women had died or been sent to prison for life because their families suspected them of having a secret romantic relationship while they were single, let alone a relationship with someone of a different religion.

But it was far more real to us than gossip. We’d lost a seventeen-year-old client to an honour killing. How could Dalia forget? This girl was being molested by a close male relative she’d told us! And she’d been killed-we had to assume by the men in her family to keep it quiet.

“All we’re doing is talking. What harm can come from that? I’m attracted to him, I admit it, and I think he’s attracted to me, but we’ve only talked.” She was blinded, oblivious. “Anyway, you know how I feel about religion. We’re all born into a religion, but it’s something we have no control over. If I was born Catholic, then I’d be Catholic. But I was born Muslim and so I’m Muslim. Look at us. You’re Catholic, but that has nothing to do with loving you or anyone more or less.”

Dalia had always made her views about religion clear, but this was different. I’d never heard her defend a man, and the passion in her voice and the look in her eyes told me more than any words. She was in love; she just didn’t know it yet.

For all her incredible strength, she was now very vulnerable, and I suddenly felt protective. “Oh, gazallae, you know I feel the same way you do about religion, but our families don’t see it the way we do. The whole country is prejudiced against this kind of thing. I love you too much to see you get hurt, especially over someone you hardly even know.”

I know, Norma. I understand that you’re worried, but I’m not going to get hurt. I’ve only talked to him three times, but

there’s something about him … I don’t know what it is. I can’t explain it. When I talk to him, I feel as if nothing else exists or matters. I know it sounds stupid, but I feel as if I’ve known him all

my life,” she said ecstatically. \020”Well, it sounds as if you more than just like him.” “I don’t know. I’ve never felt this way before. It’s different, it’s exciting and scary and wonderful, all at the same time. I can’t explain it.”

“So I take it you want to continue to talk to this man?” I asked, knowing I was falling short of being as wise as I wanted to be.

“Yes! Definitely. I know I shouldn’t, but it’s not something I can control. Who knows, maybe it’s my destiny.”

“Destiny, did you say your destiny? But you don’t believe in destiny. Anyway, how do you plan to keep talking to him? Don’t you think Mohammed will get suspicious if he keeps coming in for haircuts? I mean, after two more appointments, he’ll be bald. What’s he going to use as an excuse after that?”

“I’ll worry about my brother later. Right now, I need you to help me find a way to see him again, please. Together I’m sure we can come up with something.”

“Dalia, is it that important to you? Do you realize the risk you’ll be taking? Do you think he’s worth the risk?” This was her chance to hear me, to open her eyes. Please, Dalia, please. “I think so, yes.” She said it with a fervour that frightened me.

“OK, then. I’m sure I’ll regret this, but you know I’ll help you. We have to be careful. If we’re caught, we’ll both be in serious trouble.” I made one last try. “Why would you want to pursue this when you won’t be allowed to marry him.”

“I know I won’t, but I’m not thinking about that right now. I just feel as if I have to see him and talk to him again,

even if he only becomes my secret friend and nothing

more.”

“OK.” I hugged her and got up from the couch. “We can talk about this again tomorrow. Right now you’d better go and unlock the doors while I straighten up and clean out the ashtrays. We don’t want Mohammed and Raed to find the place looking like this. They’ll be here soon.”