Free Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri Page B

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    increased our strength and energy. After a week, he began asking us questions. We knew we had him hooked. We gently urged him to try some of them himself. Oh, if only we had access to weights and weightlifting machines, how much better our results would be, we said, nudging him towards joining a health club. The place we had in mind was Sports City, which was minutes from both our homes and the salon.
    We phoned the Club to discuss a gift membership for our brother, and, with Jehan’s help, arranged to have Michael drop off the money for fees and pick up Mohammed’s card later that evening.
    The next morning we wrapped up all of our workout books and magazines, along with Mohammed’s new Sports City membership card, and presented him with his gift when he arrived that afternoon. He was thrilled.
    Our plan appeared to have worked perfectly. Mohammed loved his new pastime, and managed to make many new friends at the gym; he was out of our hair from morning until siesta. He was
    happy to drop us off at the salon or a bride’s home, and leave. Dalia was thrilled to be in touch with Michael. And we’d found a great friend in Jehan.
    We savoured our first small taste of success at manipulating and deluding men the only route, for millennia, to any kind of power for Arab women. It gave us a little confidence, subdued the fear a bit. But it was bittersweet; had we lived in a freer world, it would not have been our strategy of choice.
    Eventually, of course, Jehan was going to have to return to university and wouldn’t be able to spend much time at the salon. We’d miss her she had become like a sister to us. Without her here to cover Dalia’s calls to Michael, and deliver long letters to him, we needed a new way for them to communicate. We agreed that Dalia would only write to him on
    the days Jehan came in and could courier the letters swiftly home. With classes and her duties at home, Jehan would be here much less often, but Dalia and I were sure that we would find a way to persuade
    Mohammed to take us to see her. \020We knew that all this scheming was dangerous, but we never discussed it. It was as if we would give life to the risks if we spoke them aloud. So they remained thoughts and fears that we managed to suppress while we hatched our plot.

CHAPTER NINE
    We became fixated on Fridays, the holy day, when everything in Amman is closed-stores, the salon. Looking out desperately for a way to escape our daily prison so that Dalia and Michael could have moments together, Fridays became our target, our only possible window of opportunity. Dalia and I had always spent Friday evening together, at her home or mine. But that had to change; Dalia would explode if she didn’t see Michael soon.
    Our first idea was to open the salon on Friday afternoons, making that our excuse to be out of the house, but both fathers opposed the idea. We refocused our energy on Friday evenings. Where could we get Mohammed or any of our brothers to drop us off and collect us later without betraying the plan?
    The problem with Friday evening was going to be football. Football is Jordan’s most popular sport; most of the males in the nation are ardent fans and watch the games religiously every Friday night. As soon as the season began, Mohammed stopped
    weight training so that he wouldn’t miss a game. The chances of getting him to drive us anywhere on Friday evenings during the football season, which lasted from late September to March, were slim to non-existent. We searched for another plan.
    It was a Thursday night. I could smell the majalabiyya baking from my room aromatic biscuits made with rice flour, sugar, milk and rose water and topped with an almond or pine nut. Dalia and I were plotting, plotting. For years we’d been allowed to have a sihra on Thursday evenings a night when our parents did not impose our usual curfew, and we were allowed to stay up late. We alternated between Dalia’s home and mine. While the biscuits baked,