By Paul Tate
AMMAN — Three years after Norma Khouri’s bestselling book on her friend’s honour killing was exposed as a fake, the Jordanian-born writer has taken to the silver screen to clear her name, but her efforts to salvage her reputation spectacularly backfired.
Khouri’s book, Forbidden Love, told the story of her childhood friend Dalia, a Muslim from a conservative family who was murdered by her father after he discovered she was engaged in a secret love affair with a Christian army officer.
The book, published in 2003, proved a big hit, selling half a million copies in 15 countries and turning Khouri into a self-styled champion of women’s rights.
But Khouri’s new found status was short-lived when it transpired that her story was fabricated.
Far from a growing up in the male-dominated society she described, Khouri had lived in Chicago since the age of three, held an American passport and was married with two children, a difficult feat for someone who claimed to be a virgin. What’s more, she never had a childhood friend called Dalia who was murdered in an honour killing.
The deception may well have gone unnoticed if it were not for the determination of a small band of women’s rights activists in Jordan who expressed doubts over the book’s authenticity.
“From the first few pages it was obvious that this woman did not know anything about Jordan, says activist and Joradan Times Reporter Rana Husseini, the driving force behind exposing Khouri.
Husseini, who is featured in the film, at first became suspicious on reading that the story was based around a unisex hair saloon set up by Khouri and Dalia.
“Everyone here knows that such places do not exist and are against Jordanian law. I then discovered that the book was full of factual errors such as the River Jordan runs through Amman and that the country shares borders with Egypt, Kuwait and Lebanon.”
Picking up the cause, the Jordanian National Commission for Women contacted the book’s publishers, Random House, to express their concerns. But despite repeated letters the publishers stood by Khouri, even refusing to reclassify the book as fiction.
Finally, in 2004, journalist Malcolm Knox ran a front page splash in the Sydney Morning herald exposing the full extent of the hoax. Random House immediately ordered the book to be withdrawn and Khouri went into hiding, or so everyone thought.
For the past two years Khouri has been making the aptly titled film “Forbidden Lies” with Australian director Anna Broinowski. The film premiered on February 25 at the Adelaide Film Festival and was Khouri’s attempt to clear her name.
Broinowski says she first met Khouri in San Francisco in 2005 and was taken in by her story that she had been the victim of a vicious smear campaign in the media.
“She utterly convinced me that she’d been maligned by the press, that her book was a true story and that she was not the con artist she’d been made out to be,” Broinowski told The Jordan Times.
But when Khouri invited Broinowski and producer Sally Regan to travel to Jordan to verify her story they soon realised all was not well.
“What happened in Jordan was astounding, says Broinowski. “Norma led us on a wild goose chase, changing the goals posts at every turn, failing to produce witnesses and relatives, taking us to dubious locations and refusing to show us the real unisex saloon where the core of the drama Forbidden Love takes place.”
During their stay, Broinowski says Khouri became increasingly paranoid, insisting her life was in danger and refusing to go anywhere without her bodyguard. She also refused point blank to debate with any of the activists who had accused her of being a fraud.
“We spent most of our time in a van with tinted windows or in hotel rooms away from extremists supposedly lurking behind every plant pot,” says Broinowski.
It was only when Khouri took the name of the real Dalia to be checked at the Forensics Institute in Amman that the film-makers knew for certain they had been duped.
“When I got back from Jordan I realised the film was now the portrait of a con woman whether I like it or not. I was disappointed Norma hadn’t proven her story but also fascinated by the woman I was getting to know,” says Broinowski.
Not one to give up easily, Khouri remains unfazed by the whole episode, revealing that she’d deliberately withheld Dalia’s real identity because she never trusted the film-makers in the first place.
As for Broinowski, despite being led on a wild goosed chase in search of a fictional Dalia, she appears to hold no grudges, recalling her time with Khouri with a certain fondness.
“I feel that she is genuinely committed to stopping honour crimes… she is brilliant, articulate, a born improviser and a naturally gifted actress… I wish she’d become a philosopher or fiction writer rather than getting embroiled in lies.”
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
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