Romance is dead in Jordan
A budding romance between a Jordanian man and woman turned into an ugly public divorce when the couple found out that they were in fact man and wife, state media reported.
Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly re-united Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chat room, the official Petra news agency said.
Bakr, who passed himself off as Adnan, fell head over heels for Sanaa, who signed off as Jamila (beautiful) and described herself as a cultured, unmarried woman — a devout Muslim whose hobby was reading, Petra said.
Cyber love blossomed between the pair for three months and soon they were making wedding plans. To pledge their troth in person, they agreed to meet in the flesh near a bus depot in the town of Zarqa, northeast of Amman.
The shock of finding out their true identities was too much for the pair.
Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: “You are divorced, divorced, divorced” — the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.
“You are a liar,” Sanaa retorted before fainting, the agency said.
With apologies to Rupert Holmes
I was tired of my Sanaa, we’d been together too long.
Like a worn-out recording, of a favorite song.
So while she lay there sleeping, I surfed websites in bed.
And in a personals column, there was this e-mail I read:
“If you like Pali jihadis, who explode on a train.
If you’re not into harems, if you don’t drink champagne.
If you like making love at midnight, in the folds of my cape.
I’m the lady you’ve looked for, write to me, and escape.”
I didn’t think about my Sanaa, I know that sounds kind of mean.
But me and my old lady, had fallen into the same old dull routine.
So I wrote to the website, took out a personal ad.
And though I’m nobody’s Rumi, I thought it wasn’t half-bad.
“Yes, I like Pali jihadis, who explode on a train.
I am into Halal food, and I don’t drink champagne.
I’ve got to meet you by tomorrow noon, and cut through all this red tape.
At a depot near Zarqa, where we’ll plan our escape.”
So I waited with high hopes, then she walked in the place.
I knew her smile in an instant, I knew the curve of her face.
It was my own wifely Sanaa, and she said, “Oh, it’s you.”
And she cried for a moment, when I said, “I divorce you…”
