The movie, Forbidden Lies, has been described as gripping, irresistible, thrilling, remarkable and incredible. These are just a number of adjectives that have been applied to it by the promotional material. Remarkable perhaps. Norma Khouri has charm, good looks and style but she is incredibly irritating.
It’s actually a documentary about the “true story” in the book Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri. The book is about the horrific honour killing in Jordan of Norma’s best friend, Dalia. It turns out that this is not her real name.
The book was a runaway best seller around the world and then Australian journalist Malcolm Knox exposed it as a work of fiction. Norma went into hiding and according to the promotional material has been in hiding ever since but decided to come out and talk to the director of this movie-length documentary Forbidden Lies. It is hard to know why she made this decision.
I was kkeen to see the documentary. I use to make radio documentaries and although they don’t have a lot in common with a full-length movie, the problem of what to put in and what to leave out is a decision all directors have to make. It is also possible to slew the content to fit the hypothesis you have in mind. We see this all the time in Australia in television magazine programmes like Today Tonight and Current Affair.
What is indisputable here is that Norma Khouri is able to write a pager tuner. Thousands of people all over the world were gripped by her story. I suppose a question we could ask is whether they would have been so gripped if the book had been marketed as fiction.
During the interviews in the movie Norma refuses to answer questions and tells one lie after another and when she is found out then tells another to justify the first. I felt that director Anna Broinowskit showed great restraint in not slapping her but just occasionally her impatience showed through. At one time she pleaded with Norma to give her something that was true: some fact that that would check out.
I found all this evasion, contradiction and justification (“I’m protecting the people involved”) boring. To me it wasn’t thrilling or exciting it was dull and I found at one stage I had dropped off to sleep. I think that it is remarkable that Anna stuck with it.
This may be because I can’t find it in me to care greatly if this honour killing was true, fiction or an amalgamation of a number of such killings. Not because I’m not appalled by honour killings. I am. I am grateful that I have born into a society where women are not a possession of their family to do as they will with. This story may be written with a fictional killing at the center but there are still such killings and Forbidden Love has made many people, who may perhaps have never heard of such a thing, aware. Ultimately this story could be one more step in a path to prevent such things. Perhaps this is why I don’t care whether it’s fact or fiction and watching Norma wriggling around on the end of the interview’s questions is not particularly interesting. At the end of the film Norma Khouri was still an enigma..
It is a finely put together documentary with great camera work and the interview style is generally sympathetic and well balanced but in the end we have to ask ourselves do we need 106mins on Norma and her book. I believe that Anna succumbed to the dilemma “it took me so much time, effort and money to get this I can’t cut it out.” I am of the opinion that a great deal could have been cut and we would have ended up with the same outcome.
What makes it remarkable is that it is about one of the great publishing hoaxes of last century.
Let me know what you think.
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3 comments:
Your eighth paragraph basically expresses my sentiments, too. And senior members of the diplomatic community in Jordan have expressed similar remarks to me in private, off the record. It's a great relief to know I am not alone.
I've been working on the "honor" killings situation in Jordan for years now, without compensation, so obviously I care. And I can tell you that, whether or not Dalia is fictional, the story Norma relates about her is more or less how things go down in Jordan. In fact, many "honor" killings there are even more violent and less justifiable than Dalia's. For example, the World Bank looked at all the Jordanian "honor" killings for the year 1997 and found through post-mortem examinations of the bodies that a full 95% of the victims were still virgins. So whatever they were accused of doing probably didn't even happen. Nonetheless, they were summarily executed for it.
I think it's legitimate for investigators and law enforcement officials to go after Norma for any crimes and frauds she's perpetrated on the public.
But I find it rather tragic that so-called Jordanian activists would invest a lot of time showing that the Jordan River doesn't flow through Amman, nor does Amman have co-ed hair salons, for example, when girls and women are dying, when there are no shelters for at-risk people to seek refuge, there are three penal code articles on the books that offer such leniency to the killers that the average sentence is six months, etc. There is so much serious work to be done, and Jordan has made so little progress. It's just such a case of woefully misplaced priorities and really kind of makes the whole movement seem petty and jealous of the success of Norma's book and maybe even media hungry instead of committed to tangible solutions for a life-or-death problem. Maybe the director of the film was trying to depict this circus-like atmosphere, for it seems no one in this movie ends up looking very good.
Like you, I think it'd been wiser of the so-called activists to use Norma's book and the international attention it garnered to move the cause forward. I'm an M.B.A./marketer by profession, so this is a professional assessment, not just a casual observation.
I remain very concerned about the at-risk girls and women in Jordan.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
It would be sensible for me to actually see the film before commenting on that, and the hooha since about her 'lies'.
Perhaps Norma has seen an opportunity to present real facts in the guise of a fictional story, turning it into an international best seller, but it may also be that she is in some real danger. Consider Salman Rushdie's years of hiding after The Satantic Verses was published.
On the other hand, by publishing she exposes herself to questions. And tthe issue of honesty and fairness in professional journalism and broadcasting has never been so potent.
On a synchronistic note, 'ethics in journalism/broadcasting' is the key topic for discussion at The Chartered Institute of Journalists' AGM/Conference in London this Saturday (29th September), and I shall raise the issues that you, Em, and Ellen Sheeley cover.
Ellen Sheeley, how nice to have someone who agrees with my point view.
I also agree with you regarding Norma Khouri and answering for any crime she may have committed.
She has also betrayed the trust of her readers who usually believe without question that the truth is the exact truth that is written by journalist or writer. There is a question of ethics here - a point I believe Viv was making.
Thank you for your full answer. I’m shocked that there are no refuges for at-risk women in Jordan and I’m awed that you have been working so selflessly for these women.
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