Dali

It was simple.

Omar would marry Salaam. Nour would marry Jude. Two weddings, one weekend, and four people who previously couldn’t be themselves in a Middle Eastern context would have the perfect cover story that would allow them to lead semi-normal, protected lives.

“It’s like a rom-com,” Salaam said, stirring sugar into her coffee at the café overlooking Petra’s hills and valleys.

“Except nobody ends up with who the audience expects.”

Jude laughed. She’d been calling herself Jude since college, but here in Wadi Musa, surrounded by her grandmother’s neighbors and her father’s business partners, she was Nujoud again. The name felt heavy on her tongue like it almost didn’t fit.

“More like a comedy,” Nour muttered, checking his phone for the hundredth time that morning. “My mother wants a bigger venue to invite half of Irbid and all of my extended family, much of which I can’t stand at all.”

Omar reached across the table and squeezed Nour’s hand briefly before pulling away. Public displays of affection between males brought attention they couldn’t afford, even if platonic. Just a few weeks ago, a friend had been arrested for being seen with his partner in a public park, which was a gruesome reminder of how unsafe their situation was.

Nour had previously been hounded by his father about his light, flamboyant attire and had slurs thrown at him. It wasn’t easy molding into what society deemed normal.

“Humor her. The bigger the wedding, the more legitimate it looks,” Omar replied.

The four of them had met at a party in the city years and ago. Not the kind of party their parents would usually know about or approve of at all. The kind where you could hold hands with whoever made your heart beat out of your chest, where you could dance without thinking about the space between bodies, where being yourself didn’t have to be a revolution. Back then, Jude had been telling someone about her family’s hotel in Petra when Salaam interrupted to say she’d always wanted to see the Siq at sunset. Nour and Omar were already inseparable, finishing each other’s sentences and exchanging looks that lasted too long. When the night was over, they had figured it out. The solution to their impossible problem.

“Your grandmother would love me,” Nour had said to Jude. “I’m almost a doctor.”

“Omar’s father would think I’m wife-y material,” Salaam had added. “English degree, comes from a comfortable family, wants children eventually.”

The last part wasn’t even a lie. Salaam did want children. She wanted to raise them with someone who loved her, in a house filled with books and laughter. She wanted to raise them on the idea that love comes in many forms. But she just couldn’t have that life with Jude. Not openly, at least. Not until this arrangement was on the table.

Now, six months later, at the café where Jude had breakfast every morning as a child, the plan felt both more real and more surreal than ever.

________________________________________________________________________________________

“I brought the rings,” Nour said, sliding a small, velvet box across the table. “My cousin knows someone that owns a jewelry store somewhere in the city. Got us a deal.”

Jude cracked the box open. Four gold bands, traditional and simple. Just right.

“What about afterward?” Jude asked. “I mean, the weddings are one thing. But then what? We all just… live this for good?”

It was the question none of them wanted to ask.

The plan resolved their immediate worries. Pressure from their families, bottomless questions on why they haven’t yet married, and endless attempts at introductions with suitable suitors.

“Maybe we don’t have to figure it all out right now,” Salaam said. She looked around the café, at the tourists with their cameras, at local men playing backgammon and sipping black tea, at everybody melting into the background almost immediately.

“Maybe we should take it one day at a time,” Salaam continued.

Omar nodded.

“My sister keeps bugging me about raising her nieces and nephews. I told her Allah knows better when that would happen.” He added.

“Very diplomatic,” Nour said.

“What did you tell your mom about the honeymoon, Jude?” Nour continued.

“That we want to explore Jordan first before going abroad. Show Omar the real Petra, not the phony tourist sites.” She teased. “She thinks it’s romantic.”

The irony wasn’t lost on any of them. Jude had been showing people the “real” Petra almost her entire life, first as a child trailing behind her father as he led tour groups, then as a pre-teen and young adult while working summers at the family hotel, and now as a graduate student writing her thesis on tourism and cultural preservation in archaeological sites.  

But this time would be different. She would be showing someone she loved around. Even if that someone was technically her beard, and even if the love wasn’t the kind that would be celebrated at weddings.

“Here’s a thought,” Jude said suddenly.

“For the honeymoon, I mean. We could go to Wadi Rum. Camp in the desert as couples. Be ourselves for a minute.” She continued.

Nour and Omar exchanged looks.

“That could work,” Omar said slowly.

“We could say we wanted to double-date. Keep things halal.” He continued.

“Halal,” Salaam repeated, tasting the word as she enunciated it.

In a week, she’d be married to her best friend while in love with someone else entirely. But somehow, the idea of the four of them together in this performance felt like the most honest thing she could imagine.

________________________________________________________________________________________

The wedding preparations consumed the coming three weeks.

Jude’s grandma emerged from what had been a decade-long depression following her husband’s passing, suddenly revived by the prospect of seeing her granddaughter married. She threw herself into planning with the spirit of someone making up for lost time.

“The roses should be pink, not red,” she declared.

“Red is too passionate for a first marriage. Pink is hopeful.” She continued.

Jude held back the urge to point out that passion might actually be relevant to a marriage, even given the background. Instead, she nodded and made mental notes about the flowers.

Salaam arrived three days before the wedding. She impressed Jude’s father immediately. Had questions about the business and listened to his stories about the early days of tourism in Petra. She helped out in the kitchen without being asked and complimented Jude’s aunties and their cooking with just the right amount of enthusiasm.

“I really like Salaam,” Jude’s cousin whispered at dinner.

“She looks at you like you hung the moon.” She continued.

That comment hit Jude unexpectedly hard. Because Salaam did look at her that way sometimes. When she thought no one was watching, when they were alone making wedding arrangements, when she laughed at Jude’s comments about the ridiculous situation. There were moments when the line between performance and reality blurred so much that Jude forgot which side they were supposed to be on.

Salaam and Omar’s wedding was scheduled for the day after her and Nour’s. The plan was that all four of them would attend both ceremonies, playing the role of close friends who had found love around the same time. That this coincidence would be a subject of discussion for their families to talk about for years afterward.

The night before her wedding, Jude couldn’t sleep. She walked out onto the hotel terrace that overlooked the valley, a gust of familiar jasmine wind welcoming her. Petra looked different at night, more like the ancient city it had once been as opposed to the tourist attraction that it had become.

“Can’t sleep either?”

She turned to find Salaam standing in the doorway.

“Just thinking,” Jude said.

Salaam joined her at the railing. “About tomorrow?”

“About everything. This whole thing we’re doing… sometimes I wonder if we’re making the right choices or just cowardly ignoring the reality of our situations.”

“Can’t we be both?”

They stood in silence for a minute. In twelve hours, they’d be married. In forty-eight, they’d be on their honeymoon with their respective partners. In a year, or five years, or ten, they’d still be living this convenient, intricate lie.

“Salaam,” Jude said quietly.

“Can I tell you something?” She continued.

“Of course.” Salaam replied.

“Sometimes I wish…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

“Never mind. It’s not fair.” She continued.

“What’s not fair?” 

Jude was quiet for so long that Salaam thought she wasn’t going to respond at all.

“Sometimes I wish we could just be normal. That we could want what our families want us to want. That tomorrow could be real.”

Salaam’s heart winced, “Jude…”

“I know. I know it’s not how we feel. I know we’re doing this for the right reasons. But sometimes I look at couples who get to love each other openly, who get to build a life together without all these complications, and I’m just… tired. Tired of all the pretending.”

“Even the pretending we’re choosing to do?” Salaam replied.

Jude laughed, but it sounded sad. “Especially that. Because at least the other pretending is something that’s being done to us. This is something we’re doing to ourselves.”

Salaam reached for Jude’s hand, squeezing it gently. “Jude, look at me.”

Jude turned, and in the soft light, Salaam could see her tears lace her face.

“What we’re doing tomorrow, it’s not pretending. We do love Nour and Omar. Just because it’s not romantic doesn’t make it less real. And what we’re building is a space where all four of us are protected. Yeah, it’s not the life we dreamed of when we were little, but it’s still a good life.”

Jude nodded, sniffling. “You’re right. I just… I see the way Nour and Omar look at each other sometimes. And I want that. Not with them, obviously, but… I want someone to look at me like I’m their entire world. Openly, not behind closed doors and in crippling fear of getting caught.”

“You will,” Salaam said firmly. “Maybe not here, maybe not now, but someday. We all will. This isn’t our ending, Jude. This is just our beginning.”

________________________________________________________________________________________

The wedding was beautiful.

Jude wore her grandma’s dress, altered to fit her frame but still recognizably the same gown that had been worn at the first wedding celebration held at this very hotel almost sixty years ago. Salaam wore a simple yellow dress that brought out her eyes and made her look, as Jude’s father said, “like a princess Diana.”

The ceremony itself was small with only immediate family and close friends. But the reception filled the hotel’s common area, with relatives, business associates, and neighbors from throughout Wadi Musa. The dabke lasted until nearly midnight, with even the oldest guests joining the traditional line dances. Omar stayed near Nour, fulfilling the role of the groom’s best friend who was soon to also be wed. Everybody danced with elderly aunts and complimented the food and posed for pictures with convincing smiles. Everything seemed normal. Except it wasn’t all about appearances.

During the cake cutting, Salaam caught Omar’s eye across the room. He was watching Nour dance with one of Jude’s cousins, and the longing in his expression was so raw it pierced his heart and soul. Tomorrow, she realized. Tomorrow Omar would be her husband, at least on paper. Tomorrow they’d get their moment.

“What’s on your mind?” Jude asked, almost tracking her stare.

“Just… all of it. How strange this all is. How good.”

Jude smiled. “My father’s been crying on and off all night. Happy tears, I think.”

“He told me earlier that seeing me married was the one thing he wanted before he got too old to enjoy it. Said he can now rest easy knowing I’ll be taken care of.”

“And you will be. Just not the way he thinks.”

“Does that bother you?”

Salaam considered it. “A little. I don’t like lying to people I care about. But I like the alternative even less.”

________________________________________________________________________________________

Later, when the guests headed home and the family had retired to their rooms, the four of them sat on the terrace sharing a bottle of champagne that Nour had smuggled in.

“One down, one to go,” Omar said, raising his glass.

“To love,” Nour added.

“To family and friendship,” Salaam said.

“To everything good,” Jude finished.

Then, glasses clinked and four people had found a way to be honestly dishonest with the sole intention of protecting one another and leading loving lives.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Salaam and Omar’s wedding in the capital, Amman was smaller but no less emotional. Omar’s mother cried through the entire ceremony, overcome with joy at seeing her oldest son finally settled. Nour’s extended family turned out in force, filling the room with loud spirits and even louder laughter and enough food to feed half the city.

Salaam and Omar played their parts just right, the newlywed couple inspired through friends to find love of their own. They slow danced together, Omar’s hand on Salaam’s waist, both moving carefully through the motions of heterosexual romance.

“You’re a good dancer,” Salaam commented.

“My mother made me take lessons when I was twelve. Said every proper young lad should know how to.”

“Mine too,” Salaam smiled.

When the bouquet was tossed, Jude deliberately missed the flowers, allowing one of Omar’s single cousins to catch them instead. But when no one was looking, she picked a fallen rose from the ground and tucked it behind Salaam’s ear.

“What’s that for?” Salaam asked.

“Because you look beautiful tonight. Because you’re my wife now, whether everybody knows it or not. Because I adore you.”

It was such a small gesture, but it imprinted on Salaam’s heart. The line between performance and reality was getting thinner and thinner every day.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Wadi Rum was exactly what they needed. They rented a traditional Bedouin camp for a week, two dome tents arranged around a central fire, with the desert stretching ahead in every direction. Soon, all of them huddled around the bonfire and released sighs of relief that the performance was through.

“That’s it. It was really that simple all along.”

For the first time in months, they could unwind. Nour and Omar held hands openly, stealing kisses when they thought the others weren’t looking. Salaam and Jude ditched their roles as newlyweds, falling back into the comfortable friendship that had brought them together in the first place.

On the third night, as they sat around the fire, Nour asked the question they’d all been avoiding.

“So what happens now? When we get back to our real lives?”

“We keep doing what we’re doing,” Jude said. 

“But for how long?” Omar pressed.

“Do we stay married forever? Do we get divorced eventually? Do we have kids?”

It was Salaam who answered. “I think we take it as it comes. Maybe we’ll move somewhere more accepting. Maybe we’ll find a way to expand this arrangement. Or maybe we’ll grow old together, all four of us, and our grandchildren will call us all grandma and grandpa and never know which is which.”

“I like that last option,” Omar hesitated.

“Me too,” Salaam agreed.

They sat in comfortable silence as the bonfire faded.

“I have something to confess,” Omar said suddenly. “My mother… she’s been asking about grandchildren. A lot. And I may have told her that we’ve been trying…”

“Omar,” Nour said, almost warning.

“Please let me finish. I told her we’ve been trying, and that if it’s God’s will, it will happen in time. But what if… what if it was God’s will? What if Salaam and Jude wanted to have children, and we could make that happen?”

Salaam felt her heart drop to her gut. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe this arrangement could be more than just cover. Maybe we could actually build a family. Have children with loving parents. With the cover of biological parenthood on our side.”

“That’s…” Jude started, then stopped.

“That’s actually not a terrible idea.”

“It’s completely insane,” Nour said. But he was smiling.

Salaam looked around at these three people who had become her chosen family, her partners in the elaborate scheme of acceptable love. The idea was insane. It was also, somehow, making sense to everybody.

“We’d have to be so careful, though,” she said.

“The timing, the story we tell, making sure everything looks natural.” She continued.

“But it could work,” Jude said, and Salaam could hear the hope in her voice.

“It could work,” Salaam agreed.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Months later, Salaam stood in the bathroom of her and Omar’s apartment staring at two lines on a pregnancy test. Through the thin walls, she could hear Jude laughing at the television, Nour and Omar discussing medical residency applications at the kitchen table.

Jude moved to Amman after the wedding, officially to be closer to her husband’s work but really because living separate from Salaam started to feel horrible. They’d found a large apartment building where all four of them could live comfortably as neighbors. Each couple had lived in their own apartment but rarely were the four of them not together in one or the other.

The pregnancy had happened faster than any of them expected. One awkward but determined night three months ago, strange and somehow still meaningful. Omar had been gentle and nervous. Salaam had been grateful for the way he treated her body like something precious he was borrowing just to return.

Now, looking at the test, she felt intense emotions. Joy, because she’d wanted this for almost too long. Fear, because raising a child in their situation would require even more caution than they were already taking on. And something else, something she hadn’t expected. It was a stubborn, intense protectiveness that mothers have over their children.

A knock at the bathroom door interrupted her thoughts.

“Salaam? Everything okay?” Jude’s said, concerned.

Salaam opened the door, holding up the test. Jude face went through a series of expressions. Surprise, denial, and then a smile so wide it could swallow the Dead Sea.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Oh my God, we’re having a baby.”

It didn’t matter who this child belonged to. It would be raised by four people who had chosen each other, who had built something beautiful out of the constraints of an unaccepting world and circumstances not in their favor.

Salaam nodded, sudden tears flooding her vision. “We’re having a baby.”

Jude pulled her into a hug, and they stood there in the bathroom doorway, two women who had married two men for all the wrong reasons that somehow found the right one along the way. From the kitchen came the sound of chairs scraping, footsteps approaching.

“Is everything alright?” Nour’s voice, followed by Omar’s worried face behind him.

Salaam held up the test again, watching as it dawned on them simultaneously.

Omar’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “Really?”

“Really.” She replied.

And then all four of them were celebrating and laughing and crying in a small apartment, planning for a future that would be complicated and beautiful and theirs.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Three years later, Jude stood on the terrace of her family’s hotel in Petra, watching Salaam chase their daughter through the gardens. Janna was almost two now. With bundles of dark curls and bottomless curiosity about almost everything. Who called Salaam “Mama,” Jude “Aunty Jude,” Omar “Baba,” and Nour “Ammo Nour.”

The plan had worked better than any of them had dared hope. To their families and the world outside of them, they were two couples who had become best friends, who shared everything from holidays to childcare duties. Their parents focused on Janna, never questioning the unusual closeness of her chosen family.

Beneath the charade, they had built something unprecedented. Perhaps a romance with more protagonists than any traditional narrative could contain. Nour had gotten into a pediatric residency program in Amman. Omar was specializing in psychiatry, with a particular interest in family therapy. Salaam was working on her master’s degree in social work. And Jude had started teaching at a local university, often commuting between Amman and Petra to see her parents. Omar, Nour, and Salaam would often join.

“She’s going to sleep well tonight,” Salaam said, sinking into the chair beside Jude as Janna finally tired herself out and curled up on the garden swing for a short nap.

“All that running around will do that,” Jude agreed. “My dad wants to start teaching her about the archaeology sites. Says she’s the perfect age to start learning about her heritage.”

“What do you think?”

Salaam considered this. “I think I want her to know where she comes from. Family history, tradition and culture, and the complicated background that we’ve given her. Everything she could possibly absorb while she’s young.”

“She’ll have questions eventually. On how her family is different.”

“And we’ll answer them honestly. Age-appropriately, but honestly.”

They sat in comfortably, watching their daughter sleep in the afternoon sun.

“Do you ever regret it?” Jude asked quietly. “All of this?”

Salaam thought about the question seriously. There were things she regretted. But this life they’d built together, this family they’d chosen and created and fought for?

“No,” she said firmly. “None of it.”

Jude smiled, reaching over to hug Salaam under her arm. “Me neither.”

In the distance, Janna stirred in her sleep, mumbling something that sounded like “Baba story”—her regular requests for one of Omar’s elaborate bedtime tales about princesses and clever foxes and families who loved each other in all sorts of ways.
Tonight, Salaam thought, she’d ask him to tell the one about the four friends who went to Petra and found exactly what they were looking for, even though it wasn’t what they thought they wanted. It was Janna’s favorite, though she didn’t yet know it was also her origin story.

The sun was beginning to set, the rose-red stones turned gold and amber. Soon, Nour and Omar would arrive from Amman to join everybody for dinner. They’d sharing stories from their week, Jude’s father would tell and re-tell stories about Al Anbaat, and everything would seem to be okay for a moment. It wasn’t the life any of them had imagined when they were younger. But it was a good life. Built on love in all its forms, in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

And sometimes, Salaam thought as she watched her daughter sleep, that was more than enough.