Norma Khouri was perfect talent for a publishing house: an outspoken and articulate English-as-a-second-language author shining a light on a bone-chilling culture of brutal misogyny in an exotic foreign location.
Khouri’s 2003 memoir, Forbidden Love, which detailed the “honour” killing of her childhood best friend, Dalia – purportedly murdered by her father in Jordan because she fell in love with a Christian soldier – became a blockbuster. The book was published in 16 countries, sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide, and positioned the author as a vigorous advocate for the rights of oppressed Arab women.
There is a scene near the beginning of director Anna Broinowski’s terrific 2007 documentary Forbidden Lie$ that re-enacts the moment Khouri says she discovered her friend’s dead body. The author herself (who was living in Queensland when the book was published) participates; we watch as she runs down a street to the scene of a crime and discovers an ambulance taking a body away. She moves inside a house screaming “where’s Dalia and what have you done with her?” A man emerges wiping his hands with a bloodied cloth.
It’s a deeply unsettling moment, but viewers familiar with the story-behind-the-story know there is a twist in the pipeline. Following an investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald journalist Malcolm Knox, it was discovered the book was fabricated and Khouri a fraud. She lived in Chicago from the age of three and left the city in 1999 when the FBI wanted her for questioning over a series of property-related transactions. Forbidden Love was relocated to the pantheon of great literary hoaxes.
Understanding the cat was well and truly out of the bag, and thus concealing the truth for a last-minute revelation would be pointless, Broinowski pricks the balloon early on (about 15 minutes in). If Khouri was once perfect for publishing, she becomes perfect for documentary. The extent to which this gallingly untrustworthy subject is a willing participant transforms Forbidden Lie$ from an investigation of an elaborate ruse into a gobsmacking character study of a con artist.
One might admire Khouri’s gumption if the recklessness and unapologetic nature with which she digs and attempts to climb herself out of a hole weren’t so disturbing. Khouri participates in re-enactments, reads out swathes from her book and fronts the camera for interviews (obstinate she changed some details but the story is true). She also ups the ante in gutsy ways, strapping herself into a lie detector and accompanying the film-maker to Jordan in a confusing attempt to vindicate herself.
When a Jordanian journalist and expert on “honour” killings discusses the ultimate effect of Khouri’s tall tale – describing it as a huge setback for a cause desperately in need of recognition and “an insult to every Arab Muslim woman” – Broinowski quashes any reading of her film as an exploration of means justifying ends.
The director finds plenty of ways into the story and throws at her narrative the proverbial kitchen sink, combining standard talking head footage, hard-hitting one-on-one interviews, dramatisations, gonzo style on-the-ground journalism and moments of visual and atmospheric aplomb.
The first truth bomb is detonated with an odd elegance. A long shot depicts a woman in a black burqa walking across desert terrain towards a cloud-covered horizon; the frame freezes when we hear the words “this is not the truth” and the figure of the woman turns to sand and disappears.
Forbidden Lie$ is a forged identity flick in the same canon as Bart Layton’s riveting 2012 documentary The Imposter, which also involved a potential murder and a hard-to-penetrate subject. Broinowski understands counting Khouri’s lies is easy but probing her personality is far harder; when the director’s onscreen presence increases substantially in the second half of the film, it becomes clear she is thrilled by the hunt.
That thrill is infectious. Forbidden Lie$ unfurls a dizzying patchwork of lies and contortions, but is less about searching for truth than contemplating the soul of the perpetrator.
