Norma khouri where is she now

On a single day in November that year, Khouri cashed all of them at various banks in Chicago. According to documents obtained by the Herald, a man called John Closterides told Chicago police in that he had a "romance" with Norma Bagain. She told him she was a Jordanian princess. He said he wanted to marry her. However, according to notes made by a police investigator, Khouri told him that she had "multiple real estate holdings in the country and she feared if she got a divorce, her husband John Toliopoulos would get all her money.

He gave her the money, but Norma refused to show him the house, telling him she was a "great humanitarian and allowed poor, elderly persons to live in her various buildings". Mr Closterides eventually went to the house, and found year-old Mrs Baravikas living there.

According to the Office of the Public Guardian in Chicago, which is now responsible for Mrs Baravikas's legal affairs, Khouri stole everything her former neighbour had. First, she convinced the woman to put her name on a safety deposit box that held cash and bonds. 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. 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. Has she said whether she will accept any of them? It's clear that this is a worldwide bestseller, and her response to the Herald 's allegations might not necessarily be centred in Australia, of course.

If so, if she is so sure of the story's authenticity, why wouldn't she come out and defend herself sooner? I suppose the documentations are concrete proof of where she was at relevant times. Toliopoulos and family, however, are not remembered so fondly among the Bagains. Khouri began to drift away from her family after meeting Toliopoulos. Until , Khouri, John and their children continued living in the area. Her sister Diana Bagain is a licensed insurance agent and Khouri also sold insurance, according to her brother, and then enrolled in a bartending school.

She drove a Nissan Sentra sedan. Nobody knew her as a writer, although she owned a notebook computer and wrote on it, mostly poems, secretively. Then, abruptly, she, her husband and their children disappeared. They hurt me big. I miss them so much. But Norma always kept deep secrets. Diana Bagain did not want to discuss her sister, saying it was "unusual that someone would call me to ask about Norma".

Khouri's disappearance from Chicago was the start of a new life. She wrote the book and submitted it piecemeal to Christy Fletcher, a highly regarded New York literary agent. Fletcher spent time editing it for fluency but did not investigate the truth of Khouri's story.

Subsequently Fletcher sold it to 16 publishers around the world, and it was comprehensively vetted by lawyers for Viacom in the US and Transworld in Britain.

None of this uncovered Khouri's real life. Having sold the lie, Khouri came to Australia. Meanwhile, in the summer of , the director of the Jordanian National Commission for Women, Amal al-Sabbagh, and a colleague began researching Khouri's book.

They found 73 serious errors and exaggerations in it. Most damning, the unisex salon that forms the focus for the book's action, set in the early and mids, could not exist by law. On September 15 last year, al-Sabbagh submitted this dossier of errors to Khouri's publishers. Random House Australia replied: "Following our discussions with Norma we are satisfied that, while some names and places have been changed to protect individuals' identities Forbidden Love is a true and honest account.

Khouri enclosed a letter to the commission, along with rebuttals of all 73 points. I am angered to see that you are more concerned for the 'image of Jordan' than for the many innocent victims of honour killings each year in your country.

When I contacted Khouri about the allegations earlier this year, she said: "Yes, I have paperwork that shows that I was married to Toliopoulos.