Fated: Budding cyberlove ends in divorce

AMMAN: 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 Sunday.

Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly reunited Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chatroom, 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.

Cyberlove 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 here.

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. – AFP