Anna was the first wife of Ali, a serious 40-something Jordanian engineer. For a long time, she was the one.
Anna loved Ali. She had loved him from the first days she met him at the university in her country where he went to study. There were plenty of handsome, healthy, strong and even smart Slavic boys, but she was used to them. That tall, handsome, righteous, brown-skinned guy, something like a desert prince, attracted her attention.
And apart from his good looks, there came his good qualities. Serious, able to engage in what he did, study or other things, and loyal. Slave to his word, so to say. And stern. Able to get respect without bullying.
The Russian boys tried to weigh him, to put him to the test. No brawls, it was not a "zone", a jail, and not even a PTU, a technical institute for not so educated young men. It was a serious university, with excellent technical faculties which attracted students from abroad; especially from extra-European countries (it was cheaper than US "Alma Maters", after all).
But, men are men, males are males. They need to state who is the Alpha man and who is not, and not only in Russia. Ways can change, but the process is the same. First, don't show your fear. He did not show it, nor tried to scare others, so as not to create a local coalition against himself. And the boys let him alone, even when he started to walk around with her.
Even her family had nothing serious against their relations. Although they were all faithful orthodox Christians, they had friends of various religions (and even some stubborn atheists, heritage of Soviet times). They had been invited in many "Kurban Bairam" (Islamic celebration to commemorate the aborted sacrifice of Isaac on behalf of Abraham, concluded with the slaughter of a ram) by their friends and relatives down in Tatarstan, where another line of the family, converted to Islam before the end of USSR, lived in peace for decades. As her mother said, "Bog Odin": God is one.
And besides religion, there was nothing a good parent could find weird in Ali. Especially when he completed his study's course there with a very good graduation, and asked Anna to marry him and follow him in his country.
To ease the last worries, Ali, a Muslim from a country that allowed polygamy, had declared that Anna would be his one and only wife. And when he declared it, he really thought it.
When he made this declaration, Anna had already wanted to belong to him body and soul. Mostly body, of course.
She had invited him at home, without telling him that her parents were out of town, And then, alone in the house with him, she had hugged him and kissed him on his mouth. Ali had tried to resist her beauty, her desire and his own nature, but he failed. He possessed her, as tenderly as he could, entering into her as in a mosque. Her body did not deserve to be simply overwhelmed and rammed. It was a wonderful field to plow, slowly, strongly and attentively. And so he did.
And so it happened, many times.
She had lost her maidenhead years before she knew him, and he knew that: she told him when their mutual feelings became serious and before they went to bed together. She wanted him to know everything about herself, before to engage with her. Ali had appreciated her honesty, and tolerated the rest. Such a woman, even if Christian and no longer a virgin, was a natural born wife; a passport to happiness. A gift from Allah...
To be fair and honest, Ali had to admit that those intimate meetings helped him to tolerate the weak points of Anna. Nothing acrobatic, Anna had never read "Kama Sutra", but she was warm (not "hot": warm), cosy, reassuring, and at the same time, passionate and yearning to learn. And Ali could be a good teacher.
The Russian guys always treated Anna with respect, nobody had molested or tried to rape her (in that case, her father had given her a simple recipe: "knee in the balls and knuckles in the eyes, and run"...), But all her past bedfellows, to talk like a sport commentator, made stakes more on "agonsism" than on "fundamentals". They were strong, and Anna appreciated it, but even a bit "rough". Not so much foreplay, focused on themselves. Venial sins, of course. Too bad, with their strength and a bit more attention to her... they would have been real sex gods...
But Ali was better. He let her feel his male strength, as in the air, but was tender. He kissed her twice or thrice the times the Russian boys did, everywhere, even where she felt embarrassed to be kissed, and where the Russian boys never did, and likely never would have ("not a manly thing!").
And the effect was indescribable for her.
She was very surprised to know that he learned his "fundamentals" not from some western book or kinky journal, but on the Koran itself. "Don't assail your women like rams...". Then he refined his theoretical knowledge with another Islamic book: "The perfumed garden", of sheik Al Nafzawi. More or less, the Islamic Kama Sutra (and so, very often hated by many extreme fundamentalist Muslims). A gift from an uncle, wise and a bon vivant. The most useful gift he ever had in his life - before Anna.
And things did not change when they came to Jordan. His big family gave them friendly greetings. Jordan was quite a tolerant state, being an Islamic monarchy. Women could work; hijab (the veil) was very appreciated, but never compulsory (out of mosques, of course).
Ali joined his father in his engineering office for a while, for practice, then his father retired. In the first years, Anna helped him, as a secretary and even with some projects, but then, when the children came, she decided to become mostly a mother and a housewife.
Even then, Anna always loved when she had the chance to visit her husband on some building ground. She liked to see him giving order and instruction to all those who asked for them, without a doubt, like a real officer on the front. And to think that that strong and self-assured man, who gave orders to other strong men, and to whom all the other strong men obeyed instantly, was HER own man.
He never gave "orders" to her. He did not ever ask her to change her religion. A Christian woman can marry a Muslim man without problems (while the opposite could even cause BIG problems, even in a moderate State as Jordan), and Ali was too educated, and satisfied of her as a wife, to argue with her on religious matters. It was she, after a while, that began to think that it was proper, for her and her new family, that she uttered the "shahada" and became a good Muslim wife.
This did not change anything in her relation with Ali, who remained loving and respectful as before, neither more, nor less. But it was a wonderful gift for his mother.
