Julia Clark, 53, turned her life upside down following a chance encounter at a pool in Egypt which set her on a course to meet a man who would become her husband
A woman left her ”stale” life behind, including her husband of 15 years and children, after a chance encounter at a pool changed her life.
Julia Clark, 53, from Lincoln, was on a two-week holiday in Egypt when she was suddenly approached by one of the hotel workers who struck up a chat and asked for her name so he could add her on Facebook. Once home she got a friend request from the worker and liked several of his photographs – including one with a man she would come to know as Ahmed. He also then sent her a friend request and they struck up a friendship – which blossomed into a relationship, eventually causing her to leave her husband to be with her new love, all due to that first chance encouter by the pool.
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“It was on that holiday in 2016 that everything changed,” Julia said. “As I sat there watching my family, a hotel worker approached me and asked for my name. He wanted to know how I was and asked if I was on Facebook. I gave him my name and introduced him to (her then-husband) Peter, who had got out of the pool. I didn’t think anything of it until we headed home.”
She continued: “After being home for a few days, I received a friend request from the man I’d met by the pool, which I accepted. I liked some of his posts, including one with his friends in, which is when I first saw Ahmed.”
“He must have seen me liking the posts and sent me a friend request himself,” Julie went on to say. “I don’t know why I accepted it, but I did. For days nothing came through, not even a hello. Then he sent me a message saying ‘Hi. How are you?’ We started talking in October 2016, just about my life and family.”
She said she felt she could “confide” in Ahmed, and “he was there for me”. Julia continued: “After four weeks of talking, Ahmed, now 35, suggested we do a video call. It was great to see his face – he was friendly and smiley.
“From then on, we video-called two to three times a week and messaged every day. At first, he was just being friendly, but three months in he started to say that he was falling in love with me. By five months, my feelings slowly kicked in too.”
Julia says it was then that she knew she had to make a decision about what her future looked like. She said: “My husband had heard me on the phone to Ahmed a few times and he knew that if I was downstairs at night while he was in bed, I was probably messaging him. One time he said if I wanted a new life then I needed to get out of here. I thought he was right. I did try to stop speaking to Ahmed, but I just couldn’t.”
In March 2017 Julia began the process of getting divorced, which she said “was sad”, and finally met Ahmed in person in 2018, when she booked a 12-day holiday to Egypt with a friend, as she said “it didn’t feel right to meet him while I was married”. Remembering the first time the pair met in person, she said it was “very strange, but I felt like there was an instant attraction”.
She said he and hie friends picked her and her friend up from the hotel and took them to a café, where he gave Julia jewellery as a gift. She added: “While on that holiday he gave me a ring. We were on the roof of an apartment and he said, ‘Will you marry me?’ I thought, ‘Oh my God’ but then I thought ‘Ok’. However, I knew we shouldn’t rush it.”
She moved to Egypt in September 2020 to start her new life with her lover – but things took a drastic turn for the worse. Julia said: “I went to Egypt every eight to nine months to see Ahmed and in September 2020 I moved there to start a new life. I gave everything up – my house, my kids, my family. It wasn’t easy because my children were my life. I still can’t believe I did it. I was a stay-at-home mum – I’d always been there for my kids.
“I was still friendly with my ex Peter, so I told him about my plans and he said he would give me a lift to the airport. We went out for a meal with our girls before I left – my daughters didn’t cry and said they understood I needed to create a new life.
“After being in Egypt for just 12 days, we married in Cairo at the embassy with a translator present. Ahmed told me not to wear anything special because it was a low-key day, so I wore a long white dress with leaves on it. Afterwards, one of his friends drove us to Ahmed’s sister’s house and she laid on all of this food, which was beautiful.
“From then on things went downhill. Ahmed wasn’t bothered about holding my hand in public any more and he didn’t want to take me out to cafés. He would go out for hours at night and leave me in the flat alone, not having a clue where he was. I already suffered from anxiety, but this made it worse.
“A year later, I went back to England to visit my family for two months and when I was heading back to Egypt, I sent Ahmed a message asking if we could have a good life again. He started taking me out more regularly and I thought that he had changed.
“In February 2022, he took me to a café that I loved. It was beautiful, but he dropped a bombshell on me. He told me that he needed to marry an Egyptian woman so he could have children as I’m older and had gone through the menopause. It broke me. I couldn’t sit there knowing that my husband was away having babies with another woman.
“We had spoken about second wives throughout our relationship, but he’d told me that he didn’t need anyone else and he didn’t mind not having his own kids. We married under Islamic law and they asked me what conditions I wanted to put in the marriage agreement, so I said I didn’t want him to marry a second wife. However, Ahmed was entitled to four wives, so we had it in writing that if he wanted another wife he had to get my permission which, obviously, I could never give.
“I told him I couldn’t share him. He told me to forget what he’d said, but I couldn’t and we became distant. I backed off from the relationship because I didn’t see a future in it. I felt stupid. My ex Peter was a good man. I gave Ahmed everything. I gave him the world. I’d wasted six years of my life.”