Control Of Success

David followed Samira back into the living room. The way she straightened up, stretched her shoulders, and breathed more freely clearly showed that she was feeling much better again. He had no idea what had been going through her mind while they had been in the bedroom together. He briefly wondered if she had been afraid that he would take advantage of the opportunity to do something immoral. No, I'm not that kind of person, he told himself. She must have seen that too.

He checked the router again. “That looks good. It would be best to check whether the PC can now connect to the internet, just to be on the safe side.”

Samira looked away sheepishly. “I don't know how to do that,” she admitted meekly.

Could there still be anyone who doesn't know how to do that these days? But David didn't let on, so as not to unsettle the customer even more. He glanced at the computer. All right. An older Windows machine, nothing special. And even if it were a Linux system or a Mac, he would have no problem with it. “That's no problem, I can turn it on and show you. If that's okay with you?

“Yes, do whatever you think is best.” She made a welcoming gesture, but then added: “As long as you don't break anything which my husband needs.”

He pressed the power button. A steady hum and the typical beeping indicated that the computer was booting up.

“Oh, no problem at all. We'll just open the browser and go to a random page. Then we'll know right away if it's working. Nothing bad will happen.”

Normally, he would have cleared the cache and checked the settings. But he didn't know if Samira's husband wanted to revisit recently accessed pages that he hadn't bookmarked. So he decided to leave it alone in this case. He wanted to avoid causing her any trouble because of him.

The password could be a problem, though. He didn't think Mrs. Rahman knew it. If in doubt, he would try the classics “123456” and “password” and, if that didn't work, ask for birthdays and wedding anniversaries. However, he wasn't surprised when the desktop appeared without a password prompt. Apparently, the owner didn't place much importance on IT security. At least he had installed up-to-date virus protection, which David noticed with a sideways glance at the Windows tray.

He opened the default browser. The home page immediately displayed a company website, presumably Mr. Rahman's employer. That wasn't really helpful because it was certainly in the cache.

“What kind of website should we visit? Something your husband doesn’t normally look at,” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

Samira shrugged. David realized that she wasn’t going to be much help. On the contrary, she looked at the glowing screen as if it were something dangerous. That really rubbed him the wrong way. Someone who didn't know how to use a computer or access the internet was excluded from a large part of social life. A purely analog existence was almost unimaginable to him. So he decided to invest a little more of his time to teach the young woman the first steps into the digital world.

How could he spark her interest in the new medium? Ah! He had an idea and smiled.

David opened a search engine and typed in: “Muslim fashion.”

Enter.

He was surprised to see how many hits the query yielded. He hadn't thought there were so many suppliers of this type of clothing. What's more, there were different styles, some of which were really modern and attractive. He selected the image view so he could see the numerous photos better.

Behind him, he heard a soft “oh” and the rustling of fabric coming closer. His smile widened as Samira leaned curiously over his shoulder to get a better look at the pictures. Well, she had taken the bait.