The groom is the grand nephew of legendary Maranao political warlord Sultan Mohammad Ali Dimaporo and Princess Jamela, and Sultan Naga and Fatima Dimaporo. He is the third child of Marcos and Khadija Dimaporo. The bride is the daughter of Mayor Johnny A. Tawantawan and Raidah Tawantawan of Salvador, Lanao del Norte.
The couple met when Jamal moved to Sultan Naga Dimaporo Municipality to continue his college education at the Mindanao State University. It was during the "Araw ng Lanao del Norte" celebration in Tubod when Jamal saw Sohailah.
"I was enamored of her benign aura," he says. "I got her number and text-text kami."
Like his impetuous dad who got married at a very young age to his first cousin, Khadija, Jamal told his mother that he has found his true love and wants to get married.
"I was against the marriage because he is very young and I was worried about the consequences," says Jamal’s father, adding that he wanted his son to finish studies first. "Second, the dowry of P1 million was too expensive."
But Jamal followed his heart and courted Sohailah’s parents, commuting from Salvador to Sultan Naga Dimaporo regularly.
Sohailah, the shy second child of Mayor Johnny and Raidah Tawantawan, didn’t know what was happening. Devoid of a normal teenager’s life, she followed a school-to-house routine. She never went bar-hopping, malling, and didn’t even watch movies often enough. Bonding with friends was very minimal as well.
Jamal’s determination eventually paid off and both sets of parents finally agreed and set the wedding date. The young man’s drive is reminiscent of the character and career of his granduncle, the late Sultan Mohammad Ali Dimaporo. According to "Mohammad Ali Dimaporo: A Modern Maranao Datu" author G. Gordon Bentley, in Alfred McCoy’s An Anarchy of Families, Dimaporo "fused the traditional warlike world of the Maranaos with the dangerous and uncertain world of the 20th century."
The uncertainties of Jamal’s generation are markedly different from his granduncle’s 20th century world. But with a character reminiscent of his granduncle’s, coupled with the gift of true love, Jamal and his new life with Sohailah will definitely thrive and flourish.