“He wanted to breathe freedom.”

With a career that extended over thirty years, Jamal Khashoggi was one of the most prominent Saudi and Arab journalists and political commentators of his time. Born in Medina, he began his career as a correspondent for the English-language Saudi Gazette, before writing for major publications across the Arab world. He was best known for his coverage of Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait, and the broader Middle East.

For a long time, he was someone who genuinely believed that change was possible, that if you cared enough, that if you were patient enough, it was possible to convince the world to move in a better direction.         

Jamal Kashoggi spent decades in the centre of the Saudi establishment. He was an experienced editor, government advisor and a familiar face in the halls of power. However, when the same system he had defended for so long started to demand silence, he chose a self-imposed exile in the United States. As an independent writer for the Washington Post, he wrote more than a dozen articles.

When he was faced with the choice of deciding between staying silent or continuing what he was doing from afar, he chose to leave, with everything to lose, he left his country. The place where he grew up, built his career and became the person he was. He left the halls of power to restart as an independent writer.

You see there is a different kind of bravery in being able to leave behind everything you have known, leave behind the life you have lived so far and start over from the beginning. And as Kashoggi left his home with the hopes that he would be able to write to protect the truth, to stand as witness to the stories he had seen, it was clear that for him being a journalist wasn’t just a career, it was about him being the voice of those who had no other choice but to silent.

He believed that silence in the face of injustice is its own kind of lie. He wrote simply because he believed that people deserved to know the truth. Even if it wasn’t the truth that everyone was comfortable with hearing.

In October 2018, Kashoggi walked into a building with hopes for a new beginning, to collect papers for his upcoming marriage. He never walked out.

When the news of his disappearance came out, his colleagues responded by printing a blank space where his column would have appeared. Perhaps a tribute has never said so much without saying a single word.

“He wanted to breathe freedom,” that’s how one of his friends described him. And these words say a lot about who Jamal was as a person, it wasn’t about chasing fame, or power. He wasn’t looking to be a hero or change the world overnight. He wrote because he genuinely believed that his words could do something. That they were worth something.

Jamal Kashoggi spent his whole life believing that the truth was worth the risk. Journalists like Jamal remind us that the truth doesn’t survive on its own. It survives because someone witnessed it and instead of letting it be they upheld it. His legacy is not just the words he wrote but the countless others he inspired with his work.

While some people write to survive, Jamal Kashoggi wrote because, for him, not writing was really living at all. Kashoggi reminds us that as long as there is someone willing to pick up a pen, the truth cannot disappear completely.

Penned By:

Rtr. Shamla Bishirhafi

Editorial Committee Member 25.26