A beloved friend and journalist in exile

I met Kawkab in 2006, when I was editor of the Yemen Observer. She quickly became not only my star reporter, but family. After a lifetime of challenges, she now faces her toughest yet.

In 2011, by pure luck, Kawkab and I found ourselves in Cairo at the same time. Here we are at my book event for The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with one of my dearest friends in the world. Those of you who have read The Woman Who Fell From the Sky will know Kawkab, as the book is dedicated to her. She is its soul. I wrote about her under a different name, to protect her from unwanted attention when she lived in Yemen. For a woman in Yemen, publicity is rarely a good thing and often is dangerous. Reputation is often all a woman has.

I have written about Kawkab many times before: In my book, in my journals, in letters, and in essays. I just searched my computer for Kawkab’s name and found hundreds and hundreds of files: stories she reported and wrote for the Yemen Observer when I was her editor, letters to and from her, a poem she wrote, reference letters I wrote for her.

Thus I have no need to recount our whole history here. I want to talk about our present. I want to talk about what she means to me and where she is now.

Almost from the moment I met Kawkab in Sana’a in 2006, I felt she was kin. We talked like we had always known each other, though our lives could hardly have been more different. There was never a moment of unease, and rarely a moment of silence. Kawkab was always talking, always asking questions, always thinking out loud or laughing or worrying. She was open, funny, and smart. We understood each other. At work she was fearless and determined. She swiftly became my star reporter. But more than that, she became my family. She took me home to meet her lively sisters and her beloved mother. She helped me learn Arabic. She was always thinking about her future, always working towards it: writing, applying for fellowships, asking for advice.

She won one of those fellowships, and ended up studying for awhile in Jackson, Mississippi. I was briefly back in New York at the time, and when she came up to see her brother in Brooklyn, they invited me over for a Yemeni version of Thanksgiving. We walked all over New York, exploring the West Village as well as the Rockefeller Center observation deck. What struck me the most was her lack of awe for her surroundings. I had preconceptions about how a Yemeni woman who had never left home might respond to New York, and these preconceptions were wrong. She was more interested in talking with me than in gazing around her at skyscrapers. She continued being the Kawkab she had always been. She engaged with her surroundings, was interested in exploring and experiencing new things, but she maintained a self-assured, cheery calm. She seemed at home, undaunted.

This continued to be the case in when I saw her in Cairo, where she was studying and I was doing a book event. She even stood up to talk to the audience about her experiences at the Yemen Observer.

Kawkab fled Yemen after the Houthi rebels from the north (this is a long and complex conflict I won’t go into here, as you can find indepth explorations of it elsewhere) took over much of the country and her husband Khaled began receiving death threats. A human rights lawyer, he was not beloved by the violently repressive Houthis. Kawkab, her sister Arwa, and Khaled landed in Istanbul, where they lived for several years. In March, 2020, just before the world shut down, Tim, Theadora and I visited Kawkab, her two sons, and her sister Arwa, who has always helped Kawkab raise her children, as her husband is often away. They lived in an apartment complex outside of the city. It had been many years, too many. Every time we find each other feels like a miracle. It is a miracle, given the circumstances of her life.

We sat in her mafraj, a Yemeni-style living room, and talked and ate and drank tea. Her oldest son Ramsey, the same age as Theo, was sweetly shy and welcoming. While the rest of us talked and played with her younger son, Theadora and Ramsey disappeared outside to play. They were gone for hours. It made me so happy to see our two ten-year-olds not only meeting, but enjoying each other’s company.

Kawkab has always worked full-time, first as a reporter for me and for other publications, and then with human rights organizations. She worked as a communications specialist for the UNDP; as a strategist for UN Women; as a gender advisor in conflict zones. She has trained Palestinian refugees, Syrian women journalists, and Yemeni field researchers. She has established two local initiatives in Yemen, mobilizing organizations and feminists to support peacebuilding and community empowerment. If you’d like to read more about her work, check out her website: https://kawkabalthaibani.com/index.php

Yesterday we talked for more than an hour. Her circumstances have grown dire. She is living in a refugee camp in the Netherlands as she waits to see if the country will allow her to settle there. Her husband moved to the Netherlands for work several years ago, and she is trying to join him. She had to leave her three sons and Arwa, who has helped raise them, behind in Istanbul until she can legalize her status. But the process has been agonizingly, heartbreakingly slow, no doubt hindered by the new far-right government and its anti-Muslim leaders.

Kawkab had initially anticipated only being apart from her family for a month or two. She has now lived apart from her children and sister for two and a half years. Two and a half years. Her youngest, a baby when she left, thinks of her more as an aunt than as a mother, she says. It also breaks her heart to be apart from Arwa, whom she adores. She speaks with them all every day. But that does not begin to fill the void in her life. I have a taste of what it is like to be separated from my child, having been separated from Theo for my first 18 months of treatment. But what Kawkab is enduring is a million times worse.

Kawkab took this screenshot during our conversation and sent it to me. I regret that my head is the big one!

Kawkab added her family to our WhatsApp conversation, and I got to speak with all three of her kids. I got to see their dinosaurs and hear their laughter. Best of all, I got to have a long chat with Ramsey.

When Kawkab had to get off the phone, Ramsey stayed to talk with me. “You can talk with her like you talk with me,” Kawkab said to him. “Jennifer is family.” He is an articulate, sweet, kind kid. After the other kids at school bullied him for not being good enough at football, he determinedly studied it until he became adept, earning their respect. He was curious, asking me questions about our travels and our lives, telling me that there are many Uzbek kids in his class. He speaks three languages: Arabic, English, and Turkish. The younger children prefer to only speak English.

I wish I could collect them all under our roof.

Those of you involved in human rights and development, please let me know if you hear of any part-time or flexible work that might interest Kawkab. Or contact Kawkab directly on her website, where you can find all of her qualifications. There are not enough words of praise in the English language for me to express how highly I value Kawkab’s work, her mind, and her diligence—and how much I love her.

Brief medical update

In the past couple of weeks, my body has come under increasing strain due to the growing cancer (my tumor markers just increased sixfold). My stomach is a tight balloon. When I lie facedown to do yoga I feel like I can’t breathe. I can feel the muscles and ligaments of my abdomen stretching, as they did when I was pregnant. I’ve been too nauseated to eat much, and feel there is little space in my stomach for food. I’m becoming anxious to get to treatment. Even to chemo. Chemo will take away this horrible bloating, this poisonous liquid filling my abdomen. It will also take away many other things I’d prefer to keep: joy, energy, hair, you know how it goes. But the waiting has begun to be unendurable.

The other thing the bloating and pain does is it make me so irritable I can barely function as a human. I’ve been difficult company. Looking down at my body, at the outer manifestation of what is going on inside, frightens me.

Thankfully, tomorrow I finally have another scan, followed by an appointment with my oncologist. I hope that after that I will have some kind of a plan, either to start chemo or to start a trial. I can’t see continuing in this body for much longer untreated.

I have some cheerier stories to report next week, complete with flamingo photos and jokes!