Politics January 22, 2020

Exile was not something that the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had ever contemplated. He had never considered it could be a location, a real place. To him, it was a word, an intangible idea. Even after he left his home in Jeddah with two suitcases and landed in the United States in the summer of 2017, he still pronounced the word with a disbelieving smile. Jamal’s decision to leave the kingdom had been difficult, not only because it was destroying his family life but because he had always thought of himself as a loyal citizen, a subject of the king.