On October 2nd, 2018 Saudi journalist and Washington Post opinion blogger Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey never to exit it again. What happened inside could have remained a mystery except that the Turkish authorities had put into place an intricate and advanced system of surveillance on the Saudis and Khashoggi’s demise was captured in vivid sounds for all to hear. A group of 11 men stood trial in Saudi in 2019 for his murder, five were convicted and sentenced to death — their sentences then commuted to 20 years in jail.
Behind the killing there lies the baffling idea that Khashoggi’s often moderate and educational views on the Kingdom were enough to get him murdered and that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS for short) objected to his work enough to call for his execution — in Turkey, a land not enjoying a favorable political relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Geopolitics aside, the truth, or truths as there may be more than one, of what really happened, what pushed the experienced Khashoggi to trust in the conditions around him and set foot in an environment that was at best hostile to his views, we’ll never really know. But my woman’s intuition tells me there is more than meets the eye — or the ear, as we’ve heard those haunting recordings — to this story.
In a wonderfully cinematic new documentary titled ‘The Dissident’ by Bryan Fogel, a few different aspect of these possible truths are explored. And two leading characters who eventually led to the demise of Jamal Khashoggi are introduced — his Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz and Saudi insurgent Omar Abdulaziz, now living in Canada. Both seemingly inconsequential figures who turned out to be the seasoned Khashoggi’s undoing.
Filmmaker Bryan Fogel poses with Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz
A personal aside. I’m baffled at how we can all get behind the cause of the murdered Khashoggi and not fight for the freedom of Wikileaks’s own Julian Assange, currently languishing in a UK jail known for its high number of Covid-19 infections. Or even Zhang Zhan, the Chinese citizen journalist who has been jailed since May for reporting the truth on Wuhan — the epicenter of the pandemic we find ourselves in the midst of this year. She’s just received a four year sentence for chronicling the truth. And don’t even get me started about Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed in Malta in 2017 for bringing down the government accused of corruption! Or even all the other 42 journalists killed around the globe in 2020 for simply doing their job. If we stand for one, we need to stand up for all. I do suggest reading renowned journalist Glenn Greenwald’s column on our own presumed “freedom” in the West to understand my POV.
But I assume the reason why Khashoggi’s murder is what comes up first when one googles “murdered journalist” is because he was done in by the Saudis. And negative, not-so-flattering-news about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sells. It’s sexy to talk about Saudi, a place so close to American interests and yet seemingly so far from U.S. values. I just wonder where Time magazine’s review of ‘The Dissident’ is… Since the publication devoted a flashy cover to Mohammed Bin Salman back in 2018 as well as an insightful interview secured during the Saudi Prince’s PR trip around the U.S..
The reason I’m starting off my own very personal “review” of ‘The Dissident’ by Fogel with all these facts and questions is because they all ran through my mind while watching his fascinating, spellbinding documentary. It’s a must-watch and constructed like a thriller, which makes it perfect streaming fare — the film is in the Angelika theaters now around the U.S., but will be online, including on Apple TV starting January 8th. I suggest you watch it somewhere private and with someone who won’t mind you pausing and rewinding to discuss what you’ve just watched! It is a film that requires more than one viewing and a lot of in-depth conversations.
Fogel is of course the Academy Award winning filmmaker of ‘Icarus’, another captivating documentary where he subjected himself to an inhumane blast of hormones to report on the illegal use of steroids in athletes. He’s a god as far as I’m concerned and can do no wrong. But in this case, apart from having traveled the Arab world extensively, I am also a person who tends to see the full three sides of a story — one POV, the opposite view and the truth — and the truth here is much more complicated than what is explained in ‘The Dissident’.
Khashoggi himself was multi-layered and to hail him as an absolute can-do-no-wrong victim simply because of the tragic manner in which he died, seems one sided. I mean, how does one criticize one’s government and claim to know it so well but not be aware of the dangers that stepping into their consulate in Turkey may present? I stepped on a tram once in Istanbul and will never do it again — Turkey is a theopolitical jungle that needs to be navigated carefully. And how did the Turks have so much surveillance in place inside the Saudi consulate conveniently used to capture Khashoggi’s last breaths in gory detail? Those are questions that aren’t answered in ‘The Dissident’ and considering there is another documentary about the Saudi journalist in circulation, well, they needed to be answered.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also consists of a multilayered society, much like our very own U.S. of A.. Now, before you throw your arms up in contempt, picture the kind of leader we’ve had in the States for the past four years and how we hardly wish be judged by the rest of the world simply by how he has behaved. Also, there are abuses of power that lead to outright murder within our very own democracy, like the case of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. And in the case of Taylor she was in the sanctuary of her very own home!
Another point where I beg to disagree with Fogel and even Sean Penn — turns out the actor wanted to do his own documentary on the Khashoggi affair and in the press screener I was sent, they included a wonderful conversation between Fogel and Penn — is their devotion to Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz. While she parades around displaying a multicolored variety of headscarves, her words and emotions felt like I was watching a bad episode of ‘Lie to Me’. If the rumors, more than rumors actually, that Khashoggi was already married in the U.S. to an Egyptian woman turn out to be undoubtable (they are mentioned in the other doc on Showtime about the murdered journalist) then we only have Cengiz’s words to confirm that indeed he was going into the consulate to secure documents needed for his marriage. This is personal conjecture of course, but the character of the sad, forlorn and distraught fiancée never fit Cengiz very well, I thought. And the way she first approached Khashoggi, almost stalking him as one haunting image included in the doc shows, is unsettling.
Finally, there is the inconvenient figure of MBS. He is probably everything that has been said about him, and more. But he’s also part of a country that is trying to move forward and while imperfect at best, it is not unlike many “democracies” that we approve of and never question in the West. Saudi Arabia is unknown territory and presents a demographic like no other country, complete with social inequalities that perhaps are easier for us to comprehend in the U.S.. While Fogel’s documentary is thrilling, wonderful to watch, slick and very beautifully made, it is also incomplete in answering a lot of the questions that those of us who wish to know more about our Saudi brothers and sisters wish to have addressed.
‘The Dissident’ screens in theaters and will begin streaming on January 8th. Check out their website for more info. You can rent it on Amazon Prime as well.