Over coffee and baklava, Hanifa attempted to draw out Gabriel on some of his exploits. And when he gently fended her off, she trained her rhetorical fire on the Americans and their disastrous intervention in Iraq. She had entered Baghdad behind the advancing Coalition forces and had chronicled Iraq’s rapid descent into insurgency and sectarian civil war. In the autumn of 2003, during the bloody Ramadan Offensive, she met a tall, handsome Saudi journalist in the bar of the Palestine Hotel, where she had taken up residence. The Saudi, while not well known to most Western reporters, was one of the most influential and best-sourced journalists in the Arab world.
“His name,” she said, “was Omar Nawwaf.”
They were both single and, truth be told, both a little frightened. The Palestine Hotel was located outside the American Green Zone and was a frequent target of the insurgents. Indeed, on that very night, it came under sustained mortar fire. Hanifa took shelter in Omar’s room. She returned the next night, which was peaceful, and the night after that as well. They soon fell desperately in love, though they quarreled often about the American presence in Iraq.
“Omar believed Saddam was a menace and a monster who needed to be removed, even if it had to be done with American troops. He also accepted the proposition that the establishment of a democracy in the heart of the Arab world would inevitably spread freedom to the rest of the region. I thought the Iraq adventure would end in disaster. I was right, of course.” She smiled sadly. “Omar didn’t like that. He was a secular, Western-looking Saudi, but he was still a Saudi, if you know what I mean.”
“He didn’t like being proven wrong by a woman?”
“And a Palestinian woman at that.”
For a brief moment, however, it appeared Omar had been right after all. Beginning in early 2011, the popular uprising known as the Arab Spring swept the region. Oppressive regimes crumbled in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, and a full-fledged civil war erupted in Syria. The old ancestral monarchies fared better, but in Saudi Arabia there were violent clashes. Dozens of demonstrators were shot or executed. Hundreds were jailed, including many women.
“During the Arab Spring,” said Hanifa, “Omar was no longer a mere correspondent. He was the editor in chief of theArab News. Privately, he hoped His Majesty would meet the same fate as Mubarak or even Gadhafi. But he knew that if he pushed too hard, the Al Saud would shut down the paper and throw him into jail. He had no choice but to editorially support the regime. He even signed his name to a column criticizing the protesters as foreign-inspired hooligans. After that, he fell into a deep depression. Omar never forgave himself for sitting out the Arab Spring.”
Hanifa tried to convince Omar to leave Saudi Arabia and settle with her in Germany, where he would be free to write whatever he wanted without fear of arrest. And in early 2016, as the Saudi economy stagnated under the pressure of falling oil prices, he finally agreed. He changed his mind a few weeks later, however, after meeting a rising young Saudi prince named Khalid bin Mohammed.
“It was not long after Khalid’s father ascended to the throne. Khalid was already the minister of defense, deputy prime minister, and chairman of the economic planning council, but he was not yet the crown prince and the heir apparent. He invited Omar to his palace one afternoon for an off-the-record briefing. Omar arrived, as instructed, at four o’clock. It was well past midnight when he left.”
There was no recording of the session—Khalid wouldn’t permit it—and no contemporaneous notes, only the memo Omar hastily composed after returning to his office. He e-mailed a copy to Hanifa for safekeeping. She was shocked when she read it. Khalid predicted that in twenty years, the price of oil would fall to zero. If Saudi Arabia was to have any future, it had to change, and quickly. He wanted to modernize and diversify the economy. He wanted to loosen the Wahhabi shackles on women and draw them into the workforce. He wanted to break the covenant between the Al Saud and the bearded Ikhwan from the Nejd. He wanted Saudi Arabia to be anormalcountry, with movie theaters, music, nightclubs, and cafés where people of both sexes could mingle without fear of the Mutaween.
“He even talked about allowing hotels and restaurants to serve alcohol so Saudis wouldn’t have to make the drive across the causeway to Bahrain every time they wanted a drink. It was radical stuff.”
“Omar was impressed?”
“No,” said Hanifa. “Omar wasn’t impressed. Omar was in love.”
There soon appeared in the pages of theArab Newsmany flattering articles about the dynamic young son of the Saudi monarch who went by the initials KBM. But Omar turned on Khalid not long after he became crown prince, when he ordered a roundup of scores of dissidents and pro-democracy activists, including several of Omar’s closest friends. TheArab Newswas editorially silent on the arrests, but Omar unleashed a barrage of criticism on social media, including a blistering Twitter post that compared KBM to the ruler of Russia. The chief of KBM’s court sent Omar a message instructing him to refrain from any further criticism of His Royal Highness. Omar responded by ridiculing KBM for purchasing more than a billion dollars’ worth of homes, yachts, and paintings while ordinary Saudis suffered under his economic austerity measures.
“After that,” said Hanifa, “it was game on.”
But in a country like Saudi Arabia, there was only one possible outcome for a contest between the royal family and a dissident journalist. The Royal Data Center monitored Omar’s phones and intercepted his e-mails and text messages. The center even tried to disable his social media feeds. And when that failed, they attacked them with thousands of fake postings from bots and trolls. But the last straw was the bullet, a single .45-caliber round, delivered to Omar’s office at theArab News. He left Saudi Arabia that night and never returned.
He moved into Hanifa’s apartment, married her in a quiet ceremony, and found work atDer Spiegel. As his social media posts grew ever more critical of KBM, his number of online followers increased dramatically. Saudi agents brazenly trailed him through the streets of Berlin. His phone was besieged by threatening e-mails and texts.
“The message was unmistakable. It didn’t matter that Omar had left the Kingdom, they could still get to him. He became convinced he was going to be kidnapped or killed.”
Nevertheless, he decided to risk a trip to Cairo to write a story about life in Egypt under the new pharaoh, whom Omar despised almost as much as Khalid. And in the lobby of the Hotel Sofitel, he happened upon a minor Saudi prince whom Khalid had fleeced in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The minor prince, like Omar, was now living in exile. They agreed to have dinner that night at a restaurant in Zamalek, an affluent quarter of Cairo located on Gezira Island. It was late summer, August, and the night was stifling. Even so, the minor prince insisted on dining al fresco. When they were seated, he instructed Omar to switch off his phone and remove the SIM card. Then he told Omar about a rumor he had heard concerning a plot to remove Khalid from the line of succession.
“Omar expressed skepticism over the plot’s chances for success. KBM had been the target of numerous assassination and coup attempts, and all had failed because he controlled the security services and the Royal Data Center. But the prince insisted this plot was different.”
“Why?”
“A foreign power was involved.”
“Which one?”
“The prince didn’t know. But he told Omar the plot involved Khalid’s daughter. The conspirators were planning to kidnap her in order to force Khalid to abdicate.”
“You’re sure it was August?”
“I can show you the text messages Omar sent from Cairo.”
“Did they contain any reference to the plot against Khalid?”
“Of course not. Omar knew the Royal Data Center was monitoring his communications. He waited until he was back in Berlin before telling me. We spoke in the Tiergarten, no phones. I’m afraid Omar didn’t care much for my reaction.”
“You wanted Omar to tell Khalid about the plot.”
