I n May, I was invited to travel to Washington to attend some hearings at Congress. I had imagined the city in the words of my fiancé, Jamal Khashoggi. My visit left me with the troubling feeling that his memory was fading in the city he evoked so lovingly.

When I met Jamal in Istanbul, he had been living and working in Washington for more than a year, having left his home in Saudi Arabia amid a crackdown on intellectuals and activists.

As we got engaged and planned for our new life together in Washington, Jamal would speak with great warmth about the city, its museums and marketplaces. “Trust me, you will love it here,” he would say. He would talk about his friends in the United States and speak about how he wanted me to meet them after our marriage.

Our dreams of a new life together brought him to Istanbul to get the required documents for our marriage from the Saudi consulate. He never walked out of that building, never returned to me and to the life we dreamed of.