Love We found
She had escaped war-torn Syria; he was a recruiter who’d hit hard times. Worlds apart on
When Arwa Omaren, 38, a SyrianPalestinian refugee, ended up in a homeless shelter in London two years ago, it felt like the lowest point in her life. This final despair came after fleeing a war zone, leaving behind her widowed mother, siblings and dog Jacko, as well as her burgeoning acting career.
She’d walked for weeks through Kurdistan, survived near rape and being shot at by the Turkish army and had swum and paddled in a rubber dinghy across the Maritsa river to Europe, before flying to claim asylum in the UK in 2018. Following 11 months in the limbo of asylum, she’d received refugee status and, despite Covid putting things on hold again, managed to build a life in London. And yet, in a few short weeks in the autumn of 2022, after her landlord sold her rented flat, Arwa lost her home and, thanks to the stress of it, her job, too.
‘It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me – even worse than the war,’ she says.
Arwa slept on the streets for several nights before the charity StreetLink got her a room at a hostel. Although, some months earlier, she had been reunited with Jacko her golden retriever after a charity had flown him to the UK, she felt completely alone in a foreign country.
Several weeks later, while she was sitting in the hostel’s garden, in walked 40-year-old Jonathan Oldknow, who had arrived that afternoon after nine weeks on the streets. ‘I’d come outside for a cigarette,’ he says, ‘and when I saw Arwa sitting there, I thought, “Wow! She’s really beautiful!”’
In a canine plot line worthy of Jilly Cooper, Jacko did Cupid’s work: ‘He started playing with me,’ Jonathan recalls, ‘and that’s when Arwa came over.’
‘He was handsome and nicely dressed,’ she says. ‘He didn’t seem like a typical homeless person. We started chatting.’
For both of them, ending up at the shelter was a shock. Jonathan, who had grown up in a stable family, had enjoyed a 20-year career in construction recruitment. A combination of Covid shutting down the construction business and the death of his father had brought him to St Mungo’s.
Arwa had been made homeless by the double whammy of war and her love for Jacko. For although the fighting had forced her to leave Syria, it was her dog that brought her to St Mungo’s. She’d got Jacko when she was 30 and living in Lebanon where her family had fled to escape the Syrian conflict.
Although Arwa had a job acting in a BBC Arabic service radio drama about Syrian refugees living in Lebanon, the war had derailed her life: ‘I had no husband, no children. Some women in the Middle East of my age are grandmothers!
So, I bought Jacko to fill the emptiness. Which he did.’
The Lebanese government then decreed that all Syrian refugees of Palestinian origin had to leave. ‘But when we returned to Syria everything had been destroyed. There were so many checkpoints that it took six hours to drive what used to take ten minutes. One soldier just shot in the air and said: “I can kill you if I want!”’ As an actress, Arwa also came under pressure: ‘I was a little bit famous so the regime wanted me to publicly support it. But I didn’t!’
Instead, she decided to escape. Her decision was partly influenced by the fact that, being a Palestinian whose family had fled Israel to Syria in 1948, she still did not have legal citizenship.
She chose the UK because she’d worked for the BBC and spoke English – her Palestinian grandfather had also had a British passport in the 1930s. Of course, this meant leaving her family, friends and Jacko behind. ‘It was impossible to take him on the journey,’ she says. But she vowed that if she survived, she’d find a way to get him to the UK.
Once there, Arwa waitressed while rebuilding her acting career, but she never forgot Jacko. ‘I emailed every charity that helps animals,’ she says. It paid off, as in late 2021 Jacko was flown over by the charity War Paws and she took him to the apartment she was renting in London. He was thin: ‘It was too dangerous to exercise him in Damascus because the government was shooting and poisoning dogs,’ she says.
Unfortunately, when interest rates soared in 2022, Arwa’s landlord sold the apartment and
‘WE’D BOTH BEEN DEPRESSED AND NOW WE WERE SHINING’
suddenly she was evicted. ‘I couldn’t find anywhere to live with a dog at such short notice,’ she says. ‘And then I lost my waitressing job with the stress.’ Her local council, while legally obliged to help, only offered her places that didn’t take dogs. ‘I couldn’t give Jacko up – he was all I had.’
So, in October 2022, Arwa and Jacko found themselves on the streets. While the police were very helpful, Arwa endured some horrifying experiences, including waking up with a drunk man prodding her legs. Jacko saw him off. ‘I had money for a few nights in a hotel, but they didn’t want me. I looked homeless. I couldn’t shower.’ Having shrewdly set up camp on the council’s doorstep, after three or four nights they recommended she contact the charity StreetLink, which found her and Jacko the place at St Mungo’s.
Despite – or perhaps because of – their shared trauma, Arwa and Jonathan’s romance moved at a Victorian pace. ‘He gave me a card on my birthday – 10 December,’ she says. ‘This was about four weeks after we met.’
By New Year’s Eve, one of the hostel security staff felt Jonathan needed a bit of help. ‘He bought us a bottle of champagne,’ says
Arwa. ‘And we just sat and talked. Jonathan’s smart, he’s funny. We have lots in common. I love how he looks to the details in things.’ Still nothing happened, though.
‘Being homeless meant my self-confidence was at an all-time low,’ explains Jonathan. ‘And I didn’t think a girl as beautiful as Arwa would look at me twice.’
Although he laughs that early on in their friendship she’d coyly asked: ‘Do you have a partner?’ ‘I said no,’ he says, ‘and she replied she didn’t either.’
It felt like the entire St Mungo’s staff – even their social workers – wanted to make Arwa and Jonathan’s love story blossom.
‘Everyone was happy for us,’ she says. ‘They could see the changes. We’d both been depressed, so miserable – and suddenly we were shining.’
Finally, on 16 January last year, Jonathan plucked up the courage to ask Arwa on a date. ‘I just felt it was really special,’ he says.
‘We went for a walk first,’ she recalls. ‘We discussed things. We made our confessions.’ They explained to each other how they had ended up on the streets. Then Jonathan took her to a Mexican restaurant.
‘Our first kiss was over a glass of red wine by candlelight in the restaurant,’ says Jonathan. A week after they started going out, Arwa asked him to make a commitment – to go to the mosque and get their relationship blessed.
‘Jonathan just wanted to date and get to know me, but I said, “I’m 37 and I’m very vulnerable.”’ While Arwa, having lived in Lebanon’s bohemian acting world, was not a strict Muslim, this felt different.
‘I promised God if he returned Jacko to me I’d be a good girl. The blessing I wanted is like a Muslim marriage, but there’s no legal commitment.’ She also felt her family would approve: Jonathan, who’d been raised Catholic, understood the comfort of religion.
At the mosque, the imam asked Jonathan if he’d make Arwa his wife, she says. ‘He replied yes. Then the Imam asked me if I accepted him as my husband.’ Arwa said yes. Then, to Jonathan’s surprise, the imam asked him how much money he’d give Arwa. ‘It’s our tradition!’ says Arwa. ‘Though I hadn’t even thought about it.’ So Arwa suggested £1, which Jonathan solemnly handed over.
Soon afterwards Jonathan got a job managing a storage company and the couple left St Mungo’s to move into a
one-bedroom apartment in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘It’s made me look at homeless people in a completely different way,’ she says. ‘Anyone can be homeless if they’re unlucky. People just need someone to love and look after them.’
After giving birth to their son Arthur Eric Oldknow last month, Arwa, Jonathan and Jacko – legally registered as Arwa’s therapy dog – are enjoying family life. Arwa’s mother in Damascus and her sisters in Qatar and Cyprus have only met Jonathan and Arthur on Zoom but once Arwa gets her British passport later this year, she hopes the family can be together again, if not in Syria, then in a neighbouring country.
Arwa and Jonathan plan to marry legally later this year. Their son Arthur is the first person in her family to have citizenship in three generations.