Jobeda 1975-2020

Jobeda Begum Ali, feminist, futurist and entrepreneur died as she had always lived – a fierce fighter until the very last. At the age of 45, she lived more of lives, touched more people and challenged all she met to reject mediocracy and the status quo than anyone else I have known.

Jobeda was a futurist above all things; she strove for a world made better by technology; she had careers in government, film making, Ted talking, as a writer, a roboticist and finally, not surprisingly, as a successful founder of a social enterprise providing care for vulnerable people in their homes.

Jobeda was hungry for knowledge. I first met her in 1997, I was struck by the incandescent passion she had for life, I recognised in her blazing rocket fuelled version of myself – in love with ideas, science, art, creativity and wit. Her mercurial way led me to conclude quickly that Jobeda was like me, prone to the black dog and in love with life. I met Jobeda in the summer she graduated from Cambridge, and I from SOAS. Connected through a mutual friend, we became independent friends quite fast. Jobeda the street smart, sassy teenager from Tower Hamlets, deceptively clad in a pink shalwar kameez. My London – Jobeda defined my experience of being alive in the city.

Although Jobeda was born in Sylhet, she spent her early life in a two-room council flat on the Isle of Dogs, she shared this miniature abode with random cousins, brothers, sisters, aunties coming and going. And then this little girl from Sylhet who grew up eating with her hands arrives at Trinity College – the domain of cutlery, intellect and patriarchy – this fireball of energy and femininity collided meteorically with established white intellectual elitism. And that’s who I met. The girl on fire who gazed at stars and laughed with life.

I left the island in 1997, with a photo of Jobeda to stick on every wall the wide world over where I slept. I trudged the planet through wars and more wars until life crash-landed back in London in 2017. I came home for Jobeda it turns out.

Months later, Jobeda had been diagnosed with Squamous cell cancer, which we were told at the time was ultimately treatable. She embraced life more after her diagnosis. Suddenly her projects became more urgent; her drive to write her first novel, her immense wanderlust, her lust for life exploded. Sadly, I fear we caught her cancer too late, after a gruelling course of chemo and a period ‘in the clear’ Jobeda learned that the cancer had metastasised into many of her main organs. Jobeda’s reaction was to wage war on her cancer; she enrolled on immunotherapy trials, flew round the world to access the most cutting edge in cancer treatment, made bizarre liquidised drinks out of kale and beetroot. In the last years of her life, she crammed in memory, joy, fights, adventures and above all laughter. We recently took at trip to Rome, ate far too much good food and realised our lifelong dream to see Tosca at the opera house in Rome. We forgot cancer and loved life.

Jobeda died this morning at home, surrounded by her family and with a great sense of peace.

For me, Jobeda, there can be no good bye. You are always in my heart.