Where the Soul Was Made

I did not grow up in Limpsfield. I landed there. My parents — a Palestinian refugee and a German refugee — arrived in England with optical skills, a cigarette habit, and the kind of socialising spirit that fills a room. Thornton Heath. London Road. Cockney street life. Fighting spirit.

They built an optical enterprise from scratch. And somehow that landed us a renovation on Limpsfield Common.

The shade. The soft ground. Dogs. Birds. The oaks. My Pakistani, Indian, Black and Chinese friends from the road — they came too sometimes. London Road in our lungs, Surrey under our feet.

I wonder how the trees I climbed are surviving.

St Michael’s was a former missionary school — all girls, very Anglican, very Surrey. Choir every morning, chapel on the regular, daughters of diplomats and the quietly devout filling the pews. And then there was me. Foul-mouthed, faithless, arriving from a world that had no idea this one existed. The cockney drained away with every new term. The fighting spirit never did. Competitive athletics channeled any blood lust, appropriately.

I flew with my private pilot Dad all over the south of England – Nutfield, Biggin Hill, in open-cockpit aircraft that terrified me and then made me fearless. Biggin Hill. The sky as a classroom.

Pilot’s kid. Pilot’s wife. Pilot’s mother.

My two eldest daughters sat their SATs at twelve and scored university-entry grades. Not exceptional children. Exceptional environment.

I ran nine months through each of four pregnancies. Home births. No hospital. There are people more scared than me elsewhere — I can handle anything. That question came from the Common. From St Michael’s. From a father and a mother who built something from nothing. Fitting in was hardwired — but I failed spectacularly. And I’m glad I did.

That seed — keep hope alive in your imagination — is rooted in time spent clambering over the oldest oaks in England. The scent of good loam. Ancient earth. The curl of a fern reaching for early spring light.

The Common — A Child Who Knew How to Ask Why

One term, large machines arrived and began clearing the holly bush camps, the log treehouses, the undergrowth — everything we had claimed.

I walked up to the men. Eleven years old. They said they were clearing invasive species. Plants that did not belong.

I went home that night and asked the question quietly, very seriously, out loud: Am I one too? Father from Palestine. Mother from Germany. Landed in Limpsfield.

Am I One Too? The Invasives Question

Writing has always been as easy as running. Approaching strangers to ask why — same impulse, same age. They were right about the plants. The invasives were choking what belonged. Protection is not always soft. Sometimes it is a hard question asked out loud.

The question never left. I left in 1993. Belfast — 1989 to 1992 — while the city was still learning how to stop fighting itself. Then Egypt. Dubai. Teaching scuba. The water was always where the story was.

San Diego. Married Jonesy — a Naval Aviator. Children from 2000. The elder is a Marine Biology PhD student at FIU, diving with Bonefish and Tarpon Trust — asking the same questions without knowing it. The next flies T-45s at NAS Meridian. Then Laila the Down syndrome super star – independently at college in Key West, always late but amazingly never left behind. Then Mira, just beginning the Navy Pilot kick at UF. Go Gators!. The refugee spirit my parents carried — I did not inherit it. I chose it. Every time I walked up to someone I did not know and asked why.

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park – Coral Whiteout — Writing Hope Back Into the Dialogue

Key Largo is home now. Mangroves. Kayaking. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park — the Common under another sky. The same question underneath everything.

But the reef is bleaching. The water is warming and the living architecture of the Keys is dying while people walk on the land side and do not know it. David Attenborough made the ocean impossible to ignore — he is a hope robber too, putting living water back in front of people who had looked away. Benedict Cumberbatch is sharpening the same knife: hope in one hand, accountability in the other. Hope robbers. Same job I claim.

Hope Robbers — The Children Carry It

The work I do here extends the soul that caught fire on the West Heath and Limpsfield Common and at St Michael’s School. The children I raised got the benefits of that fire too — I didn’t see anyone else teaching French, Latin or English literature or science with the passion with which I had absorbed it, so I taught them myself. Teaching young people to love learning and seek Hope in their own way.

That same question I asked on the Common lives in them now. They challenge the world and demand answers — in their own highly aggressive, determined way. They ask the hard questions while joining their own tribe. For two it’s military, service, and great discipline. For others it’s marine biology, science, and research. They carry the world, and I trust them with it.

Coming Home — October 31-November 3

I am the Hope Robber — the journalist who writes hope back into the dialogue when all hope seems lost. Front pages: South Dade News Leader, Keys Citizen, Free Press. Blog hoperobber.com/blog

The reef off Key Largo is where I ask the same question I asked on Limpsfield Common in 1977. The same question. A different world answering.

BBC South East placed my Limpsfield and Oxted aerials for Surrey Day 2024. Love Oxted. Visit Surrey. Wave to the Sky — produced with Sophie Martin PR.

When I go back, I will walk those fields again. Until then, Pennekamp Coral Reef State is the Limpsfield Chart & Limpsfield Common under another sky. Every time I walk there.

The Pitch

I write. Photograph. Film. Craft stories. I bring the inspiration.

I’m leaving Miami on October 26 — flying to Belfast to dig up old drinking college buddies from the University of Ulster. Journalists. Engineers. Then back to Surrey for October 31 through November 3. Then home to Key Largo.

I would love to work with National Trust UK, BBC South East, and anyone telling the story of Oxted, Limpsfield, and the Tandridge district — the people, the land, the history, and what it means to belong to a place like this.

To the editors, publishers, and collaborators who feel the edge of this, whose arms prickle when they read it: I want to work with you.

I am bringing this raw, unexported England back to the page, to the screen, to the room.

Give me a brief, a deadline, a stage, a table in the corner of a noisy pub, a London to East Grinstead platform café, a run-down estate or a beautiful lush green West Heath, and I will bring you something only I can bring.

My inspiration always goes on red alert on the flight over; I land already lit up with the same glamorous love for England I have always had.

This place gave me life. My parents, now in their woodland burial grounds in Eden Valley, nourished me and let me go wild, and the world is better because of them.

I hope it is better because of me too, because I know how to steal hope.

In the spotlight of the story is the rugged end of whatever dark thought lies outside, discarded in the dark.

I choose the light along with you, and with all the journalists on earth. Use me for the light.

Limpsfield soul. Florida Keys heart.

Limpsfield never left.

Yours, Nada Khalaf-Jones

Key Largo

Limpsfield

UK CREDIBILITY CLIP — BBC South East · Surrey Day · 11 May 2024
Limpsfield / Oxted aerial drone footage. Also credited by Love Oxted + Visit Surrey, Wave to the Sky package alongside Matt Cuzen.

Nada Khalaf-Jones · photographyfloridakeys.com · Florida Keys freelance (Citizen / Free Press / South Dade News Leader) · BBC South East 2024 · Belfast Oct 27–Nov 1 · London/Surrey Nov 1–4 · Wave to the Sky — Surrey Day 2024, produced with Sophie Martin PR