Iman loves her husband so much that she doesn't want people to address Bowie as her "late husband."
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on August 28, 2020. It has since been updated.
It's really hard to find true love in this world but when you do, you try to hold on to it. But then life keeps throwing curveballs at us and sometimes we lose the things we love the most. Many choose to move on but some tend to hold on to the memories.
Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid, David Bowie's wife, chose the second path. Iman, a Somali supermodel, was devastated when she lost her husband to cancer. In an interview with Porter Magazine in 2018, when the term "late" was added in front of the word husband, she said, "...no, he is always going to be my husband.”
For Bowie, it was love at first sight when the musician met Iman who had recently retired from modeling at a dinner party in 1990. According to Biography, the couple was introduced by her hairdresser. Talking about their meeting back in 2000, Bowie told Hello! Magazine, “My attraction to her was immediate and all-encompassing. I couldn’t sleep for the excitement of our first date. That she would be my wife, in my head, was a done deal. I’d never gone after anything…with such passion in all my life.”
While talking to Entertainment Tonight, Bowie recalled his first date to be "corny" since he asked her out for "afternoon tea." Iman revealed that the singer only said "tea?" She added, “He doesn’t drink tea; he never drinks tea. He had coffee."
Two years after they met each other, they got married in 1992 after Bowie proposed her in Paris. Iman revealed back in 2004 that she wasn't sure about Bowie in the beginning. Talking to The Guardian, she said, "Definitely I didn't want to get into a relationship with somebody like him. But as I always said: I fell in love with David Jones. I did not fall in love with David Bowie. Bowie is just a persona. He's a singer, an entertainer. David Jones is a man I met." But they still got together.
But life isn't that simple, Bowie was diagnosed with lung cancer. Keeping their lives private was always the couple's goal. They were so good at keeping their lives hidden from the tabloids that when Bowie died on January 10, 2016, it came as a shock to everyone. No one knew that the 69-year-old was battling cancer, not even the musical collaborators.
According to The Guardian, the Space Oddity singer got to know about the seriousness of his cancer just three months before his death. According to the documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years, Bowie was filming the video for his last single, Lazarus, when he got to know that he had to stop his treatment.
Francis Whately, the maker of the documentary revealed that Bowie had become weak because of the treatment but he put all his energy in his last three projects, especially Blackstar and Lazarus, until his last breath.
He said, “Often he would go and record in the studio and then go and watch the rehearsals for Lazarus in the evening, or talk about the play in the morning, go to the studio, and then come back. It was quite an extraordinary workload."
Iman at that time didn't talk much about her husband's death but displayed her love for Bowie occasionally on events like anniversary, or Valentine's day where she wrote, “All I need is Us. #ValentinesDay #BowieForever,” reported Biography.
But two years after the singer's passing, Iman opened up about her feelings about the death of the love of her life during an interview with Porter Magazine. She said, “People take pictures of me in the street, and say [touching my arm]: ‘I am so sorry for your loss.’ I’m like, don’t touch me. You just took pictures of me, how can you be sorry?”
“I get the fans’ grief, but it’s not the same. They have lost someone they look up to; we have lost a husband and a father. And sometimes, I don’t want people to know how sad I am,” she continues.
“People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so strong,’” she said rolling her eyes and added, “I’m not strong – I am just trying to keep it together.” When she was asked if she would venture into a new relationship, she said, “I will never remarry. I do feel very lonely. But do I want a relationship? I can’t say never, but no, not now.”
Since she's a very private person, no reports of her dating have come out after Bowie's death. Guess we'll know when Iman wants us to.
References:
https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-us/porter/article-8d8aadf6855141a6
https://www.biography.com/news/david-bowie-iman-love-story
https://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/2016011129165/david-bowie-tribute-hello-exclusive/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-KAzkA2E70
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/jun/29/iman-i-am-the-face-of-a-refugee
