The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

by Jennifer Steil

  “Together, we’re a penguin,” I say. “Or a nun.”

  “Or I am your shadow!”

  “That, we knew.”

  September 11 is a Monday, and thus a closing day, so work and its frustrations divert me from personal sorrow. I’m a wee bit exasperated with the three-and-a-half-hour lunch breaks my male reporters are taking. If they could cut their lunch break down to even an hour or two, we could get out of the office much earlier. However, I know I can never suggest this ridiculously American idea without a mutiny.

  In an effort to help me with election coverage, al-Asaadi hands me a new intern, a tall, broad young man named Jabr. Jabr wears his hair slicked back and dreams of becoming a movie star. In the meantime, the Yemen Observer will do. He has no experience, but I can’t afford to turn away able bodies.

  I send Jabr out to poll people for our opinion poll column, in which four ordinary people answer a question such as “Can democracy work in Yemen?” “What is the first thing you want the new president to tackle?” or “Do you think the newly released bin Laden video is real?” This should take about half an hour, tops.

  Jabr disappears before lunch and is gone for six hours. I’m wondering if maybe he has decided to quit when he returns to tell me he has quotes from only three people, and they are all men. I had told him explicitly that we must always interview two women and two men.

  “Jabr,” I say, “you’ve been gone from the office for six hours, and you’re telling me you couldn’t find four people to talk to? In all that time?”

  “Some of the women wouldn’t talk.”

  “So ask more of them.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?” He stands there looking large and helpless.

  “Walk out to Algiers Street. Hundreds of people walk by every minute. Surely you can find one who will talk. And we need women. We are half of the population. And I would like to know what both halves of the population have to say.” Representative democracy begins here.

  He nods and backs out of the room.

  Two hours later he comes back to tell me that he can’t find anyone.

  It would be generous to call Jabr a slow starter. Luke and I become so frustrated with his inability to perform even the simplest of tasks that we begin referring to him as the Missing Link. I can’t fire him though; we’re hardly paying him anything, and I suppose (though sometimes I have doubts about this) that having him around is better than having no one.

  Adding to our woes, the Internet connection goes down regularly, usually on closing days, when we most need it. Ibrahim e-mails me his election stories from home on closing days, and all of the op-ed pieces and Middle Eastern news must be drawn from the wires. With the Internet connection down, we cannot finish an issue. No one seems to know what to do when this happens. Everyone stands around and complains, but no one does anything. The Doctor is supposed to help, but he is either out on a four-hour lunch break or useless. He will shout at people and then come tell me it’s all taken care of, which it rarely is. Only one technician can help us with our Internet, Enass says. But often when we need him, his phone is off.

  Faris has promised me an Arabic tutor, who has yet to materialize. I’ve taught myself enough to get around on my own, but here are a few phrases I’m desperate to know:

  “None of the power outlets in my office is working. Can someone fix them?”

  “Can you tell me when the toilet will be functional?”

  “There is no water in the entire building.”

  “There will be no newspaper if something isn’t done about the Internet.”

  “Am I ever going to get the key to open my desk drawers?”

  ON OUR NEXT CLOSING DAY, Zuhra finishes her stories before three P.M. and makes her reluctant departure. It occurs to me that she should be the person I train to take over the paper when I leave. This is one of my main goals: to train a successor to carry on my work when I leave. But Zuhra is a woman and thus cannot stay late in the office (or, probably, command the respect of the men). It’s early to be thinking about my successor, but it could take the rest of the year to properly train someone.

  At three A.M., we’re still working, although I am having trouble reading the words on the page. I give the last of the front-page stories to our designer Samir and am about to call it a wrap and escape when I see al-Asaadi typing away on the pages I have already finished. “I’m just moving a few stories,” he says. It turns out he has also rewritten several critical election headlines, none of which is grammatical. I am convinced he is only making these changes for the same reason a dog pees on lampposts. But I have no choice but to stay until he is done; my eyes must be the last to see the paper before it hits the printer. Sighing, I set down my bags and pick up the pages he has altered to do one last edit.

  THE PREELECTION DAYS turn quickly into newsprint. I am now beginning to realize the peril of trying to change everything at once. I’ve been trying to get the paper on a schedule, hire staff, train reporters, edit the entire paper, write some pieces of my own, and earn the respect of my staff all at the same time. But despite my growing awareness of the impossibility of this task, I haven’t figured out yet how to do one thing at a time or what should come first.

  I don’t have enough time to sit with my reporters as I rewrite their pieces and explain to them how to do better. So I am happy when I get all three health and science stories early enough in the last preelection issue not only to edit them but to discuss with Najma, Bashir, and Talha what is missing from each of them. Bashir, for one, wrote about the accelerating melting of the Arctic ice without mentioning two major studies just conducted by NASA. I am trying to get my reporters to read all of the background stories on a subject before they begin reporting the news. But they resist and don’t seem to understand why it is important. Farouq has flat-out refused, saying that he has his own reporting, so why does he need to know what everyone else is saying? When I explain that he can write a better story knowing the whole background, he simply tells me that I should read the background and fill it in myself.

  Production has been slow this week, because every single staff member has had to take time off to care for a sick relative. Al-Asaadi’s mother has a snakebite on her foot that has turned into a cyst that won’t heal. Bashir’s mother is ill. Farouq’s brother is in the hospital. So is Hakim’s wife, who has stomach problems.

  We are also burdened by a love letter that the minister of health has written to President Saleh for our last preelection issue. Faris insists that we put it in the paper, saying it will encourage other officials to talk to us and write for us. He also insists that it be on the back page, which he considers prime real estate. This is all communicated to me by al-Asaadi.

  “I won’t do it,” I say. “Opinion does not belong on the back page.”

  “You tell him that.” Al-Asaadi is unwilling to argue with Faris over anything.

  I run upstairs and explain to Faris that an opinion piece belongs on the Op-Ed page, which is widely considered the most powerful page in a newspaper.

  “That is not true here,” says Faris. “Here the back page is most important.”

  “Really?”

  “Arabic is read right to left. So Arabs will naturally turn first to what for you is the back page.”

  This hadn’t occurred to me. “But we’re an English paper. And even if that is true, we lose legitimacy when we publish opinions in the regular pages,” I say. “Opinions and news must be kept separate.”

  Finally, Faris suggests a compromise. “I will let you put it on the Op-Ed page,” he said, “if you will put a mention in the banner on the front page, with a little photo.”

  “Done!” I say, greatly pleased.

  I run back downstairs. “It’s going on the Op-Ed page,” I tell al-Asaadi, who looks at me in astonishment.

  The minister’s piece, it transpires, is utter garbage. Al-Asaadi gets stuck translating it and moans the entire time. “Jennifer,” he says, “you know what it’s like when y
ou are forced to eat something that makes you gag? That is what I am doing.” The heavily edited piece is then thrust upon Luke, who wrestles with it some more. And I still have to do further edits. It tortures all of us.

  Faris stops by in the late afternoon with his friend Jalal. On their way to a qat chew, they’re clad in long white robes. “Faris,” I say with mock sternness, “you shouldn’t chew too much qat. It has pesticides and isn’t good for your teeth.”

  “But I am Yemeni!” he says in defense. “Whereas you are soft and tender.”

  “Soft?” I flex a bicep.

  Faris pinches my arm and agrees that there is nothing soft about it. “It’s just that when I see your face, I think of meditation and tranquility,” he says. “You’re like a calm angel.”

  Luke laughs so hard he almost chokes. “Come back and see her at two in the morning.”

  ON ELECTION DAY, I walk to work, disregarding all warnings that it is unsafe for westerners to be outside. I just can’t get through such a busy day without a bit of exercise. If I don’t burn off some energy, I’ll need to be peeled off the ceiling by noon. The streets are deserted. All of the shops are dark and shut with steel gates, except for a few juice places. Even the big Huda supermarket is closed. To keep a low profile, I wear all black, plus sunglasses to hide my blue eyes, but I’m conspicuous no matter what I do. This is driven home when just a few blocks from my office, a filthy man I pass on the sidewalk invites me to suck his cock. Who taught him this English?

  I arrive at work to find the gates locked and no one there. I pound on the doors, trying to wake the guard, to no avail. Dear god, does everyone think this is a holiday? Our biggest reporting day of the year? I mean, it is a holiday for the rest of the country, but we work for a newspaper! Surely my staff knows that they must show up? It hasn’t even occurred to me that this is something I needed to tell them.

  Desperate, I ring al-Asaadi. He doesn’t have keys but makes a few phone calls to try to find someone to let me in. In vain. “You shouldn’t stand around in front of the newspaper,” he tells me. “It isn’t safe.”

  “Al-Asaadi, there is nowhere else to go!” I am so frustrated that I kick the gate in frustration, and to my great surprise, it swings open. Now I am in the courtyard but still can’t get into the building. The welcome mat that usually hides the key is missing. So I pound on the door to the guard’s hut until I finally rouse him. Rubbing his eyes, he stumbles out to open the building.

  I worry that no one will show up. It is unusual for the women reporters not to be here at this hour. Enass is also missing from the reception desk and there’s no sign of the Somali cleaning lady. So it is an enormous relief when I see Zuhra bustling into the courtyard. “Please call everyone else and tell them to get their butts to the office,” I say.

  Noor and Najma say that their families won’t let them out of the house. “It’s too dangerous.” The usually reliable Hassan is spending the day working for the EU election observers. Talha, who has no phone, is MIA. We also have no secretary, Doctor, or drivers.

  Trying not to panic, I send Zuhra out to the polls. As soon as she is gone, Farouq shows up. He promptly heads out to report from the Supreme Council for Elections and Referendum (SCER) and to visit other polling sites. Two reporters in action!

  Jabr, the Missing Link, shows up an hour later, and I send him out to the polls as well. I hand him a notebook. “Don’t come back until you fill this,” I say. He looks terrified. I soften a bit. “Here, I will write you a list of questions to ask.”

  Luke arrives next, followed by Qasim, who waves his dark purple thumb—proof that he has voted. I beg him to take me to the polling sites. I don’t want to sit in the office missing all of the action. He insists on calling Faris to get permission to take me out, and we finally head to the SCER. It’s housed in a massive building filled with scores of hustling and bustling Yemeni officials and local and international reporters dashing about looking important and typing up stories in a computer room. On the first floor, reporters run in and out of the smoky restaurant, holding glasses of shaay haleeb—tea with milk.

  We head to the Ministry of Information to get my press ID. This is no simple task. Qasim asks me to lie and say that I am a reporter for The Week in the United States, because an international press pass apparently grants greater freedom. I don’t want to lie. I’m going to be living here for a year, and I will be found out sooner or later. But it’s illegal for a foreigner to be running a Yemeni paper, Qasim reminds me. We compromise and put both the Observer and The Week on my tag, which is pink for “international reporter.”

  We hear rumors of election-related violence and killings in Ta’iz and other governorates, but most remain unconfirmed. It’s funny how fast the news of these alleged incidents spreads. I even hear from several people that a man was arrested with explosives in Tahrir Square, just down the street from me. Misinformation seems to move much faster than fact.

  My pink tag dangling from my neck, I climb into Qasim’s car and we head to a nearby polling place. In the courtyard of the al-Quds School for Girls on Baghdad Street, a long black column of women stretches all the way down the hall leading to their voting rooms. Though it’s now noon, many of them have been standing there since the polls opened.

  Across the courtyard, men do not have to wait in line. They dart in and out, completing their votes in five minutes or less.

  “The women take longer to vote because they are not educated,” local election supervisor Ameen Amer explains. “Many are illiterate.”

  To assist the illiterate, the presidential ballot has color photos of each candidate, as well as his party’s emblem, next to his name. A rearing horse symbolizes Saleh, while a rising sun is the sign of the Islah Party.

  “Most of the women just registered this year and haven’t done this before,” says another election supervisor. “It’s a matter of education, and now, democracy is proceeding, day by day, and getting better and better.”

  Others we speak to in the sunny courtyard suggest that men vote later in the day, after work, while most women vote in the morning. It’s a frustrating wait in the hot sun for the women, who grow restless and shout out their complaints. “We have a crisis!” one woman cries. “Nobody is moving!” Yet they admirably do not give up, and most wait patiently for their turn in the voting booth.

  As voters file into each room, they are given one presidential ballot, two ballots for governorate councils, and two for district councils. They then secrete themselves behind the gray curtains of a small booth, where they mark their chosen candidates. As each emerges, she stuffs her papers into the plastic ballot boxes, before dipping her thumb into the well of purple ink that brands her as a voter.

  A row of seated representatives from each party observes the voting, often erupting into arguments but not becoming violent.

  “Nobody is cheating,” says observer Hanan al-Jahrani, who is representing the GPC (the ruling party to which President Saleh belongs). “We have had no problems.”

  For the most part, the process is going smoothly, concurs Amer. But at least fifteen people have come to the polls wearing T-shirts or hats emblazoned with their favored candidates, which is against election law.

  A businessman tells us that the voting process has improved. “We have seen the competition getting stronger, and each party is more nervous this year, which means we are getting closer to democracy. If a voter senses this, he will be more likely to vote.”

  Outside each room stand two armed men in green camouflage and red berets. Despite the threat of violence, I don’t see any reason to feel uneasy. Things seem to be moving more or less smoothly and thankfully the guns remain unused.

  Back at the office, I write up my notes. Zuhra and Jabr bring me their stories from other polling centers, and I tuck them into my reporting. Farouq runs around between the SCER and polling centers all day, so I don’t see him. Al-Asaadi is allegedly doing something similar.

  Election results won’t come in
until the next morning, so I am able to leave work by eight thirty P.M. The next day will be long; I had better escape while I can.

  The results trickle in all the next day, with Saleh unsurprisingly winning 77.2 percent of the vote. It’s a disappointing anticlimax after the frenzy of the last few days. No serious election violence is reported, no riots, no major problems at the polls. And privately we had all hoped bin Shamlan would do a bit better.

  On the upside, it’s a bizarrely calm day. I sketch out the issue on my dry-erase board and get al-Asaadi’s approval. He hasn’t eaten breakfast so I offer him some of my oat cookies. He takes four. “My food is your food,” I say.

  “My office is your office,” he says, his mouth full of oats.

  I am pleased that he’s so cheerful, and even more pleased that he gets his pages to me on time. So does everyone else. It’s not a perfect issue, but some of my ambitions for the paper will have to wait. When al-Asaadi leaves early to let me finish the issue on my own, I am downright astonished. Without his last-minute headline changes and layout shifting, we finish all the pages by midnight and I am out of the office by one A.M. Some nights, it feels good to be boss.

  TEN

  homemaking in the holy month

  After a month in my little suite at Sabri’s, I still haven’t unpacked my suitcases. My two rooms are certainly adequate, but they do not feel like home. I have made no attempt to decorate the walls, put up photos, or stock my kitchen. It seems a waste of effort when I know I am leaving. Living in a dormitory with Sabri’s young Arabic students has its perks, but I want a place of my own. Once I have a house, I can get myself sorted. I can unpack, decorate, invite people over for tea. Then I can truly begin my Yemeni life.

  So far I have had no time to look. Faris found a house he thought I might like, but it was far away from everything—far from the Old City, shops, and my office. I want to be able to continue walking to work. Karim gives me the number of a Yemeni man he knows, Sami, who can find me a house in Old Sana’a. I tuck it in my purse and plan to call. Just as soon as I have a free minute.