The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

by Jennifer Steil

  THINGS CONTINUE in the same vein after he returns from London. The very next issue, he e-mails me that he wants to write the editorial. So I save him that space. Luke and I finish every other page by seven thirty P.M. Al-Asaadi waltzes into the office at seven forty-five P.M. He hasn’t even started his editorial. It’s textbook sabotage.

  I have been in a sunny mood all day, but now clouds are gathering. When he finally finishes his editorial, al-Asaadi decides to rearrange the entire front page and suggest additions to the Local page. I fight to keep my voice steady.

  “I would have loved your feedback—at four P.M. this afternoon,” I say. “When we had plenty of time to rework things before deadline.”

  “I can’t come in at four P.M.,” he says.

  “Why not? Everyone else does. That’s our work hours.”

  We are interrupted by his phone. Al-Asaadi has two mobile phones, both of which ring constantly. He chats for several minutes, his cheek bulging. While the entire rest of the staff has been hard at work, he has been at a qat chew with his friends.

  Al-Asaadi seems to believe that holding the title of editor in chief entitles him to do less work than the rest of the staff. His time in prison has made him a bit of a celebrity. He’s Yemen’s poster boy for press freedom, and he milks this so much that Manel takes to calling him the “Boy Wonder” or the “Ghetto Superstar.” He loves to go out to embassy parties, to meet and greet dignitaries, but isn’t all that interested in the day-to-day sweat and toil of editing a paper. He spends no time training the staff to become better reporters, though they could use his help, and is impatient with their mistakes.

  Luke and Manel and I confer about al-Asaadi’s obstructiveness after we finally flee at eleven P.M. Compared to our first two months, this is still an early close, and I have worked a mere fourteen hours instead of twenty. Luke, who worked for the paper for several months before I arrived, says that before I came there was no order at all and they were often there all night. “We were here until five or six in the morning,” he says. “You’ve done an amazing job.”

  Luke offers to come with me to talk to Faris, to support my complaints about al-Asaadi. “He has blatantly sabotaged you for the last three issues,” he says. “All three issues would have closed at eight if not for him.”

  Faris, as is too often the case, is out of town. So we wait.

  The weird thing is that I know al-Asaadi likes me in spite of himself. And I like him. He brought me a pretty souvenir candy dish from London, and on days we are not closing an issue, we often talk and laugh together. But throughout the fall, the tension has escalated. When he is in the office, he entertains a constant stream of visitors, who sit a few feet from my desk talking loudly and slurping tea. The incessant racket is deleterious to both my patience and my editing. If al-Asaadi isn’t with a guest, he is shouting on the phone.

  In Yemen, no one ever makes an appointment. People visit the editor of a paper when they feel like visiting, with no regard for the fact that she might be on deadline. Yet it is the height of rudeness to turn anyone away. I make this mistake one day, when a Yemeni reader drops in to talk with me about the paper just as I am editing several stories on a closing day. “Look, I’m really sorry, but I just don’t have time right now,” I tell him. “I am trying to close an issue. Could you please make an appointment next time?”

  As soon as he leaves the office, al-Asaadi berates me. “You cannot do that,” he says. “You must always offer them a seat and at least a glass of tea. That is how things are done here.”

  I feel terrible guilt for being so culturally insensitive. But I am also frustrated. If I am required to entertain endless visitors, as al-Asaadi does, how am I ever going to get my work done?

  Yet sometimes, my visitors delight me. I am busy editing one afternoon when a tall, blue-eyed cowboy walks into my office. A real cowboy. From Arizona. This is Marvin. He steps hesitantly across my threshold, looking as though he’s just been peeled off a Marlboro billboard. His gray hair is cropped short, and he sports a big mustache, jeans, and bowlegs.

  I’d heard of Marvin. He is running a livestock program on Soqotra and splits his time between the island and Sana’a. Thinking that I could get an interesting story, I invite him to sit.

  Goats run loose across the pristine island of Soqotra, he tells me, and they are slowly destroying its unique and delicate ecosystem. Marvin’s plan, yet to be put into action, would help the local people learn how to keep their animals healthy, manage foraging, open a sanitary halal slaughterhouse, and sell meat to the mainland.

  We commiserate about the difficulty of getting anything done here, the malingering of our workers, and the disorder of the country. Marvin tells me that one of his workers refused to come in one day because he’d skipped breakfast and his stomach hurt, while another didn’t show up because his left pinkie finger had a paper cut.

  “You know the Spanish word ‘mañana’?” says Marvin.

  “Of course,” I say. “Tomorrow.”

  “It doesn’t really mean ‘tomorrow,’” he says. “It means ‘definitely not today.’”

  I could see where this was going.

  “And here, it’s the same thing with ‘insha’allah’.”

  “I know! It’s the universal excuse for everything. If my reporters don’t get a story done on time, well, it just wasn’t meant to be done on time.” This absence of personal responsibility bothers me. The general attitude of my male reporters seems to be “Why should I worry about it, when I can just leave it to God?” While my women will work themselves to exhaustion, refusing even to eat until a story is done, my men spend the bulk of their time justifying their minimal efforts. This is the result of privileging one half of society over another, I think. The men feel the world owes them a living and work only to get more money for qat, whereas the women work three times as hard in an effort to prove that they can do what everyone tells them they cannot.

  Yet the men treat the women with condescension. One afternoon, al-Matari, who is Noor’s cousin, comes into my office to tell me that Noor has gone home crying. “It is Farouq,” says al-Matari. “He yelled at her.”

  This is not the first time this has happened. Zuhra recently ran into my office trembling. “Can I talk to you?” she said, closing the door and throwing back her veil. She was in floods of tears. Farouq had been taunting her, she said, accusing her of spending too much time talking with westerners, as if this were a betrayal of her people. By “westerners,” he meant Western men, which meant Luke and Manel. Zuhra sees Luke as a brother and is nearly as comfortable talking with him as she is with me. Because Luke is Western, she knows he won’t mistake her friendliness as a sign of loose morals. Over time, she has come to feel the same way about lovable Manel. It’s agonizing to have these relationships misconstrued.

  Today, it’s been Noor’s turn to play punching bag to Farouq. As she is already gone, I send her an e-mail saying that I am sorry Farouq has upset her and that she shouldn’t hesitate to come talk to me if he bothers her at work.

  The next afternoon, I pull Farouq into my office. He claims that Noor yelled at him first (which I doubt). “Farouq. You are an adult. No matter what Noor said to you, I need you to try to be kind to her in the office. If you have a problem with her, come talk to me about it, and I will deal with her. But this isn’t the first time you’ve upset someone in the office, and I don’t want my reporters leaving here in tears.”

  “I will have nothing to do with the women!” he says angrily. “I will never speak to them!”

  “Well, you may have to, for work. So I need you to please try to be nice. And professional. Come to me with any problems. Okay?”

  He gives me a curt nod and leaves my office.

  I tell all of this to Marvin, who nods sympathetically. “Well, if you need to get away, come see us on Soqotra,” he says. “There are plenty of stories for you to write there.”

  I KEEP MARVIN’S INVITATION in mind as I redouble my efforts to work
with al-Asaadi. The tension is not constant, and he can be quite charming. In late November, our relationship gets a boost from an out-of-town field trip. I haven’t left Sana’a since I arrived (other than a long weekend in Istanbul) and am aching to see the countryside. Al-Asaadi says he wants to take me somewhere in honor of my birthday, which I think is the best gift possible. So one Friday in November, he and his two eldest daughters come to pick me up in the Old City to take me out to Wadi Dhar, a valley about a half hour from Sana’a.

  Hulud and Asma, ages four and six, both tiny and shy with identically braided hair and long, curly eyelashes, stand in the backseat of the car for the entire ride, staring at me silently. I cannot get used to seeing parents fail to buckle their children safely into cars. There are no child safety seats, and older children never wear seat belts.

  It is a bright, sunny morning as we head out of Sana’a, past the sprawling fruit and vegetable markets on the fringes of town and increasingly ramshackle homes, into the mountains. We are heading to Dar al-Hajar, the imam’s palace built on top of a rock in Wadi Dhar.

  On the way, al-Asaadi pulls over at a scenic overlook, where hundreds of tourists, both Western and Yemeni, mill around the edge of the cliff overlooking a deep, green valley. The four of us walk to the edge and stand looking down at the patches of qat and the squat homes beneath us. Mountains fill the horizon. Yemeni men sell trays of bright pink cotton candy, fruit, and nut brittles. A man with a falcon on a rope lets foreigners take pictures for a price. We take photos of each other and talk with a German family standing near us. Al-Asaadi is happy to see tourists in his country. “When bad things happen, like these terrorism things, it makes me worry about their future,” he says, tapping his girls on their heads.

  I want to say that one of the best things he can do for their future is to make them wear seat belts in the car, but I bite my tongue.

  It is hot and dusty when we arrive at the palace. Just outside, men dance in a circle with unsheathed jambiyas. Even knee-high little boys wave their daggers around in the air as they try to follow the steps of the men. No one seems concerned about trusting preschoolers with lethal weapons. I am reminded of my sister’s horrified reaction when, after my first trip to Yemen, I gave a tiny jambiya to my four-year-old nephew, Noah. “I can’t let him have a weapon!” she scolded me.

  We wander over to the entrance and make our way up the many flights of stairs, pushing through throngs of people. The five-story medieval Dar al-Hajar (Rock Palace) was expanded in the 1930s into a summer residence for Imam Yahya, who ruled Yemen from 1918 to 1948. It is a maze of gypsum-walled rooms, riddled with qamaria and nooks and crannies for children to crawl into. We lean out windows to gaze at the valley below. Hulud and Asma are interested in everything, touching the walls and looking around them with big eyes, but are almost entirely silent. They don’t even jabber with each other.

  When we’re done exploring, al-Asaadi is in a hurry to get home in time for noon prayers. The dirt track winding back to the main road is lined with fruit sellers offering pyramids of plums and pears. I buy a kilo of tight-skinned purple plums and we eat them as we drive back, the sweet juice running down our arms and chins. When Al-Asaadi drops me home, he runs to the Qubat al-Mahdi mosque across the street, as he doesn’t have time to get to his mosque. I ask if he is taking the girls, and he says no, they will wait in the car. The afternoon heat is sweltering and the car is overly warm. Trying to hide my horror, I ask, “Why don’t they come stay with me until you’re done?”

  “Oh no,” he says. “They’re used to it.” He opens a window and shuts them in the car.

  I stand next to the car for a moment as al-Asaadi hurries across the street to pray. The girls sit quietly. It feels unconscionable to walk away and leave them there, but I don’t have a choice. I turn to head toward home, hoping that al-Asaadi prays quickly.

  AT THE END OF NOVEMBER, two men from the South African embassy visit me. These men actually made an appointment, only I have completely forgotten. When they arrive, I am buried in work, but I set my editing aside to talk about the recent elections and press freedoms in Yemen. Ambassadors often drop by to quiz me about the Yemeni press. They want to know “where my red lines are”—what limits are put on free expression. I normally enjoy these ambassadorial briefings, but I am so overwhelmed by the work I have left to do that their visit sends me into a panic. Exacerbating matters, I return to my office to find a group of women students sitting there, waiting for al-Asaadi. Struggling to be polite, I chat with them briefly before he arrives.

  Now I am even more behind, so I ask al-Asaadi to please take the students to a conference room, so I can catch up with my editing.

  “No,” he says with a note of defiance in his voice.

  I look up from my computer, startled. “Why not? The conference rooms are both empty, and I have to be in the office to edit on my computer and e-mail questions to Hakim on his story.”

  “No. You go someplace else.”

  I am stunned, not just by his irrational obstinacy, but by the fact that he is arguing with me in front of a room full of women.

  “Mohammed, I need to be in this office and you know that. Why do you need to be here to talk with these women? This is why we have conference rooms! For meetings like this!”

  He refuses to leave. I attempt to work, but it is impossible with him talking at top volume to the students right next to me. Faris, for once, happens to be upstairs, so I run up to solicit his support. I interrupt his meeting with Jelena, the temperamental advertising coordinator for Arabia Felix, who has just had such a vicious fight with Karim that he threatened to quit.

  “What is it?” says Faris, looking annoyed.

  I explain the situation, and Faris immediately phones downstairs to tell al-Asaadi to take the girls to a conference room. I am well aware that tattling on al-Asaadi to Faris sounds the death knell of our relationship, but I don’t know what else to do. I have five pages left to edit, and most of the day is gone.

  I run back downstairs, but al-Asaadi, in defiance of Faris’s orders, still refuses to leave. Faris sends down the big guns, in the shape of the formidable Doctor. I hide out in the newsroom with Luke while he goes to oust al-Asaadi and the girls from our office.

  When at last they are gone, I go straight back to work. Al-Asaadi promptly returns to yell at me. I yell back.

  “Why are you being so stubborn?” I say. “You know I have to be here for work. Why do you have to be here, when both conference rooms are free?”

  “Because it’s my office!”

  “That is not rational! There is no reason you cannot talk to those women in the conference rooms!”

  Al-Asaadi picks up things from his desk and throws them down again. “This isn’t even an office anymore,” he says. “It looks like a grocery store!” He waves angrily at the orange sitting on my desk.

  “You know I keep most of my food in my desk drawers,” I say, my voice starting to tremble. “And I have to keep food here, because I don’t have a wife at home to cook me lunch.” (Anne-Christine has moved to Syria, and I’ve gone back to a diet of cereal and salads.) “This is where I eat my lunch. I have too much work to finish to go home. What do you want me to do? Stop eating?”

  Silence.

  “Al-Asaadi, if you want me to move, I will try to move to a different office. Then you can do what you want. It is your office, after all.”

  “No,” he says, relenting a little. “It is your office too. I am sorry. I want you to stay here.”

  “I am sorry too. I really didn’t want to get into a huge argument about this, but you have to understand that I really need to get work done!”

  I turn back to my computer, and al-Asaadi taps away at his keyboard, for once in total silence.

  I finally get caught up on my editing, after skipping both the gym and lunch, enabling us to close by the not unreasonable hour of ten thirty P.M. I’m pretty pleased with the front page, although nervous about what Faris will think, as
it is packed with what he is sure to see as negative stories. Headlines include QAT-CHEWING DOOMS YEMENI FOOTBALL TEAM, GUN-TOTING YEMENIS DISCOURAGE INVESTMENT, and ATTACKS ON JOURNALISTS CONTINUE.

  I am even more nervous about my editorial, in which I attack President Saleh for not standing up for journalists. He has said nothing to condemn the imprisonment and harassment of journalists, and I think this is disgraceful, particularly given all his big talk about how Yemen is such a swell democracy.

  Yet Faris doesn’t notice. I start to suspect he doesn’t even read the paper unless someone makes a complaint. I never hear a single word from him about anything we publish.

  Qasim has begun giving me almost as much trouble as al-Asaadi. Noor comes to me one morning to say that she wants to cover a big concert for her Culture page. This sounds fine to me, so I agree to write her a letter confirming that she is a journalist. Faris is still refusing to give my staff press IDs, which means they are constantly getting thrown out of government buildings and hospitals for lack of credentials. He claims that my reporters must prove themselves trustworthy before they deserve IDs, although I point out that it is nearly impossible for them to do their jobs without identification.

  Just after I give Noor permission to go to the concert, Qasim storms my office. “You cannot let Noor cover the concert!”

  I am bewildered. “I want this story for the Culture page,” I say. “Why shouldn’t we cover it?”

  “Arabia Felix is writing about it.”

  “Arabia Felix is a magazine and comes out twice a year. It’s not exactly a conflict of interest for us both to write about it.”

  “Well, Noor can’t get in. I only have two passes.”