The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

by Jennifer Steil

  EIGHTEEN

  dragging designers from the qat shed and other drug problems

  Whenever I leave the newsroom for too long in the afternoon, my men disappear. Initially, I have no idea where they go and send other reporters to find them. But it doesn’t take long for me to discover their hideout: the qat shed. This is a grimy little room tucked just inside the Observer’s gates. Dirty mafraj cushions are squeezed against the walls, and boxes of newspapers are stacked in the corners. Here, the men smoke cigarettes, stuff their cheeks with leaves, and try to hide from me. I stand in the doorway of the qat shed calling, “Amal!” (Work!) until they reluctantly hoist themselves from the cushions and follow me inside. Of course, this doesn’t happen right away. They first try to convince me to join them. “Chew, Jennifer!” they urge. “It’s nice!” Farouq holds up an alluring branch of green leaves and waves it at me. “It will relax you.” On occasion, I give in and chew a little with them, though I can’t say it makes me any calmer.

  My male reporters chew every day, often late into the night. Most Yemeni men chew, though not all make a daily habit of it. The nationwide dependence on qat is perhaps Yemen’s greatest development hurdle. The thirsty plant drinks the country’s aquifers dry, sucks nutrients from the soil, steals hours of productivity from workers, and causes a wide range of health and social problems.

  I don’t need scientific reports to know the adverse effects of qat; I see them every day. My men constantly complain of insomnia and lack of appetite. Many of them are painfully thin, the result of skipping supper in favor of a cheekful of greenery. Their teeth are brown with decay. Several have complained to me about the depression that follows a good chew, which I’ve experienced myself. “But that’s when you just chew some more!” say my reporters.

  Qat also keeps journalists from meeting deadlines, which causes me health and social problems. When the typical Yemeni workday ends, at two P.M. (not ours, alas!), many men rush from work to stuff themselves with stews and breads to line their stomach in preparation for a five-hour qat-chewing session. Because my reporters work evenings, they chew in the office (or the shed). On closing days, the drivers bring us rice and chicken for lunch so we don’t need to leave the newsroom—but the men still manage to sneak out to buy qat. Often, we will be ten minutes from finishing an issue, and all of my male reporters will simultaneously vanish. They cannot fathom getting through an afternoon without their fix.

  Qat has been cultivated in Yemen for centuries—some evidence suggests it grew here as early as the thirteenth century. Ethiopia and Yemen are the two biggest producers, although it also grows in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. There is some disagreement as to whether the plant originated in Ethiopia and spread to Yemen or vice versa. An Ethiopian legend holds that a goatherd was the first person to chew qat. One night he noticed that his goats were particularly wakeful and frolicsome. So the next day, he followed them and found them munching green qat leaves. The herder tried some for himself, and a habit was born.

  Until the 1960s, qat chewing in Yemen was mostly an occasional leisure activity for the rich. But in the 1970s and ’80s, rising household incomes and increased profitability for farmers contributed to the spread of the practice. Now, about three-quarters of men and a third of women chew qat, according to a 2007 World Bank report. Other studies have found chewing even more prevalent. Most qat chewers are habitual users; more than half of those who chew do so daily.

  MUCH OF WORK LIFE in Yemen revolves around qat chews. Friends working as consultants for government ministries report that decision making often happens in the qat chews that precede official meetings, rather than in the meetings themselves. “Which means that Yemeni policies are often made by men who are high as a kite,” says one consultant.

  It’s easy to see how qat became so prevalent. For farmers, qat is lucrative—ten to twenty times more profitable than other crops. Its contribution to the economy is equivalent to two-thirds of the contribution that oil makes (oil revenues make up 75 percent of Yemen’s budget), according to the Ministry of Planning. Thus, farmers are understandably in no hurry to switch to alternatives—even when rising global food prices threaten to starve the country and increasing cultivation has led to a serious water crisis.

  Qat production and distribution also employ about one in seven Yemenis. But while it may supply jobs, the drug bleeds money from Yemeni families. A tenth of the typical Yemeni household income is spent on qat, and some poor households spend more than a quarter of their income on it. Money spent on qat is money that isn’t spent on food, medicine, or other necessities—hitting children hardest.

  My male reporters, who are always out of grocery money weeks before payday, somehow still manage to buy qat. So it doesn’t surprise me to learn that 94 percent of nonchewers and 77 percent of chewers admit that qat has a deleterious effect on the family budget. Just under a fifth of Yemenis are forced into debt to finance their drug habit. It’s not unusual for a reporter to stand in front of my desk with a cheek full of qat asking to borrow money for dinner.

  Qat eats up hours as fast as it eats money—hours that might be spent on more productive pursuits. More than a third of qat chewers indulge their habit for four to six hours a day and nearly a quarter chew for more than six hours a day. When men joke that qat is Yemeni whiskey, I say, “Yes, but we don’t tend to drink whiskey for six hours a day, seven days a week.”

  One of the most entertaining bits of information I found in the World Bank report was that men dramatically underestimate how much qat their wives are tearing through. Fourteen percent of husbands said that their wives chew, but 33 percent of their wives reported chewing. This may be because there is more of a stigma attached to qat for women than for men. Or it could be that men are just out of touch with what their wives are doing, given that they spend little time together.

  Because men and women chew separately, the practice contributes to sex segregation as well. Primarily, it keeps men away from their families. My reporters, for example, would rather spend all night chewing with their male friends than go home to their wives and children.

  Before coming to Yemen, I was very curious about qat, and I have chewed my fair share in my efforts to assimilate. It’s nearly impossible to avoid qat chews, as almost all social life revolves around them. Even the expat community has adopted the tradition. Whenever someone leaves the country—and there is always someone whose contract has just ended or whose diplomatic term is up—there is a farewell qat chew. There are also housewarming qat chews, birthday qat chews, and just-because-it’s-Friday qat chews. The main difference between Yemeni chews and expat chews is that at a certain hour, the expat qat chews turn into cocktail parties when everyone spits out their leaves and picks up a glass of wine.

  Overall, I probably wouldn’t mind the whole qat phenomenon were it not for its interference with work. I don’t try to ban the practice; it would trigger mutiny (though the Yemen Times, I find out later, bans chewing at work). But I do try to keep the men from running out to buy it while we are closing an issue. It’s a losing battle but one, for some reason, I don’t seem able to abandon.

  “This has got to be the only country in the world where reporters are allowed to run out and buy drugs when on deadline,” I say to Luke.

  “It’s not drugs,” says Farouq. This is a regular argument. Yemenis do not consider qat to be a drug.

  “It’s a mood-altering stimulant. What else could it be?”

  “It’s just qat,” says Farouq.

  Hadi sides with him. Hadi, Farouq, and al-Matari are my most devout chewers, though Jabr often chews with them. He has trouble talking with his mouth full and sometimes spits bits of leaf at me when trying to explain a story. I try to imagine the reaction of my editor at The Week if I did this to him.

  At least Luke admits it’s a drug. One day he comes to my office to report a conversation with Hadi.

  “Hadi just came in and said, ‘The qat, it is
killing me. I can’t sleep at night. I am spending all of my money on it. It is making my wife mad at me. It takes away my appetite!’”

  “That’s because it’s a drug,” he told Hadi. “When the negative consequences outweigh the benefits, and you still continue to do it, then that means it’s a drug.”

  Hadi just shook his head sadly and stuck another leaf in his mouth.

  Another reason I don’t try to ban qat is that I am not sure that my men could do their jobs without it. They might fall asleep on their keyboards. Or go home for a nap. Journalists on qat, I figure, are better than journalists suffering from qat withdrawal.

  In contrast, my women are almost universally opposed to qat. Najma constantly writes health stories about its deleterious effects as a passive swipe at the men. Here is an excerpt from one of her masterpieces: “The qat chewer is prone to a lot of bad effects after taking qat. He becomes unable to sleep and he feels lazy and worried. He is also prone to be weak in sexual performance, focusing on things or information and to lose control on sperm. His appetite is badly affected by chewing qat and he tends to sit alone. He also suffers from some difficulties in urinating.”

  But there’s some evidence that my men are coming to grips with what qat really is. One day in May, Farouq pops into my office as I am finishing editing a front page.

  “Do you need me?” he says.

  “Why?” I ask warily. “Where do you need to go?”

  “I need to take your permission to go buy some drugs,” he says, grinning broadly.

  I laugh. “Well, since you put it that way, you have my permission to go buy drugs.”

  “Shukrahn!” And he’s off like a shot.

  I don’t complain. Farouq has been inordinately kind and respectful lately and receptive to my thoughts and criticisms. We’ve just finished going over a story he wrote about a graduation project that two Sana’a University students did on religious conflict. Islam is vastly misunderstood, both by “bad” Muslims (who use Islam to justify terrorism) and non-Muslims, the students say. To address this, they wrote a booklet and held a workshop to increase the understanding of Islam in a post—September 11 world. A few parts of the story made me cross, particularly the sections that referred to the Western media as a homogenous entity, as if every newspaper and magazine in the Western world were conspiring together and speaking with one voice, when, in my experience, the Western media is a multiheaded beast encompassing an infinite number of voices. Doesn’t it include both Mother Jones and the New Republic? Playboy and the Wall Street Journal? While it’s true that some voices are louder than others, I’ve personally found the “Western media” to be pretty free and various.

  When I try to explain this to Farouq, he responds, “But don’t the Jews control all the media?”

  “Farouq,” I say, “tell me what percentage of Americans you think are Jews.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just guess. I am curious what you think.”

  He considers for a moment. “Twenty percent?”

  I hold up two fingers. “Ithnayn. Two percent. Tops.”

  He is shocked. He had assumed that the entire United States was ruled by a Zionist cabal.

  I sigh. “Farouq. I have been in the media for twelve years and I don’t recall ever having been controlled by Jews.” In fact, I reflect, my last three bosses were Catholic. “And while there are certainly plenty of biases evident in newspapers and magazines, I’ve read quite a few pro-Muslim stories. Even in the New York Times. Which is, in fact, owned by a Jew. The U.S. media is not one big anti-Muslim block.”

  The United States was founded on the idea of religious freedom, I add. “It’s illegal to persecute anyone for his or her religion.”

  It’s strange to hear myself sounding so patriotic. I’ve spent a great deal of time agitating against the U.S. government—going to anti-Bush demonstrations, signing petitions, marching for peace, and supporting gay rights. Yet in Yemen, I find myself defending the government I have done nothing but complain about for years. And it’s true that in comparison with the corrupt and inefficient Yemeni government, mine is beginning to rise—just a bit—in my esteem.

  Farouq is surprised that it is illegal to persecute Muslims in the United States and surprised that any paper has written anything pro-Muslim. Even more, he seems surprised that the United States encompasses diverse viewpoints.

  In his story about the students’ Islam project, a source claims that the reason the United States is so afraid of Islam is that it is worried that its entire population will convert.

  “I don’t think that’s quite it,” I tell Farouq. “The reason some people in the U.S. worry about Islam is that terrorists have used it as an excuse to attack our country.” But I leave the quotation in anyway.

  Farouq doesn’t argue with me. He listens. This alone is progress. He has begun to ask me more questions and seems to be trying harder to impress me. Last week he redesigned the front page. He does this fairly often now, coming into my office to show me the two pages side by side in the hopes I will choose his. Sometimes he is right; I am the first to admit I have little design sense. But in this issue I have been quite firm about where I wanted which stories, and when I express this to Farouq, he just shrugs. “You’re the boss,” he says. “It’s your call.”

  His deference makes me feel so warm and fuzzy that when he tells me he needs to leave just before deadline to go buy drugs, I don’t try to stop him.

  NINETEEN

  bright days before deluge

  I have stopped fantasizing about going back to New York. I have stopped thinking of anywhere as home other than my own lovely gingerbread house in Sana’a. I sleep through the night more often than not. I eat meals. When I return to the Old City at sunset and see the gold and rose evening light setting the houses aglow against a darkening sky, I feel like the luckiest person on earth. The paper has never run more smoothly; we’re on such a predictable schedule now that I can make plans with friends even on closing days.

  This is how it happens. My canny reporters figure out that meeting deadlines means getting out of work earlier. Getting out of work earlier means spending more time napping, chewing qat, or, in rare cases, with their families. In other words, all it takes is for them to realize that they are not just making me happy—there is something in it for them.

  It sounds so simple. I suppose every manager realizes this at some point: that you must convince your staff that they themselves will benefit from doing what you want them to do. There’s a big difference, however, between reading this seemingly simple philosophy in a management self-help book and trying to implement it at a newspaper in a foreign culture. Not that I’ve ever read a management book. Or—until now—been a manager in a foreign culture. I just fumbled in the dark until one day, light dawned, the paper closed at three P.M., and we all sat around marveling at ourselves and wondering how it happened.

  Almost everything I learn in Yemen happens through improvisation, through feeling my way over each hurdle, each newsroom battle, and—after 1,001 mistakes—actually hitting upon a successful strategy. For example, one closing day in June, I discover that it isn’t just Faris who can be manipulated with peanut butter cups.

  I arrive at work that morning feeling cheerful and excited about social plans I have later. “I don’t feel like dawdling around here today,” I announce to the newsroom. “How about we have the earliest close ever?”

  My reporters look up from their computers. “Insha’allah,” they say, looking dubious.

  I have three front-page stories edited before eleven thirty A.M., which gives me plenty of time to hustle my staff. It is then I am struck with genius.

  “The first person to get me his or her front-page story gets five peanut butter cups,” I say. “The second person gets four, the third person gets three, et cetera. Now, go!”

  I cannot believe how well this works. Noor gets her story in first, followed by Jabr and Radia. Soon, the men all have chocolate-swollen ch
eeks, and the women’s hands keep disappearing under their niqabs.

  As I am in the middle of designing a page with Samir, who is filling in for a tardy Hadi; ringing Sharabi to demand that he come in and give us photos; and ordering my reporters about, Luke swings away from his computer to look at me.

  “When you leave here, you really ought to think about joining the circus,” he says. “You have all the skills to be a ringmaster.”

  My stomach tightens. When I leave here? The phrase fills me with panic.

  It is a frenetic day, but we do indeed close early. Farouq turns in a decent story about two brand-new X-ray machines that were intended to screen containers entering Yemen’s ports but that failed embarrassingly in a public demonstration. When the officials put a machine gun through one of the machines, it failed to detect it.

  Ibrahim files a story about three officials in Dhamar who were fired on corruption allegations. Zuhra writes another story about Anisa al-Shuaibi, whose rape case goes to trial this week. Luke and I joke that Zuhra is on the sodomy beat after she turns in a series of stories on abused prisoners, raped women, and sodomized men. Every story she reports seems to involve some kind of bodily violation. My little human rights crusader.

  Najma gives us a story about how an overabundance of fluoride in the water of some villages is turning children’s teeth brown, and Noor writes a piece about a march through Sana’a to demand funding for children’s programs.

  All of our pages are done by two P.M., though I stick around a bit to prod my staff along, proof pages, and make sure all of the captions are written and grammatical. “Do you need me?” I ask Hadi before making my escape.