The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

by Jennifer Steil

  “No,” he says without hesitation. “Go home.”

  “Yes,” says Luke, turning to me. “Please go home.”

  EVEN WHEN DAYS don’t go this smoothly, I now find my reporters’ mistakes more entertaining than exasperating. Take Bashir’s translation of Farouq’s story about the Huthis: “The minister of endowment and giddiness Hamoud al-Hitar said, ‘We will try to convince the rebels to surrender and lay down arms and stop the war against the camps of the State.’ He adds, ‘Last Saturday, the scholarship committee arrived to Sa’ada to transfer massage from the scholarship to the rebels about the war there.’”

  I am sure that a massage by the minister of endowment and giddiness could play a productive part in conflict resolution. But it seems unlikely to happen.

  Jabr turns in another of my favorite leads, for a story about a fundraiser for a charity that helps children with cleft palates. “One thousand and seven hundreds dollars for work of Yemeni smile that provide operations for children who have genital problems and who can not smile, said Nerys Loveridge, the Principle of the school. The money delivered to the ambassador of British during the open day that held in Sana’a British School on Wednesday.”

  It’s common for Arabic speakers to mix up the P and B sounds. There is no P in Arabic. Thus I often get sentences like this: “There are some teams of masked soldiers called IRF (Instant Response Force). ‘They enter the cell and beat the crab out of the prisoners,’ he said.”

  Zuhra pulls her weight in the malapropism department too. When she is assigned to write a story on the celebration of Passover by fifty Yemeni Jews who live in the North and are under government protection in Sana’a after threats were made against them, she describes their food restrictions as such: “Jews are not allowed to eat inflated bread during this time.” In a story about a group of people protesting shoddy medical treatment, she refers to them as “people who have had kidney plantations.”

  But perhaps my favorite is this paragraph from a health story she wrote on fertility treatments, which—alarmingly, given the country’s already astronomical birth rate—are increasing. “Women must take medicines that stimulates the ovaries to produce eggs, and the men must stimulate their male liquid. Then, the mother will be in stupefaction in order to take out the eggs. Laser peels the chosen egg from the surrounding cells to guarantee that it will be fertilized appropriately.”

  I relish having time to discuss these errors with my reporters. The macro structure of our paper has fallen into place, allowing me to focus on the micro structure of my staff’s stories. Now, instead of hurriedly rewriting everything alone in my drab office, I have reporters come sit with me while I edit their stories. This allows me to explain every change I make.

  It’s good that I now have time for these editorial tête-à-têtes, because in the spring I acquire Zaki, who replaces Hassan as the Business page editor. Charming to the point of obsequiousness, pudgy, bespectacled Zaki has a mere passing acquaintance with the English language. I spend hours coaching him and trying to break his habit of using meaningless business jargon sure to befuddle our readers. His stories are full of sentences like this: “Professor, Mohammed Muammar al-Shamiri, Supervisor of Group Insurance, said awareness on the importance of securing is very important either individuals or institutions on the all economic fields in Yemen.” Decipher if you dare.

  Zaki is eager to learn and gets me his page before deadline, so I don’t complain. Besides, by now my standards for staff run something along the lines of “Must type with at least two fingers and sometimes show up.”

  Zaki is also a source of intriguing cultural information. One afternoon, he bursts into my office, wildly excited.

  “Jennifer,” he says, settling into the chair next to my desk and leaning toward me. “I met with the jinni yesterday!”

  “Oh, great!” I say, thinking he has met my journalist friend Ginny. “I had dinner with her just last night!”

  Zaki looks at me in horror. “You did?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “At the Indian restaurant.”

  “At the Indian restaurant?” Zaki looks very confused. I suddenly realize that Zaki means jinni as in jinn—the oft-evil spirits made of fire and capable of possessing people. It turns out that Zaki was recently called in to help with the exorcism of a possessed woman. And this may not surprise anyone, but it turns out that the bad jinni, in this case, spoke English, with an American accent. This is why the sheikh who was reading the Qur’an over the possessed woman needed Zaki to translate.

  “Her face changed shape!” he says. “And she turned colors!”

  “You saw this?” I say, eyebrow arched.

  “Yes!”

  “And you really believe in the jinn?”

  He looks offended. “Every Muslim believes in the jinn!”

  “Ah,” I say. This was all before I actually read about the jinn in the Qur’an some months later. Not only do all Muslims believe in the jinn, they find it inconceivable that there are countries without jinn. I tell my Yemeni friends that the closest thing I can think of are ghosts, but they are the leftover energy or spirits of dead people, whereas the jinn were never human. I suppose the evil spirits or demons that possess evangelicals in the South and make them speak in tongues are the best Western version of the jinn, but with a different backstory.

  Zaki describes how the woman writhed and moaned in American English before he returns to the newsroom. I’ve told him that he can write about the jinn, but I would like to see if scientists and doctors have any possible alternative explanations for the physical changes in the woman. Perhaps this is too secular a demand, but I am curious to hear what they might say.

  I sit mulling this all over and then walk to the newsroom. Something is bothering me.

  “Zaki,” I say. “Did this woman know English?”

  “No!” he says. “She is completely illiterate!”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I know a woman like that too,” says Bashir (who often stops in to help, despite having quit months ago). “She was completely illiterate, but when the jinni possessed her, she spoke perfect English with an American accent.”

  It turns out that pretty much everyone in Yemen knows a woman like this. At a loss for words, I turn back toward my office.

  “You had better watch out,” says Najma. “Since the jinni is American!”

  “If the jinni is American,” I say, smiling, “then I don’t think I have to worry.”

  I AM GROWING CLOSER to all of my reporters. It’s easy to spend time with my men outside of the office, because they can go where they want whenever they want. But my women all have curfews. They can’t be out after dark, and I can’t take them to dinner at a restaurant. Most women don’t go to restaurants. (It’s nearly impossible to eat while wearing a niqab.) Also, when I invite my women to lunch, they often decline because they are fasting. My women are frequently fasting, sometimes just because they want a little spiritual extra credit. Still, many afternoons I eat with Zuhra at al-Mankal, the nearby Jordanian restaurant where I now have lunch most days and where the manager brings us a wooden screen to hide her from view. Other days, I buy falafel sandwiches for me and Radia, who never goes home for lunch, and we sit eating them at her desk. None of the men are around then, so she flips up her veil while she eats and helps me with my Arabic homework.

  My women are, however, more likely than the men to invite me home. It’s easier for them; they don’t have to worry about jealous wives. The first time I have lunch at Zuhra’s house, I am struck by how joyful a place it is. She and her three sisters drag me to their bedroom after we eat, and we lie on the bed looking at scores of photos and a series of home movies. One stars Zuhra and Shetha (her sister now married and living in Dubai) playing old village women wrapped in the traditional Sana’ani setarrh (a red and blue cloth now worn only by the elderly). Ghazal, Zuhra’s youngest sister, dances toward them in a skimpy dress. She doesn’t cover her face or glittering eyes and exudes self-confidence. “Pu
t something on!” Zuhra says in the film. Aping the old gossips who sit around judging the younger generation, they ask Ghazal if maybe she is American. Are you praying in America? Who is your father? (Two questions Zuhra says are often asked of young girls.) We all roll around on the bed laughing and poking each other.

  “This is what we are like all the time,” Zuhra says. I have a pang of envy. When I was a child I fantasized about having a big, noisy family. Zuhra and her sisters and mother are as close as I can imagine any family being. “We’re like Little Women!” Zuhra says. I am surprised she knows the book. And I think they might have a bit more fun than those March sisters.

  IBRAHIM IS ONE OF THE FEW MEN who dares to invite me home. I go to his house, some forty minutes outside of Sana’a, for lunch one Friday afternoon. Ibrahim and his wife, Sabah, live with a passel of relatives and children. Upstairs, I take off my shoes and settle in a large carpeted room, where the curious eyes of little people soon surround me. A plastic sheet is spread on the ground, and platters of fish, salads, breads, rice, chicken, radishes, and zahawek (the spicy Yemeni salsa I love) are piled in front of me. Because I am the only non—family member present, men and women eat together. If I were a man, I could eat only with the men. Sabah is very pretty and asks me the usual questions. Am I married? Yes, of course. Do I have children. I hesitate. No, I say, waiting for the usual cry of dismay. But to my surprise, she brightens. “Like me!” she says. “You are like me.” I hadn’t realized that Ibrahim had no children. He and his wife are both in their thirties and have been married since they were around twelve. Such early marriages are common in Yemen, though there is a growing movement to increase the minimum matrimonial age. I constantly hear reports, from both Yemenis and westerners, of young girls forced into marriage before their bodies and psyches are prepared. These appall me, and I find it horrifying that it is acceptable for grown men to find twelve-year-olds sexually appealing.

  But Ibrahim and Sabah share a genuine affection that isn’t often obvious between husbands and wives here. It is unusual for a Yemeni man to stay with a woman who hasn’t given him children. Yet Ibrahim and Sabah occupy themselves with caring for their herd of nieces and nephews and appear happy.

  ALL THIS PROGRESS with the rest of my staff leaves me with just two people to worry about: al-Asaadi and Zaid. Faris has promised to keep al-Asaadi out of my hair by making him the editor of a new magazine he’s launching and has approved my choice of Zaid as my successor. While I am dismayed that I only have a couple of months to get Zaid up to speed when he returns from London, I have high hopes that his journalism studies abroad have molded him into something resembling an editor. All I will have to do, I hope, is polish his edges. Yet I am plagued by anxieties. I have no idea what Zaid will be like as a manager. I have no idea how al-Asaadi will take to his new job.

  My relationship with al-Asaadi has improved with distance. He calls and writes me enthusiastic e-mails from upstate New York, where he is studying and working as an intern at a newspaper, congratulating me on what I have done with the Observer (which he reads online). “Only now can I appreciate what you did for us,” he says. “I am so grateful for all I have learned from you.” I am astonished. Who is this man, and what has he done with my belligerent little fellow editor? Yet this doesn’t quell my fears that our old battles will resume once we are face-to-face again.

  Al-Asaadi arrives in Yemen a week before Zaid. He demonstrates his Americanization by kissing me once on each cheek, a first. We have lunch together soon after his return, at al-Mankal, my favorite haunt. We chatter easily about his time in the United States and about work. Jamal Hindi, the Jordanian owner of al-Mankal, comes over to tell us that he is going organic. He spent eight years living in Hong Kong and the Philippines, where he learned about macrobiotics and became interested in organic food. Once he began eating organic, he says, he lost seventy-five pounds. Now, Mr. Hindi is still a very large man, so it’s a bit alarming to imagine what he looked like before.

  The first organic restaurant in Sana’a! I pull out a notebook and interview him. I also interview the manager and several people eating nearby. In between, al-Asaadi tells me his plans for the new magazine, called Yemen Today. I look at his list of proposed sections and story lineup and am very impressed. Newsweek, look out! We discuss stories and timelines, and I’m amazed at how well al-Asaadi and I get along when we aren’t battling for supremacy. A huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders; now all I have to worry about is Zaid.

  ZAID ARRIVES FROM LONDON about a week later, and I take him to the same restaurant. Like al-Asaadi, he greets me with a kiss on each cheek. Yemeni men who have been abroad are particularly fond of this Western custom. Frankly, I prefer not to be kissed. I’ve become incredibly protective of my physical space here; every touch begins to feel like a violation after a while in a country where most men and women never even speak to each other.

  We have a fantastic lunch. He tells me about his studies in London, although he spends more time talking about all of the women he got to hug and all the whiskey he drank. He also tells me about the scandal he created when he arrived at Sana’a airport. “When I was in London, people asked me what was the first thing that I wanted to do when I got back to Yemen,” he says, “and I said that the first thing I wanted to do was to kiss my wife. I missed this woman like you would not believe.”

  So when his wife met him at the airport, he lifted her veil and he kissed her. “She was angry at me for about twenty seconds,” he says. “Then she kissed me back.”

  Her relatives are less forgiving. His wife’s father and brothers are still furious with him. Heaven forbid a man demonstrate his love for his wife in public.

  I update Zaid on life at the paper, give him an outline of our schedule, and talk with him about how I would like our relationship to work. Until I leave, I am in charge. To present a unified front, I want him to run anything he says to the reporters by me first. Zaid concurs.

  He then announces that he has given up qat entirely. I find this hard to believe, as I have rarely seen Zaid in the newsroom without a massively swollen cheek.

  “You should ban it from the newsroom,” he says.

  “There would be mutiny!”

  “No, the men would thank you for it in the end.”

  Oh really?

  This lunch leaves me feeling even more relaxed. At last, I have someone willing to help me! At last, I can begin to shift a bit of my burden and begin to think about the future.

  AT HOME, I’ve started building a family. My new Scottish housemate, Carolyn, whom I met at the Soqotra airport and who had originally planned to stay for just a month, moves in for the rest of my time in Yemen. This delights me, as I’m not eager to evict someone who does my laundry, occasionally cooks, and entertains me endlessly with her adventures following in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta and leading tour groups through Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Tashkent.

  Just when I’ve settled into domestic life with Carolyn, my Dutch friend Koosje rings one morning while I am making coffee.

  “Remember how you said that maybe I could live with you if I had to move out of my house?” she says.

  “Yeees …”

  “Well, I do actually have to move out. So, would it still be possible?”

  “When?” I stir my coffee.

  “Twenty minutes? I’m already packed.”

  What can I do? I can’t leave a pretty blond Dutch girl to the streets. So half an hour later, I have a second housemate. They bookend me agewise; Carolyn is forty-nine and Koosje twenty-two. Koosje is an intern at UNHCR.

  It surprises me to find that I love living with other people. For years I have thought I could only live alone. After all, I have lived alone quite happily for the better part of twelve years. Now I find I am a communal creature after all. I love coming home and sprawling in my mafraj with Carolyn or Koosje. I love the flurry of their comings and goings. I love that there are always other people around to help, say, fix the washing machine. Fun
ny how you can get to thirty-eight and still find out so many new things about yourself.

  We all get on famously, spending our free evenings lounging in our mafraj, talking over drinks. My friends are more diverse than ever before: Dutch students, German development workers, Ethiopian housecleaners, Kenyan consultants, and Yemeni economists. It occurs to me how insular my world was in the cosmopolitan city of New York. I could not have anticipated, for example, that it would be a Republican oil company executive from Texas, a man named Don, who would become one of my most loyal friends in Yemen.

  OF COURSE, my life is never quite trouble free. Just when my reputation is beginning to recover from my little run-in with customs, it suffers a new insult. One Thursday afternoon, Floor rings. She has the alcohol left over from Kamaran; may she drop it off for the party we are throwing at my house that night? No problem, I say. Swing by the office. There are three bottles of whiskey and two of vodka, which clank suspiciously as I trot from Floor’s jeep back to my desk. I stuff them into my gym bag, which is sitting on a chair by the door, and go back to editing a front-page story.

  A few minutes later, I hear a sharp clang, followed by the shattering of glass. My gym bag has thrown itself from its chair, as if offended at being asked to carry the contraband. I look up, horrified to see the spreading pool on my carpet. Immediately, my office smells like an Irish bar at closing time. I panic. I’ve wasted alcohol, in a dry country! I should be taken out back and shot. Worse, my door is open and any minute a reporter is going to walk in and step into a puddle of vodka. Just one bottle has broken, thank god. I vault over my desk and begin to frantically pick up the pieces of glass. I am grateful it wasn’t the whiskey.

  I am still on the floor, my knees soaked in booze, when Qasim walks in.