The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

by Jennifer Steil

  The next evening, I am nervous as I dress in the black-and-gray sundress I’ve been wearing to parties for about seven years now. It’s a bit shabby around the edges, but I trust the lights will be dim.

  At the party, I talk with a friend for a while on the porch, where Tim eventually joins us. My friend fades away and then there is just Tim, standing close to me, his pupils dilating into saucers. I have no idea what we talk about. The newspaper, probably. The vacation to Jordan, Beirut, and Ethiopia I am planning before returning to New York. Things he hopes to do in Yemen. But really, I have no idea. Everything that happens between us has nothing to do with words. I know his wife is somewhere in the room, but I am never introduced to her. I wonder why. Not that it matters. Tim and I are only talking, and what could possibly ever really happen between us? My love for him has no expectations; it just is. But why, why must there be a wife?

  It’s been a funny week. People keep coming into my office just to sit with me. Even Qasim came in the other day as I was closing an issue and just sat watching me.

  “What can I do for you?” I inquired, figuring he had come in to try to pressure me into writing about an advertiser.

  “Nothing,” he said mournfully. “It’s just that you are leaving.” And he continued to sit there, gazing at me.

  Luke visits several times, coming downstairs from his new job at Arabia Felix. It reminds me how much I miss him. He makes me laugh. As does Ali, who also comes in between editing stories. In my final days, I manage to talk Ali into staying at the Observer beyond my departure. He had planned to quit when I did. “I couldn’t survive this place without you,” he says. But I beg and plead. I tell him I can’t bear to see the paper descend immediately into chaos. I tell him that the women need him and that Zaid can’t edit. At last, in exchange for a hefty raise, he agrees to step into my shoes. Both Yemeni and a native English speaker, he is the ideal person to be editing the paper. I know he won’t last long, but at least I feel better about the paper’s next few months. “Write me,” I say. “Let me know if you need help with anything.”

  Ali laughs. “You’ll get more e-mails than you could possibly want.”

  AFTER LUNCH ONE AFTERNOON, Zaid, Ali, and I are chatting in the newsroom about why tattoos will keep you out of heaven, as well as the Arabic words for bellybutton (seera) and monkey (kird), when Zaid reaches into his black briefcase.

  “I have something for you,” he says. He presses play on a small tape recorder, and I hear a familiar voice.

  “I have seen quite a lot of progress over the few weeks I have been here … but I have a few recommendations as you go forward.”

  It is the speech I gave to my class a year ago, at the end of my first trip to Yemen. It’s the voice of someone with answers, someone who knows a few simple steps to turn the paper around. Someone almost unrecognizable.

  “… and I recommend that you create the position of assigning editor, or editor in chief…” It is the voice of someone sentencing herself to a very interesting life.

  The day of my first farewell dinner, I look around my office. The windows are tilted open, letting in cats and wind and fluttering curtains. I run my fingers across the dusty gray desk that used to be al-Asaadi’s. There is nothing particularly attractive or memorable in this room. Yet I will remember all of it. My wheeled blue chair. The dry-erase board across from my desk. The battered filing cabinet where I lock my wireless keyboard each night. I will remember the sound of men arguing in the hallway. The distant sound of prayer. The not-so distant sound of prayer. Radia and Enass’s voices, high-pitched with excitement. Their serious brown eyes peering over their niqabs. The Doctor screaming in the hallway.

  I sit with myself. I can’t do this for long without crying, so I close my computer and pick up my gym bag, and lock my door behind me.

  DESPITE MY NERVES, the farewell dinner is lovely. Some fifty people come to bid me good-bye, including Bashir and Hassan, who arrive in suits; Ibrahim; and most of my women. Only Najma and Zuhra are forbidden by their families to come, even though I have arranged for the women to be seated in a separate room. Carolyn comes, as do my friend and fixer Sami, an American filmmaker, Shaima, Phil Boyle, and others. It’s a full table.

  Most of my reporters come bearing gifts, wrapped in silver paper covered with hearts or red roses. Shaima and her friend Huda give me jewelry. Jabr and Zaki each bring me a spray of flowers tucked into crepe paper. Zaid gives me a pretty bracelet with a handwritten note.

  I’ll always remember you, no matter what. I wrote this small poem for you last night. It was 3 o’clock in the morning and I hope you’ll like it. I wish you all the best and don’t worry about the paper.

  I will try to hide my tear

  I will try to give it a laug

  You might leave Yemen,

  But you’ll never move a bit

  Out of our hearts and minds.

  Zaid al-Alaya-a

  your successor

  Tue 3 A.M.

  Al-Asaadi fulfills a promise he made ten months ago and brings me the Yemeni raisins he claims are the best in the country. This perhaps touches me the most.

  Faris is late. When he does finally come, he sits in the middle of the table, ignoring me. Despite the odds, I’ve been hoping that finally Faris will offer me a tidbit of recognition, throw me some crumb of acknowledgment that will somehow validate my year here.

  I wait in vain, as I circle the table trying to talk with everyone individually and run in and out of the room where my women are dining without their niqabs. Everyone waits. My staff also expects Faris to say something. At least a few parting words. At least good-bye and good luck. That would give me an opening to say a few words of thanks to my staff.

  But he does nothing. He sits there, complaining that the main course is too slow to arrive, and then leaves before the end of the night with a hasty “Thanks for the invitation” before practically running for the door.

  I stand there in the emptying restaurant, feeling stunned. Just a few of us are left, as some of my male reporters have gone back to work, the women have curfews, and the expats have scampered to have drinks at someone’s house. They’ve invited me, but I’ve never felt less like a drink. Shaima and her friend Huda come around the table to comfort me. “He can’t even manage a thank you?” I say. I am so hurt that I can hardly speak properly. Shaima tries to console me, telling me that everyone else appreciates me, and isn’t it my reporters who matter? She is right, of course. My reporters are why I came, and they are why I stayed.

  “It isn’t Faris’s nature to be thankful,” says one of the women. “You can’t take it personally.”

  I look at them, so kind and concerned. I try to inhale their patience. They smell of frankincense. They smell of Yemen.

  “Thank you,” I say, squeezing their hands. “I’m sorry to be so emotional.”

  They go, and I head home for almost the last time, alone.

  THE SECOND FAREWELL PARTY is for people who drink. Phil Boyle from the British Embassy has generously consented to host and does a spectacular job of it. He places little bowls of nuts and chips on the tables and lines up bottles of wine in front of his liquor cabinet. “My farewell gift to you,” he says. He’s also filled an entire refrigerator with beer and sodas.

  I wear a clingy fairy dress in sparkly green, in complete contrast to the modesty I’d demonstrated the night before. My hair is down, and I’m wearing lipstick the color of a stop sign. I’m heading back to the Western world, after all, so I must start to adjust!

  Carolyn is the first to arrive, followed shortly by Tim, who comes without his wife. I perch on the arm of the sofa next to him, and we talk about my imminent trip to Jordan, as I have just gotten off the phone with a Jordanian friend who is helping me with arrangements. Tim asks me about my staff, but the second I start to talk about leaving, I am in tears.

  “Sorry—we’ll change the subject,” he says kindly.

  My oil worker friends arrive next, followed by a
passel of other friends and neighbors, bearing food and drink. Just as the bulk of people begins arriving, Tim tells me he must leave early. He’s heading to Aden the next day. I’m sad to see him go. “But I’ll be back,” I tell him as I walk him to the door, where he kisses me chastely on each cheek. “I know I’ll be back.”

  What happens next depends on whom you believe. I swear that Tim kisses me full on the lips before turning to go, but he is equally convinced that I am the one to kiss him.

  “I was stunned all the way back to the house,” he says later. “I hadn’t thought you liked me like that. Like I liked you.”

  I find it hard to focus on anything after that. Around eleven thirty, Phil taps on his glass to get everyone’s attention and gives a little speech, saying all the things I wished Faris had said, albeit with a wry British spin. He talks about how I have revolutionized the newspaper, turning it from a paper that was “a total rag” into one that is “just a little bit of a rag.” But perhaps the nicest thing he says is that I probably have “more Yemeni friends than anyone else here.” It’s so easy for expats to operate in their own social bubble, but I have striven to integrate myself with Yemenis. They are the reason I am here. Phil’s speech makes me feel, for a warm minute, that I’ve gotten something right.

  THE NEXT DAY, Thursday, August 30, is my last day of work. Tears stay close to the surface all day; I can barely hold myself together. Noor rings me in the morning to ensure that I am coming in and can edit her interview. I had stayed late at work the night before to edit Najma’s last piece before the party. She had sent me an emotional e-mail. “Please Jennifer, edit this yourself and make it a beautiful shape for me, don’t give it to anyone else to edit.” I honor their last wishes.

  As a parting gift, I write recommendations for every single one of my staff members. I rather enjoy doing this, not just to help them, but to remind myself of just how far each one of them has come this year. Farouq now writes in English. Najma, who was unable to keep personal emotions out of her health stories and who had no idea how to incorporate studies into a real story, now is a capable health and science writer. Radia, who was a receptionist when I came, is now a novice reporter.

  Noor and Najma come into my office together at the end of the day to say good-bye and to present me with a Yemeni purse woven from goat hair. None of us can speak for the tears. They just hug me, look at me with damp eyes, and hurry away. Even Jabr has to blink back tears as he shakes my hand good-bye. I am glad Zuhra has already left. I could not have handled all of the good-byes at once.

  ZUHRA CAME INTO MY OFFICE the day before and stood uncommonly still in front of my desk. “I am going to say good-bye now.”

  I stopped slicing the skin of the pomegranate on my desk and put down the knife on an old copy of the paper. Pomegranates were taking over my life. I couldn’t go a day without them. I thought about Persephone and how eating six pomegranate seeds in Hades consigned her to spending six months of each year in hell. One month per seed. If I were to spend a month in Yemen for every seed that I have eaten, I could never leave.

  I was not ready to say good-bye to Zuhra. Someone is there every day of your life for a year, and then she isn’t. There is no transition. Wait, I wanted to say. I need time.

  She came around the side of my desk and I hugged her tightly, my little bundle of rayon, like holding a Christmas present with all of its wrapping still on it.

  I couldn’t say anything. There were no significant last words, no best wishes, no declarations of love. I could not talk. She didn’t say anything either. We just looked at each other.

  Then she was gone.

  Feeling numb and slightly queasy, I sat back down at my desk. I picked up the pomegranate.

  When I emerged from my office to throw away the peels, Zuhra was still standing by Enass’s desk, gathering a cluster of plastic bags full of her possessions.

  “If you stay any longer I am putting you back to work,” I said.

  Zuhra smiled. Or I imagined she did, from the way her eyes glinted for a moment. “How many times have I said good-bye?” she asked Enass. And she walked by me to the door. “I’ll see you in New York.”

  I nod.

  She hurried across the courtyard, and I turned to follow her. I couldn’t help it. She didn’t see me. I walked out of the office to stand at the top of our three marble steps. She walked quickly, a bustle of black skirts and plastic bags, with her fringed, brown leather purse banging against her side. I watched her until she stepped out of the gate and was gone. She did not look back.

  I WAS AT MY COMPUTER half an hour later when my phone beeped. It was a text from Zuhra, her last before getting on the plane: “I LOVE U.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  reasons to return

  During my worst months in Yemen, when I fantasized only about sleep, broccoli, two-day weekends, and having access to cheese, a friend asked me how my love life was going. “You must be joking,” I said. “Even if I had time, everyone in Yemen is married, Muslim, or twenty-three. But knowing my luck, I’ll fall in love with someone my very last day and get stuck here.”

  This, it turns out, is exactly what happens.

  During my three-week trip in September to see friends in Jordan, Lebanon, and Ethiopia—my victory lap of the region to celebrate surviving the past year—I find myself horribly homesick, for Yemen. I miss my gingerbread house. I miss the Old City at dusk. I miss my reporters. I miss Carolyn and Koosje. I find myself eager to get back to Sana’a, although I will have only three days there before flying to New York.

  I’m obviously not ready to leave. But there’s no question of changing my ticket. I now have a meeting with an agent in New York; I have a free apartment and a large orange cat waiting for me to take care of them; and my family would kill me if I didn’t return. But I’ve started to think of the upcoming months in New York as a visit rather than a permanent move.

  Going back to The Week does not even cross my mind. To return to that office would be to resume being someone I no longer am. What new challenges would there be for me there? The things I want to learn can’t be learned doing a comfy job in a comfy First World country. I need new cultures, new people, new languages. I couldn’t go back to a predictable work life. Having survived the hardest year of my life, I am suffused with a new sense of confidence. Got a difficult job in a chaotic country? Bring it on.

  The Sierra Leone job looks good, if they decide to offer it to me. I haven’t spent much time in Africa, but I know I could handle the work. In fact, despite the myriad challenges of the Observer, the idea of training a whole new staff at a whole new newspaper is thrilling. It’s particularly alluring because I wouldn’t also have to be editor in chief. I could focus just on training. It sounds positively cushy.

  I decide to give up my Manhattan apartment, which I’ve been subletting. While I have no idea where I’ll end up living, I know I am not done traveling. If I sell my book proposal, I’ll have to come back to Yemen anyway, at least for a few months to do research. How much fun it would be to live in Yemen while not running a newspaper! I’d get to travel more around the country, spend time with friends, and focus on Arabic. Most important, I’d have time to write.

  Of course, I don’t have to decide just yet. These three weeks I spend traveling are supposed to be pure pleasure, pure respite, before plunging back into New York life and the decisions that await me there. But it’s tough to keep my brain from dwelling on these thoughts. It keeps trying to figure out how I could stay in Yemen a bit longer and how I could earn enough money to support myself while writing a book.

  And then there’s Tim.

  DURING MY TRIP, I strike up an unexpected correspondence with Tim. I first write to him from a dingy little Internet café in Amman, to thank him for attending my party and to tell him a bit about my visit to the spectacular ruins of Petra, where I spent three happy days climbing around ancient temples with bedouins. He writes back immediately and at length. Thus begins near-daily communicat
ion that continues the entire time I am gone.

  Every night before I go to sleep in another strange bed, I write him about my day, and just about every night, I dream about him. Vivid, passionate dreams. I don’t understand it. I’ve never dreamed so much and so intensely about someone I hardly know. I dream that I go to his house. I have a piece of paper with notes on it, which I show him. We talk about these notes with great excitement. He is happy to see me. Then his wife comes in. At first she is kind and then sees right through me and realizes that I am in love with her husband. She looks at the notes I have written and she knows. Her face darkens. She begins to yell at me and at Tim, saying cruel things.

  I expect Tim to rush to reassure her, but he does not. She leaves, and he turns to me. “I don’t love her,” he says. “It’s terrible to say. But I don’t. This won’t last much longer, and I adore you. And we can be together. We could marry.”

  When I wake, my head whirls. It has never occurred to me he could actually leave his wife. I reassess how much I am enamored. Do I really want him on a permanent, long-term basis? I must love him that much if he is to sacrifice his marriage for me. To my surprise, I feel simply joyful, without a shred of doubt, at the prospect of a life with him. Of course, in real life, this is not exactly on offer.

  By the time I arrive in Addis Ababa for Ethiopian New Year, I can hardly think of anything but Tim. What is happening to me? All this from a flurry of e-mails from a married man?

  I RETURN TO SANA’A on September 16, 2007, the day before Tim’s birthday. As my plane descends into Arabia, the sight of the cookie-colored cubes below brings tears to my eyes. I’m practically soggy with love for this city, this country, these familiar streets. If I didn’t have a lunch scheduled with a literary agent in New York, I don’t think I would leave at all. As the plane taxies down the runway and the Yemenis begin leaping out of their seats, I switch on my phone. Tim has texted to welcome me home. Sami is waiting for me at the airport and takes me to my beloved house, where I want to hug everything. Carolyn has left for China, but there is too much to do to wallow in lonesomeness. I have to pack up a year of my life in less than three days. The first two I spend stuffing all I can into two suitcases, giving away the rest, and seeing friends.