The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (14 page)

SIX
when, exactly, is
insha’allah
?

I arrive at the offices of the
Yemen Observer
on September 2, 2006, to find
no one waiting for me. Faris is away, I presume with the president, who is madly campaigning for reelection despite the fact that there is little doubt of his victory; editor Mohammed al-Asaadi has vanished from his corner office; and the rest of the staff is nowhere in evidence. My heart sinks. Surely they haven’t forgotten me? I don’t have a phone yet, so I have not been able to call anyone to tell them I have arrived.

My footsteps echo on the marble floors as I walk through the empty office. I am amazed to find the entire building festooned with my quotes. It’s a bit unnerving to see my own words,
framed
, in both English and Arabic adorning every wall.

“This is a NEWSpaper, not an OLDSpaper! Let’s put some news in it!”

“When you think your story is perfect, read it again.”

“Never, ever begin a story with an attribution.”

“A lead must contain a subject, verb, and object!”

I feel a bit like Chairman Mao. At least I know I haven’t been totally forgotten.

I’d overslept my alarm this morning at Sabri’s house, where I was temporarily housed in student quarters, and woke in a panic. I couldn’t be late on my first day as the boss! I skipped coffee, skipped my planned walk to work, and dashed through a quick shower and into a cab, breathless. To find that I apparently have not been missed.

But wait! There are noises in a back office. The door opens, and a tiny pillar of black rayon launches herself across the front foyer and into my arms. “I cannot believe I have you before me!” Zuhra says, stepping back to look at me, keeping hold of my hands. Her dark eyes sparkle. “I have waited so long for this day. I love you so much! And now, we are for the first time going to have a woman in charge. I am so very happy!”

“I am so happy too!” I say, though perhaps with less confidence. “Where is everybody?”

She tells me that Faris is indeed with the president, that al-Asaadi rarely appears this early, and that Farouq is out because his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter has just died of a mysterious illness. He hasn’t been able to work, she says. He is overwhelmed with grief. I cannot imagine. I have no idea how anyone recovers from the death of a child. “And Arwa has quit,” Zuhra goes on. “She went to find a different job. And Zaid of course just left for London. Hassan and Adel are both working for the EU observers until the election is over.” Theo, who is still in Yemen, has left the paper, apparently burning some bridges behind him. I fell out with him myself after he sent me a series of bizarrely discouraging e-mails about my return. I think he rather resented the invasion of what he saw as his turf.

“Do we have anyone left?” I am beginning to panic. How can I transform a paper with no staff?

“Radia is here! And we have some new ones,” she says. “Come, meet them.”

Radia, who is officially Faris’s receptionist and not a reporter, emerges from the back room, where the women have been breakfasting, to tell me how much she missed me and how pleased she is that I am back.

They take me to the newsroom, where we find two women and two men hunched over computers. Zuhra tugs me over by the hand.

“This is Noor. She is doing the culture page.” Noor has thick, long eyelashes and eyes that crinkle when she smiles. Like Zuhra, she wears glasses, but unlike Zuhra, she ties her
hijab
in the back of her head. I make a mental note of this so I can identify her later.

Najma, Zuhra tells me, has been writing the health page. Najma shyly takes my hand and tells me how glad she is to meet me. Her eyes are wider and more frightened than Noor’s.

The men, a tall, bespectacled man named Talha and a stouter, boyishly attractive man named Bashir, are equally polite and welcoming.

“How long have you been here?” I ask them. They hadn’t been hired when I left Yemen two months ago.

“A month or so.”

All four of the new hires are recent graduates of university. None has any journalism experience. I am dismayed. So many of the people I had already begun to train are gone. I will have to start all over again.

ZUHRA SHOWS ME
to al-Asaadi’s office in the back of the first floor, where I sit and take notes on recent issues of the paper until al-Asaadi arrives, close to noon. I’ve forgotten how tiny he is; just a bit taller than my shoulders (and I am only 5’6”). He’s handsome, with doll-like features and Bambi eyelashes. I would guess he weighs something approaching ninety pounds. He wears a suit jacket and slacks.

“Ahlan wa sahlan!”
(Welcome!) he says, taking my hand and smiling warmly.

“Ahlan wa sahlan!
I am sorry for invading your office. I wasn’t sure where to go.”

“My office is your office.”

Theo had warned me, when I was last in Yemen, that al-Asaadi would prove my biggest challenge. He won’t want to give up control, he said. He is used to being in charge.

So I am cautious. I don’t want to wound his pride and jeopardize our relationship by throwing my weight around and acting like an Ugly, Imperialist American. I tell him how much I look forward to learning from him and how much I hope we can work as partners.

“It is I who will learn from you,” he says. “Faris feels—and I feel the same way—that you are to be the captain of this paper. You are to run the entire show.”

My knees begin to tremble.
“Shukrahn,”
I say. “But perhaps you could help me begin? Can you walk me through how things work now, what your deadlines are?” I have no idea where to start.

“Of course.”

He and I sit down with Zuhra in the front conference room to come up with a tentative game plan. Al-Asaadi explains all of the deadlines (which he concedes are generally missed), and Zuhra gives me a printed sheet detailing which reporters write which pages. I tell them I would like to hold editorial meetings at the beginning of each publishing cycle, one at nine
A.M
. on Sunday, and one at nine
A.M
. on Wednesday, so that each reporter can tell me what stories they are reporting, who their sources are, and when they will be handing them in. My goal is to somehow streamline the copy flow so that all the pages aren’t coming in to edit at the last minute. This will clearly take a miracle.

After our meeting, Zuhra walks me to the grocery store (I forgot that the bathrooms at the
Observer
never have toilet paper; Yemenis use water hoses to clean themselves, which means the bathroom floors are nearly always flooded with what my copy editor Luke often refers to as “poop juice”) and then to the Jordanian sandwich shop for one of the rolled-up spicy vegetable sandwiches I love so. I haven’t eaten anything all day, although Zuhra has fetched me several cups of sticky-sweet black tea. “You are the only one I would make tea for,” she says. “No one else.” Like me, Zuhra does not cook. Tea is one of the few things she knows how to make.

After lunch, she hands me a story by Talha. No other copy has yet been filed for the next issue. I spend nearly an hour going through his story, making edits. It has no coherent structure, no clear first sentence, and a dearth of sources. I sigh. I will have to teach him everything.

A second desk has been moved into al-Asaadi’s office for me, although I can’t use the drawers yet as they are locked. It’s a plain office, white walls, gray carpet, with no decoration save for a map of Jerusalem on the wall near the door. Light floods in from the windows along two walls of the office. Outside, stray cats yowl in the yard.

I seem to have gone numb. All the panic and fear and grief of those last few days in New York have fallen away, but nothing has moved in to take their place. I probably should be feeling stark terror about the challenges of this job, but for some reason I feel bizarrely level.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON,
after a swim, I am happy to find Qasim, whose irrepressible high spirits I’d enjoyed in June. He was the rascal always stealing people’s shoes and hiding them in the wastebaskets, the one making prank phone calls, the one most likely to be caught singing in the office. But he is in charge of advertising, not a reporter, and thus not really part of my staff.

I also find my copy editor Luke, the blond Californian surfer dude. I’ve no idea if he actually surfs, but he looks like he should. He’s not entirely sure what he’s doing in Yemen, he tells me. He and a friend are thinking about launching some sort of business. “Yemen is a great place to be because they have nothing,” he says. “Everything is new to them. You can do anything. And it’s easy to rise to the top here.”

Still, he complains that Yemen is destroying his health. He hasn’t exercised since he got here, and he smokes way too much.

“And drinking? Do you drink?”

“Not anymore!”

“Guess you picked the right country.”

“Actually, I didn’t come here to get away from alcohol,” he says. “I came here to get closer to the
qat.”

I find Talha in the newsroom and pull him aside to go over his story on the hazards of buying prescription drugs in Yemen. Drugs sold in Yemen are often either contaminated with toxic substances or completely ineffective sugar pills. Talha is quiet, serious, and eager to hear my suggestions. I explain to him all about leads, and story structure, and why we
never
begin a sentence with an attribution!

Mohammed al-Asaadi gives me the last ten issues of the paper to read after work before handing me off to Salem, who drives me and Radia home after nine
P.M
. They insist I ride up front, while Radia perches on a stack of
Yemen Observers
in the back of the van. I offer her my seat, but she refuses.

As we near Radia’s house, she leans forward and touches my arm. “Come with me,” she says. “Come to my home.” I look at her. Does she mean now?

“Come to my house,” she says again. “Come sleep with me?”

This is not quite as provocative an invitation as it would be in New York. I learned on my previous trip that girls often invite new friends to sleep at their homes. Still, it catches me off guard.

“Why, I would love to!” I say. “But not tonight. I have things I need to get from home. Books and things. Presents to take to the office tomorrow.”

She nods. But when she gets out she asks again. “But you will come, another time?”

“I will.”

Salem teaches me several new Arabic words on the way home. I am famished by the time I arrive, close to ten
P.M
., and polish off a yogurt and a peanut butter and raisin sandwich. Did I mention I don’t cook? I read a few issues of the
Observer
, try not to despair, and slip into sleep.