The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (21 page)

“Jennifer,” he says, looking concerned, “I don’t want 100 percent from you. Do this gradually. Aim for 40 percent improvement or 60 percent improvement. I am afraid you will burn out if you try to do too much.”

Fine, I think. It’s good to know his expectations are low. But how do I
do
that? I don’t know
how
to give less than 100 percent.

Because I end up working until
iftar
most Ramadan days, I walk home for dinner. It’s too hard to find a taxi. Besides, it’s so lovely to walk home when the streets are near-deserted. As I pass the restaurants along Zubairi Street, I see men poised to break their fast. Some even have plates of food in front of them, which they poke at hungrily as they wait for the cannon to go off so they can eat. The expectation in the air accompanying the approaching
iftar
always feels festive. Watching them makes me wish for a kitchen of my own, an
iftar
dinner waiting for me. If only I had a wife!

One of these solitary nights, I finally ring Karim’s friend Sami about apartments. A slender, handsome twenty-four-year-old who studies English and works as a fixer for foreigners living in the Old City, Sami does a small business in tourism, arranging drivers to take people around the countryside, finding homes for expats, running errands, and generally being the most helpful person I have ever met. He is enthusiastic about meeting me and finding me a home. It doesn’t take long. In the last few days of September, at our third meeting (having looked at a house that was too vast and one that was too tiny), we find my gingerbread house in Old Sana’a.

THE HOUSE SAMI FINDS
for me is not just any house but my
dream
house. It’s a three-story, boxy stone house of my own, tucked behind a pale blue fence overflowing with pink flowers. I know I want it after just having seen the kitchen. It is vast, with a long counter, a small table for eating, a stove, a refrigerator, and antique Yemeni bread-baking ovens (in case I get
really
ambitious). On the same floor are a bedroom and a small laundry room/bathroom. On the way up the uneven stone stairs to the second floor is another small room, about the right size for an office. The next floor holds a large bedroom, with Star of David
qamaria
(Jews built this house 350 years ago, the landlord, Mohammed, tells me) as well as a couple of circular alabaster
qamaria
. I immediately decide this is where I will sleep. On the same floor is a large, airy
mafraj
lined with red cushions and adorned with several half-moon
qamaria
, a guest room, and a Western-style bathroom—with a tub!

And there’s more! The top floor includes a tiny jewel of a room that looks out over all Sana’a, a storage room, and a door to a wide roof.

A whole house! I have never had so much space in my adult life. Mohammed and his entire family follow me as I admire the house, and then we all take off our shoes and sit down in the
mafraj
of the neighboring house to sign the lease. The rent is $300 a month. Expensive for Sana’a, but worth every penny to me. Sami and Shaima translate each line of the lease. Ever since I moved here, Shaima has been my most loyal friend. We eat together once a week or so; she helps me run errands and introduces me to her family and friends.

Several westerners have warned me away from the Old City, the most conservative part of town. Here, people keep a very, very observant eye on their neighbors. I will be watched, and all my guests will be duly noted. But what is the danger in that? I don’t have time to behave badly. Besides, there is nowhere else in Sana’a I can imagine living. I can think of no greater bliss than to inhabit these thick gingerbread walls in the cozy warren of cobblestone streets. In fact, I long for nosy neighbors. I am so incredibly lonely that the smallest kindness from strangers makes me teary. Sami lives right down the street and says he is willing to help me with anything, anytime.

I sign my name to the lease, in both Arabic and English. I have a home.

The morning I am to move into my new house, an exploded cyst in my ovaries sends me to the hospital. I’ve been bleeding, feverish, and in pain for days with no idea why. A female doctor assures me I’ll survive and sends me away with antibiotics. I’m too weak to carry anything, so Sabri’s guards kindly transport all my possessions to the Old City.

But I can’t rest yet. I have no bed! I am so tired I can barely walk, but I head out shopping with Sami. The Old City streets are thronged with people; it is just before
iftar
and everyone is buying provisions. Around Baab al-Yemen, the main gate to the Old City, the ground is covered with cross-legged merchants selling heaps of dusty plastic sandals, pyramids of raisins, and bright red pistachios. Crippled children sit in cardboard boxes, their big dark eyes eloquent with despair; dwarves stretch out their palms for alms; and deformed children are pushed by their parents to beg for cash. The high rate of birth defects in Yemen is visible everywhere. I feel much less sorry for myself.

Sami weaves through the clusters of men as I hurry in his wake, breathing in a soup of male sweat, cumin, and exhaust. I am struggling to catch up when, a few blocks from the gate, a man grabs me hard, squeezing my left side and breast. My scream carries. Some 150 people turn around to look. Sami whips around and takes a step toward the man, intending to hit him.

But the man is clearly crazy. He is half-dressed, in what looks like a large white diaper, with no shirt. His arms and legs are bent and wiry; his shoulder-length hair is dirty and wild, sticking out from his head in all directions; and his grin is toothless. Madness glazes his eyes. When Sami realizes this, he lowers his arm.

“I would hit him,” he says. “Only it wouldn’t do any good because he is insane.”

I concur, but the attack has shocked me into tears. Sami tries to find something comforting to say but is obviously unequipped to do this. Realizing how uncomfortable I am making him, I pull myself together. By the time we get to the mattress store, my eyes are dry. We pick out my bed things, and Sami negotiates the price. Finally, I have a place to lie down.

SAMI HELPS ME
furnish my house, fixes electrical and plumbing problems, and runs errands. Both he and Shaima are constantly trying to feed me. One night I enjoy a massive
iftar
at Sami’s house, and the next day I am invited to Shaima’s.

Shaima and her sister Nada live in Hadda, the fancy part of town, in a large, two-story home with vast carpeted rooms and a kitchen big enough for a sit-down dinner for twelve. A froth of flowers surrounds the house.

Shaima’s father, currently away in Germany receiving treatment for lymphoma, was a diplomat. When he was posted to Algeria, he fell in love with an Algerian woman, taking her as a second wife, much to the distress of Shaima’s mother, who stopped talking to him for a couple of years. Shaima’s stepmother (whom she despises) has children by Shaima’s father, but she has not been told about his lymphoma.

Nada is married to an Italian man, Desi, who has also fallen in love with another woman. When he told Nada he wanted to make this woman his second wife, she was grief-stricken. This is why she is now living with Shaima. Desi comes to visit his daughters Ola and Mumina but doesn’t want to give up the other woman. It all sounds horrible and painful. Shaima says that if he were her husband, she would have drawn and quartered him by now. Throughout the year, I hear many more stories like this one. These multiple wives cause immense pain. Yemeni men seem to be about as faithless as American men—only instead of keeping their mistresses secret, they marry them. Islam permits up to four wives, as long as the man commits to treating them all equally. But this is impossible. Even the most perfect of humans cannot love four women equally. And in reality, this is rarely how it seems to work out. The women always suffer.

Shaima herself was once briefly engaged to a man with a first wife in Aden. But she backed out of the deal after three days. “I am just too jealous to deal with another wife,” she tells me.

When she was at university in Jordan, Shaima received several marriage proposals, which she turned down because she thought she wanted to marry a Yemeni. But when she returned to Yemen, she found Yemeni men not up to her standards. “They are not polite to women,” she said. “They do not hold doors, they do not want to chew
qat
with their wives, they don’t want to spend time together.” Now she is hoping to marry a Muslim foreigner, like her sister. “Jennifer, I am an atom bomb for Yemen,” says Shaima bitterly. “I am an educated woman. I won’t stay home. I work with men.”

I ask her if there is really no contact at all between men and women before marriage. “Oh, everyone here is in a relationship,” she says. “They are just underground. Like people everywhere, they find a way.”

“What kind of relationship?”

“Like by texting. People have relationships by texts or by e-mail. Or they Bluetooth each other.”

This intrigues me. I wonder if Shaima has such a relationship, but she assures me she doesn’t.

WE START THE
IFTAR
MEAL
with dates, of course. Then comes
shafoot
with salad, and
sambosas
filled with vegetables and cheese. Shaima has made the whole meal vegetarian on my account, which touches me. No one seems to mind—there is such a vast amount of food. After
shafoot
, they go one by one to pray before eating the rest of the meal.

Shaima serves us bowls of Ramadan soup, which is made from coarsely ground wheat, milk, and onions. “High in fiber,” Nada tells me.

I am already getting full. But there are still roasted vegetables with cheese, couscous and yogurt, and several breads. I keep protesting they are feeding me too much. Yet somehow, when Shaima brings out the crème caramel, I manage to squeeze it in.

Desi interrogates me in a friendly fashion. He’s very interested to hear everything about my life and work. I’m curious about him, because of the other woman. He makes us Italian coffee after dinner, and he and Nada compete to see whose coffee I like better—Nada’s Yemeni or his Italian. I pick Nada’s in solidarity.

After dinner, he heads to work teaching English. The rest of us have just retired to the living room when all of the power goes off. This happens every day during Ramadan, often for hours at a time. Nada is on her feet in a shot. “Ola will cry,” she says. “She hates this.”

Sure enough, a second later we hear a wail from upstairs, where the girls are playing. I dig a flashlight out of my purse for Nada, who runs upstairs to fetch the girls. Once they join us, Mumina starts to dance. She is wearing a long, pink princess dress with spaghetti straps. Ola, who is wee at a mere one and a half, dances with her, making me want to kidnap them both for my own.