The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (37 page)

Close to midnight, boats arrive to take us to the mangroves. We climb into two fishing boats, clutching bottles of whiskey and beer, and zoom off into the dark sea, the moon our only light. Drenched by the sea spray, we toss beers from boat to boat, teasing each other. At a spit of sand near the entrance to the mangroves, we all strip down for a moonlight swim.

When we grow chilly, we climb into the boats and race each other back, drinking and egging each other on. By the time we get to sleep, there are no moons left on Kamaran Island.

The trip to Kamaran throws open doors to the outside world. I return with a host of new friends, who will introduce me to still more new friends, and at long last, a social whirl begins. I still have to work six days a week. I am still the first to leave parties on Wednesday nights, because my staff and I are among the few people in Sana’a who work Thursdays. I still have moments of impatience and exhaustion. But now, I have learned to walk out the door in time for dinner. I have learned to leave things undone on my desk. After all, as I am always telling my reporters, the great thing about the news business is that there is always a next issue.

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?”