The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (44 page)

Take several dozen locust adults, preferably females, slit the abdomen lengthwise, and stuff a peanut inside. Then lightly grill the locusts in a wok or hot frying pan, adding a little oil and salt to taste. Be careful not to overcook or burn them.

  
Barbecue (grilled)

Prepare the embers or charcoal. Place about one dozen locusts on a skewer, stabbing each through the centre of the abdomen. If you only want to eat the abdomen, then you may want to take off the legs or wings either before or after cooking. Several skewers of locusts may be required for each person. Place the skewers above the hot embers and grill while turning continuously to avoid burning the locusts until they become golden brown.

Locust Bisque
, serves 6
1 gallon locust shells

2 onions, roughly chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 celery stalk

2 carrots

½ tsp. powdered mace

1 cup whipping cream

salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients except whipping cream into a large stew pot, and fill with water. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, and simmer for three hours. Process in blender or food processor in batches, and strain before returning to clean pot. Add whipping cream, being sure not to allow it to boil. Serve with animal crackers.

My dad writes from Vermont immediately, asking for a recipe for beetles, too. “They’re ruining Mom’s garden. She wants to bite back.”

WHILE I HAVE MINIMAL CURIOSITY
about the taste of locust, I’ve become obsessed with pomegranates
(romaan
in Arabic). I eat at least three a day. Unlike the small, red pomegranates for sale in New York, Yemeni pomegranates are yellowish green and the size of grapefruits. But their seeds are crimson and swollen with sweet, addictive nectar. An inconvenient fruit, they require such intense effort to peel and open that it is impossible to do anything else while dismembering one. I’ve learned how to run a knife along the rind, weakening it just enough so that I can pry it apart with my fingers, sending ruby-red seeds spraying across my desk. Rarely do I bother anymore to pick the seeds out one by one. Rather, I break the fruit apart and gnaw on the berries inside, red juice dripping down my chin and often onto my shirt. Pomegranates are directly responsible for the slow start to my days my last few months, and for the dire condition of my blouses.

The proliferation of brides also takes a toll on work. Most of my reporters are either preparing for weddings or attending them. Everyone is rushing to get hitched before Ramadan. From nearly every house emanate the yodels of Yemeni women celebrating a bride-to-be. Several parties precede the actual wedding, parties during which brides are painted with whirly designs, decked in traditional gowns, and feted with sweet tea and biscuits.

Wedding sites in the Old City are marked by strands of bright white bulbs strung along streets and across alleyways. Under the bright glare of these lights, men dance outside to deafening music blared through stat-icky loudspeakers and climb into a nearby tent to chew
qat
. I grow to dread seeing these lights near my house, as weddings often go on until the following morning, meaning no one nearby can sleep.

Women gather indoors to celebrate, away from the male eyes. It never ceases to feel odd that the bride and groom rarely meet. It’s a stark example of the gender segregation that is so integral to Yemeni life. What’s the fun of a wedding if you cannot dance with your loved one? What is the fun of a wedding devoid of flirting and champagne? Yet for Yemeni women, it is enough to look pretty for each other, to move their hips on the dance floor with a freedom they don’t have in front of men, to drink tea and gossip.

In mid-August, Noor invites me to a pre-wedding party for her sister Rasha. It’s a
nagsh
party, at which a local artist paints the assembled women with intricate botanical-looking designs in an inky black dye. These designs, a traditional wedding adornment, stain the skin for weeks. Radia, Jelena of
Arabia Felix
, and I travel together from work to Noor’s home, a large modern house in a wealthy part of town. We are seated in the front
mafraj
, where women are unwrapping themselves, drinking tea, and passing plates of date and sesame cookies. Several girls and women dash in and out of other rooms, changing clothing, fixing their hair and makeup, and helping the hidden bride. I hardly recognize Najma when she emerges from another room, after shedding her
abaya
and
hijab
. She is wearing a form-fitting leopard-print top, revealing more than a hint of cleavage, with tight jeans. Her thick hair is tied in a ponytail. I’ve seen her face many times before, but never her hair. She laughs to see me stare at her and takes my hand to lead me outside, to show me a tent filled with fancy candelabras for the wedding.

Noor rushes around attending to her sister and other family members, also in jeans and a top, her hair pulled back.

A long-haired woman sitting near me asks me what other Yemeni weddings I’ve attended, and I tell her that I went to the wedding of one of Noor’s cousins.

“That was my wedding!” I look closely at her. I would not have recognized her. Like all Yemeni brides, she had been buried in layers of cosmetics, her hair tightly curled and sprayed into rigid obedience. Now she wears a bit of eyeliner but little else on her face, and her hair hangs straight down to her hips.

“Wow!” I say. Then, to cover my surprise, “That was a beautiful wedding.”

“Thanks!”

“So how is it going, married life?”

“Al-hamdulillah.”
She laughs.

What I really want to ask is, How’s the sex? But I’m fearful of offending. “I thought you were going to China.”

“We
were
going to China, but I have two more years of school so we decided to stay here.” I am pleased to hear that she has a husband willing to make concessions for his wife’s career. It is the rare Yemeni woman who is granted all the rights we take for granted in the West: the right to work, to choose a career, to decide whether to bear children, to get on a plane by herself, to direct her own life.

Someone hands me a cup of tea, and I am introduced to a dozen more women, who all kiss my cheek several times before moving to kiss the rest of the room.

At last, the
nagsh
is ready, and Jelena and I, as the guests of honor, are shepherded into an adjoining
mafraj
to be painted. Jelena goes first. She wants to get her whole body decorated with the black ink (which I much prefer to the reddish henna that some Yemenis use instead) but settles for both arms and her chest. I sit next to her and watch as an elderly woman still wrapped in her
abaya
paints on the ink with a small brush in short, rapid strokes. She’s remarkably fast, and yet each shape looks perfectly formed.

Then it’s my turn. “I just want a little,” I say, indicating my wrists. The woman protests. Too small a canvas! Why don’t I want my whole arms done? But it’s my first time, and I am not sure I like the way it looks all the way up the arm. Fading
nagsh
or henna can resemble a skin disease.

Najma and Radia perch on cushions near me, watching closely, as the woman paints bracelets of flowers and leaves around each of my wrists, the designs extending down the tops of my hands to my knuckles. I won’t let her do my fingers. “I wash my hands so much!” I say.

“So don’t wash them for a few days!” says Najma.

“Impossible!” Some Western habits are just too hard to break.

The ink is cool on my skin, and as it dries, the tattoos tighten around my wrists like ethereal handcuffs.

But the process isn’t over when the ink is dry, we discover. We still must be basted with Vaseline and patted with flour before getting wrapped in plastic, to preserve the design. I watch Noor work on Jelena, smearing Vaseline over her
nagsh
. When Jelena is completely greased up, Noor takes out a large blue cloth and drapes it across her lap and the floor. From a pan next to her, she scoops out handfuls of white powder, which she pats onto the Vaseline, sending clouds of it into the air. A woman brings a roll of plastic wrap decorated with green flowers from the back room, and each of Jelena’s arms is encased in plastic, another sheet wrapped across her chest. I am very glad that I have just asked to have my wrists done.

Noor works on me next, greasing and powdering each of my wrists and hands before sticking my hands into plastic bags and tying the ends tightly around my wrists.

“How long do I have to keep these on?” Losing the use of my hands and fingers makes me mildly panicky.

“At least an hour.”

“An hour!”

“But you really should leave them on all night.”

“All night!” I am invited to a dinner party later, and I don’t think I’ll want to attend with plastic mittens dangling from my arms.

When at last we’re finished, we wait for Rasha, the bride, to emerge from one of the back rooms, where she has been suffering body waxing in preparation for her wedding. Yemeni women take everything off—leg hair, arm hair, pubic hair,
everything
.

It’s been hours since we got here, and we’re growing restless. The girls and women around me began to whoop and clap, prompting Rasha finally to begin her slow progress down the hall to a chair that has been set up for her. She wears a dress of gold lace and a gold tulle veil over a black ski-mask kind of hat. Once again I regret not being able to take a photo. Her eyes are very serious.

I stand around with the other women a while, clapping and attempting the distinctive Yemeni ululation, before pulling on my shirt over my plastic-bag-wrapped arms. I can only ululate for so long before tedium overwhelms me. Najma and I share a taxi. I ask about her family’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, and she says that they hope to do
umrah
to Mecca. “I love this place,” she says passionately. “I cannot tell you how much I love it.” I ask about what she will be doing there, if it will be mostly praying. She said yes, mostly praying. “I pray to my God for things,” she says.

“Like?”

“I pray to him for a good husband,” she says, laughing.

TWENTY-THREE
she’s leaving home

Zuhra hasn’t even left yet, and already I miss her. She is suddenly very busy
, with all kinds of visa interviews, doctors’ checkups, and shopping for her trip to America. We still don’t know when she will leave, and I am in a panic at the thought of going even a couple of weeks without her. Whenever I am short of stories on a closing day, Zuhra says, “I will find you one.” And she does. Luke said that on the rare occasions I am gone from the office, she takes over control of the copy flow, running around with a chart of stories and bossing people.

Now Zuhra is preoccupied with her own problems. Once the thrill of receiving the fellowship has dimmed, she starts to worry about her family. She will not be able to travel to the United States unless she gets permission from her male relatives. It never occurred to me that she might not be able to go. I feel sick at the thought of anyone keeping her from this opportunity.

Strategically, she first tells Fahmi, her eldest brother who lives in New York. Fahmi is the most westernized and open-minded of her siblings and is utterly devoted to his little sister. He is thrilled and promises to speak on her behalf to her other brother. Aziz, who still lives with Zuhra in Yemen, is initially resistant.

“I am afraid that if they say no I will lose a chance,” Zuhra frets, rocking back and forth on her sneakers. “If I don’t go, I might not be given a fellowship again.”

Zuhra had thought she’d be sent to Washington, DC, because the administration of the fellowship program is there. Her family fretted about the safety of the city, but Fahmi worked hard to reassure them. “It’s safer than Yemen,” he told them. Then she found she was being sent to Mississippi, and no one knew quite what to think about that.

At last, Aziz relents. “He was only afraid that I would be alone in the U.S.,” Zuhra says. “But Fahmi convinced him after long discussion that I would be okay and that he would take responsibility for me.”

Amazingly, Zuhra, who has never been on an airplane or spent a night away from home, has no trepidation about the journey. “Not for one single moment,” she says. “I am only happy. It is an opportunity, it’s great, and it’s not fair to feel nervous.”

Privately, she is sad to be traveling away from Kamil al-Samawi, the human rights lawyer. While it will be some time before I find out, Zuhra has been falling in love all year. She first realized she was in love with Kamil last autumn, after fainting while covering a story in a Sana’ani hospital. The chemical smell of the place had made her ill. When she regained consciousness, Kamil was the first person she rang. He had been so supportive of her, such a close friend, that he was the one she trusted to come and get her. It was Ramadan, but Kamil gave her juice and food to revive her and took her safely home. That was before they were in love, she said. “After this incident I realized I was in huge love with him. I see him and thought oh my god I want to spend my life with this person. It was deep down. Lots of changes that happened to me were because of Kamil. He made me feel confident, he made me love myself, he made me feel I am beautiful. We knew we were in love after this incident. But it took time. It’s not acceptable to be in love here.”

Which is why she stayed silent.

Kamil supports her trip to the United States. They have been discussing marriage, and she wants to start a life with him, but he promises to wait. I’ll just be gone a little while, she tells herself. I’ll be back soon.

In mid-August, I start to panic about my own future. Two weeks left, and I have made no preparations for my departure, other than to try to sort out visas, which as usual has gone wrong. The immigration authorities didn’t renew my residency, which will be two months expired by the time I leave. And the exit visa they gave me runs out before I even get to the airport!

I ambush Faris the next day to ask him for help. I also tell him that Jamal Hindi, the owner of al-Mankal restaurant, has offered to host my farewell dinner with my staff. What day would be good for him? He doesn’t know. He’ll get back to me. He doesn’t seem particularly broken up about my imminent departure. Everyone in the office has asked me to extend my contract—everyone, that is, except Faris. I remember sadly the huge banquet he threw for me at the end of my first trip to Yemen and wonder what went wrong. Then he had given speeches lauding me and handed me a pile of Yemeni gifts. Now he can’t seem to get me out the door fast enough. He can’t bring himself to look at me but fiddles with his pen and stares at his computer.

“Faris? Is everything okay?”

“You’ve made me a lot of enemies,” he says. “Everyone in the government hates the paper. The minister of the interior will not speak to me to this day.”

I look at him levelly. “It is not the job of a newspaper to
befriend
the
government,”
I say. “We should be the
watchdog
of the government and make sure that it is fulfilling its promises. And frankly, I am not at all convinced that it generally is.”

He nods, but not in agreement.

“And everyone I have spoken to, every diplomat, every expat, and even Yemeni officials, has told me how far the paper has come in the past year.” I am desperate for just one tiny shred of recognition.

“Yemeni officials? I doubt it.”

“Even your friend Jalal.” Jalal is now deputy minister of finance.

“Oh, really? What article did Jalal like?”

“Faris, I can’t remember a specific article. Look, are you saying you are unhappy with my work?”

“No. I am just telling you the whole picture. Didn’t I tell you lately how I heard everyone is begging you to come back and offering you their houses?”

I stare at Faris. He looks away, at the wall, the desk, anywhere but at me. I linger, hoping vainly for a few kind words about the changes I have wrought in his paper, but Faris is obviously done with me. I get up to leave. If I were to wait around for Faris to pat me on the back, I’d be waiting an awfully long time.

MY STAFF HELP
make up for Faris’s apathy. Hadi gets more despairing every day. “I will suffer when you leave,” he says, likely remembering the pre-Jennifer closes that went on until dawn.

Even my new business reporter Zaki is inconsolable. One day, I am working on the business page with him for one of my last issues, chastising him for forgetting to use quotation marks and to attribute important contentions. He also uses too much incomprehensible business jargon.

“You have to understand that politicians and government officials speak in
bullshit,”
I tell him. “It is your job to translate that bullshit into something anyone can understand.”

Zaki laughs but says that his story is meant for businesspeople, who are sure to understand this technical jargon. It’s his customary argument.

“Any story in a newspaper is a story for all people,” I say. “Business can be fascinating even to people not interested in business if you write it engagingly. The more complicated the story, the more important it is that you make it clear to your readers.”

Zaki looks at me, his eyes solemn behind his glasses.

“It will be bad when you go,” he says. “I learn so much working with you. No one else will help me like this. You have improved me so much.”

These conversations always make me feel like a traitor.

“But why do you have to leave?” my reporters ask me. “What are you going to do now?”

I have no answer for them. Perhaps I will find another country that needs a journalist trainer. I’ve noticed that an NGO in Sierra Leone is hiring, and I’ve sent in my résumé. How scary could Sierra Leone be after Yemen? The idea of being a journalist trainer to the world at large, moving from one chaotic country to the next, is rather exciting, too.

My only other prospect is the book proposal I’ve been putting together about my time here, which I am hoping to show a friend with a brilliant agent in New York. But I can’t pin my future to a pipe dream like a book contract.

Faris has finally agreed to give my reporters press IDs, which I’ve been requesting for eleven months, but this leads to new problems, because now everyone wants one. Hadi walks into my office one day and demands one.

“Why? You aren’t a reporter. They are for reporters, so they can get into government events.” Hadi’s duties don’t take him out of the office.

“I
want
one,” he says like a child demanding candy.

“But why do you
need
one?” I cannot imagine what use it could be to a designer.

“I just
want one,”
he says, pouting.

“Hadi, I am prepared to give you one if you can tell me why you need it.”

“I want one!” he says, stomping out of my office.
“I want one!”

I sigh. Two more weeks, I think. Just two more weeks.

I INVITE TIM TORLOT
to my first farewell party. It’s almost all staff, but several of my friends are coming, and I suppose I am looking for an excuse to see him again. He responds immediately. He’s terribly sorry, but he has a dinner engagement that night he cannot escape. But he adds how sorry he is that I am leaving and promises to call me before I depart.

I sit at my computer rereading this and finally respond that there’s a second farewell for me later that week, at my friend Phil’s house. Could he come to that one? He writes immediately that he could! He also says that he will see me even sooner, at his deputy’s house the following night, as we’re both invited to yet another (nonfarewell) party there.

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?