The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (29 page)

“God likes lesbians better?”

“Funny, I always picture God as a straight man.”

“Straight men
love
lesbians.”

“Incidentally, what’s the Arabic word for lesbians? For some reason my dictionary doesn’t have it.”

“There are no lesbians in the Arab world. There are women who have sex with each other, but no lesbians.”

The next day, I call Najma into my office and ask her to sit down next to me. I am so nervous that my hands tremble and I hide them in my skirts. It is important to me that I do this right. I do not want to risk offending her religious beliefs or losing my temper. Keeping my voice as calm and steady as possible, I explain to her that the Health and Science page is no place for opinion or judgment. What you have written, I say, is more a sermon than a piece of journalism.

“I have great respect for your beliefs, and naturally you are free to think what you want, but you may not put your personal beliefs in this newspaper. The only place in the paper that should show any evidence of personal beliefs is the Op-Ed page.”

She listens and nods, her dark eyes serious. She does not argue or resist what I am telling her.

I go through her entire story, line by line, explaining to her every error. I explain which contentions go against science and which are simply un-provable. Education, I say, is much more likely to
prevent
the spread of AIDS than to increase it. I show her places where she is judging people. “It is not our role to judge,” I say. “It is our job to lay out the facts for people and let them make their own opinions. Let’s leave the judgment up to God.”

She nods and seems almost ashamed. We talk about the definition of the word “fact.” We discuss the importance of studies being conducted by reputable universities and medical research centers, published in reputable journals, and peer reviewed. This is all news to her.

And oh! I can’t help myself! I have to know what she will say! I ask her why lesbians so rarely get AIDS if it is meant to punish homosexuals.

This is obviously not a point she has ever considered. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Maybe something to think about,” I say.

While she seems to understand, I won’t really know if I have gotten through to her until I see her next story.

Toward the end of our talk, she looks up at me pleadingly. “I worked so hard on this—”

I stop her. “I
know
how hard you work. And I really appreciate that. This isn’t at all about how hard you work. This is just part of learning how to do this work better. It’s a continual process. We are all constantly learning. But I am well aware of how hard you work.”

And we are through. She thanks me and leaves. I feel limp with relief and happy that I have managed to get through the entire conversation without once raising my voice or getting angry. Progress for both of us!

The next time Najma turns in a story on AIDS, it addresses the bias against victims of the disease and the misperceptions about how it is spread. It is full of factual information and accurate statistics and contains no preaching whatsoever. I very nearly kiss her.

A TINY BESPECTACLED WOMAN
shows up in my office one morning, unannounced. She wears a
hijab
, but her face is uncovered. This is Adhara. “I want to be a translator,” she says.

I sigh. She and half the country. Everyone who speaks even a few words of English thinks they can be a translator, and they all show up at the paper sooner or later.

I politely inform her that we are not hiring translators—though we desperately need them—as Faris won’t give me the money to pay one.

“But I need practice,” she says. “I will work as a volunteer. My translation is very bad.”

Hardly an advertisement for her skills, but I’m impressed with her honesty. Most would-be translators consider themselves quite brilliant, despite the fact that they can’t put together a job application that isn’t riddled with errors. Still, I worry that shoddy translations will only create more work for me. I send her away.

She is back in my office the next day. “Please,” she says. “Let me translate something! I must learn!” She stands stubbornly on my gray carpet, refusing to be dismissed.

I believe in rewarding persistence. I relent and let her translate part of the Q & A for Jabr. She’s right; she’s not a good translator. But at least I can figure out what she means, and as we are not paying her, I can’t complain. I allow her to stay.

When I get to the office the next morning, Adhara is waiting. She comes again the next day and the day after that. Her translation slowly gets better. I assign her the Panorama page, which contains translated editorials from Arabic papers. This used to be al-Matari’s responsibility, but he has constantly been out sick. Adhara, on the other hand, never misses a day.

One afternoon, she walks into my office holding a flash drive aloft.

“Zuhra asked me to write a back-page story. She said you needed one,” she says. “And I did it!” There is triumph in her voice.

“Fantastic!” I take the disk. I am desperate for a back-page story.

It’s a piece about the conflicting views of the Internet in Yemen. It is crudely written, contains no real news, and is mostly made up of huge blocks of quotations with no transitions. But my standards are not what they once were. I decide to run it anyway. Together, Adhara and I rework the structure and impose some segues. She is immensely pleased. She follows this first story with a piece on a new course that trains women to paint on glass and sell their art. It needs massive work, but I sit her down and explain what to do. Now that the paper is on a schedule, I have time for training. It’s thrilling to be able to watch and aid Adhara’s diligent and measurable progress.

She begins to tail Zuhra, who takes her on reporting expeditions to the Old City and shows her how to conduct interviews. My women welcome little Adhara into their fold, thrilled to see their ranks expand. I tease my men by telling them that soon we will have an all-female staff—this seems to motivate them more than anything else.

By the end of my year, I will have to officially hire Adhara. There is nothing else to do. She won’t stop
showing up
and we cannot in good conscience let her keep working for free, I explain to Faris. He finds the money to pay her.

One day Zuhra runs into my office, Adhara on her heels.

“Tell her,” says Zuhra.

Adhara shakes her head, turning red.

“Leysh?
It’s okay.”

“Please,” says Adhara.
“Please
, Zuhra.”

“What is it?” I say.

Earlier, I had told Adhara to give her story to Ali to copyedit. It didn’t even occur to me that this might be awkward. But the prospect of talking to the handsomest man in the office overwhelmed Adhara, who is painfully shy. It was as if I had asked her to please interview Brad Pitt. Petrified, she had gone to Zuhra for help.

“Ali is very nice,” I reassure Adhara. “You don’t need to worry.”

“I told her!” says Zuhra, who no longer fears men, handsome or otherwise.

Eventually, Adhara and Zuhra together get the story to Ali. And over time, Adhara’s fear ebbs. One day, I walk out of my office and look out the front door to see Adhara and Ali sitting on the steps side by side. Ali is smoking a cigarette, and Adhara is talking easily to him. Almost as if he is just another human being. I can’t stop smiling at the sight.

LIKE NAJMA AND NOOR,
Adhara is fortunate to have parents supportive of her ambitions. But this doesn’t mean all three don’t face barriers at work. The carefully cultivated modesty of women is at odds with the requirements of their profession. My women are often nervous about approaching men or about being perceived as too aggressive. Najma and Noor deal with this by working as a team. They accompany each other on reporting excursions, write stories for each other’s pages, and edit each other’s English. Rarely does one leave the office without the other. I’m impressed with their cooperation and the creativity they use to find their way around restrictions. The men could take a lesson.

Radia, whose official title is Faris’s personal secretary, has also begun reporting and writing stories. Like Adhara, she doesn’t ask me if she can become a reporter. She simply hands me a story one day. She writes in Arabic and gets one of the men or Zuhra to translate. Her reporting is good, though her writing and storytelling are weak. I spend hours with her, helping her find the news angles and fill in reporting gaps. One of her first pieces is a back-page story on the rising price of fabric. It sounds dull until she tells me that these rising prices are hurting brides in particular, many of whom have begun sewing their own dresses and settling for plainer fabrics. We refocus the story on the plight of brides, and it transforms into something eminently printable.

Soon, Radia isn’t just writing back-page features. She is covering car accidents, human rights issues, and explosions, turning in several stories for each issue. One day she runs into my office to tell me that she has a good story about a “hot phone.” I have no idea what she is talking about. When she can’t make me understand, she fetches Enass, who laughs. “She means
hotline,”
she says.

Yet she is not a reporter and continues to make the mere $100 a month Faris pays her to be his secretary. She asks Faris for more money, which he denies her, because she is “not a real reporter.” Never mind that she writes more stories per issue than any of my men. She accepts this as something she is helpless to change. I’ve repeatedly tried to get higher pay for my women, but every time Faris just tells me he is paying the fair market wage. My hands are tied.

ZUHRA IS ALSO FLOURISHING,
largely because she asks more questions than anyone else and never leaves my side when I am editing her work. One day, Luke comes into my office after editing a raw story of Zuhra’s. “I didn’t realize how good her English has gotten!” he says. “It’s been so long since I saw her raw copy. I’m amazed at how much better her stories are than they were in the fall.”

Her stories are so intriguing that it is weeks before I realize how often she is quoting Kamil al-Samawi. It’s clear why HOOD is such a crucial source of human rights stories, but Kamil can’t be the organization’s only lawyer.

“What’s the deal with Kamil al-Samawi?” I ask her one day. “You’ve quoted him in your last three stories.”

Zuhra smiles mysteriously. “He’s the lawyer on all these cases. I have to quote him!”

“Well, try to figure out what cases the other lawyers are working on and write about them,” I say. “You are banned from mentioning Kamil al-Samawi for a month.”