The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (30 page)

DESPITE HER NEAR-CONSTANT PRESENCE
in my office, Zuhra is still careful about what she reveals to me about her life. She tells me all about her career ambitions, her mood swings, and her physical ills, but when she falls in love in the middle of my tenure, she holds this secret close to her chest. It will be months before she can confess it all to me. For a Yemeni woman to admit to love before marriage is to risk social ruin. Women are not supposed to have friendly contact with men who are not close relatives, let alone spend enough time with one to fall in love. Very few Yemeni women choose their husbands, and most matches are arranged.

Thus, Zuhra has plenty of reasons to keep quiet. To confess to even one person is to risk exposure and censure. She lives in a conservative neighborhood, where her neighbors gossip, and the women are particularly vicious about each other. “Sex is the most important thing in all of our society,” Zuhra tells me with bitterness in her voice. “Even homosexuality isn’t as bad as a woman committing sex outside of marriage. A woman isn’t just representing herself as a person; she is representing the whole family, the whole tribe. If my sister’s reputation is bad, my reputation is bad.” When one of Zuhra’s sisters broke off an engagement, the whole family suffered the condemnation of their community. Zuhra fears what her family would say if they knew of her secret love. Because her father is dead, Zuhra needs permission from her brothers and uncles in order to marry. Or to travel. Or to do so many things.

ON MY RECOMMENDATION,
Zuhra has applied to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, my alma mater. She is the one person on my staff with what my Columbia professors liked to call the “fire in the belly” necessary to become a brilliant journalist. So I think she would thrive there. I’d especially like her to be admitted because she plans to return to Yemen afterward and eventually launch her own newspaper. Then, in a way, she can carry on my work after I leave. As part of the application process, she is required to take a news-writing test, which I proctor on the last day before the deadline. It must be postmarked that day, but because it’s the end of the month, no one has enough money to pay for postage with DHL, one of the only reliable mail services to the United States. I give Zuhra my last YR1,000, which isn’t even close to enough. We have to take up an office collection. Manel, Hassan, Jabr, and Jelena all contribute their last
riyals
. We send Hassan off to fax a copy to New York, and Manel runs to DHL to mail it. It’s inspiring to see that even the poorest among us empties her pockets.

To my great disappointment, Zuhra’s improved English is not quite good enough to get her into Columbia. A professor on the admissions committee calls me personally to tell me that although the committee absolutely loves her application, they have reservations about her English. Zuhra takes the news like someone accustomed to disappointment and vows to try next year.

“We will find another way to get you to the U.S.,” I say. “I promise.” She needs to perfect her English abroad, as there is little chance of doing so in Yemen. Diligently, Zuhra begins applying for every fellowship abroad she can find. So many, in fact, that if a fellowship were offered for applying for the most fellowships, Zuhra would definitely win it.

It is Zuhra, and the rest of my women, I am most desperate to help. The men will be all right. They will always find work in Yemen; they will always have society’s approval. My women I worry about. What will become of them when I am gone?

ONE DAY,
I am editing a health story with Najma when she says, “Jennifer, I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” I say, looking up from my computer screen. “What is it?”

“Are you really leaving in September?” She sits on the very edge of her chair, leaning toward me, her dark eyes serious.

“Well, that’s my plan.”

“Jennifer, this is a very big problem for us. A very big problem. Noor and I were talking. No one else will read our stories so closely; no one else will help us like you do.”

“Najma,” I say, tears pricking the back of my eyes, “my goal in coming here is not to help you for a year and then abandon you. My goal is to train you, and train a person to take my place, so that you won’t need me as much.”

I am suddenly panicked about my reporters’ future. No matter how good Zaid is—and he has his flaws—he is not a woman, and Najma is right; he won’t care as much about their work. This, unfortunately, will be truer than I could ever guess.

The men resent the attention I pay the women. “You like the women better,” they say accusingly.

“I like all of you the same,” I lie. “But the women happen to always show up for work on time. They don’t take cigarette breaks. They don’t chew
qat
. They turn their work in on time. If you want to be treated like the women, try following their example.”

This makes them grumpy. They believe it is their God-given right to smoke cigarettes and chew qat! It is their God-given right to take a nap for several hours after lunch! They should be considered better reporters simply because they are
men!

One day I am joking around with Bashir, who has written a story about a group that works for women’s rights and to preserve culture. “Well, what if the culture they want to preserve doesn’t grant women rights; then what?” I tease. “Then they have a conflict. They can either preserve the women’s rights or the culture, but not both.”

This is said in jest, and he laughs. But then I make a reference to women not being free in Yemen, and he looks shocked and retorts that women are
totally
free in Yemen.

“Women can do whatever they
want
here,” he says. “Noor doesn’t have to wear her
abaya
if she doesn’t want to.”

While it may be true that Yemeni women are legally freer than most women in the region—they can drive cars and the dress code is not enforced by law—they can hardly be said to be unfettered.

“Bashir,” I say, “do you have any idea what it is like to be a woman here and walk around
without
an
abaya?
She would be harassed constantly.
I
get harassed constantly, even dressed as I am, and it is much worse for Yemeni women.”

Zuhra once put it like this: “A woman in Yemen would get harassed even if she were wrapped in an
abaya
, shut in a cardboard box, and on the outside of the box was written ‘THIS IS NOT A WOMAN.’”

My dark-skinned foreign friends who could pass for Yemeni get hassled even more on the streets because they appear to be fallen Muslims rather than heretical foreigners. My Dutch-Indonesian friend Jilles had acid thrown at her and was handed a slip of paper with an illustration of how women ought to dress.

When I tell Bashir what kind of harassment women would face on the street here if they went without an
abaya
or
hijab
, Noor turns around in her chair. “It’s true,” she says.

Thus begins a debate on the status of women in Yemen. Noor claims that Islam does not require the
hijab
, culture does. This is news to Bashir, who argues that the Qur’an orders the
hijab
. The conversation gets heated, with more reporters joining in, but I have so much editing to do that I retreat to my office. When I return to the newsroom a half hour later, they are still locked in combat. I have to break up the discussion three times before they settle down and focus on their stories. “I know this is my fault!” I tell them. “But could you please go back to work?”

They dutifully turn back to their computers. But the second I leave the room, I hear the battle resume.

MY WOMEN ARE TEACHING ME
at least as much as I teach them. Radia and Zuhra and occasionally the others take turns helping me with my Arabic, delighted to be able to correct
me
for a change. Every time I get something thing right, Zuhra claps her hands and says, “You’re so smart!” I feel embarrassingly like I am five, learning how to talk all over again.

My Arabic lessons are a source of entertainment for the entire office. On the day I learned negatives—“I am not your mother, you are not a baker, he is not the president”—I rushed into the newsroom to practice on my staff. “I am not bread!” I announced proudly. It was the first word that came to mind. My reporters dissolved into giggles.

But it’s not just Arabic they give me. They patiently explain to me bits of Yemeni history and culture, telling me about wedding rituals, Yemeni foods I haven’t tried, and tribal honor. They bring in cakes for me to taste, such as
kubana
, a crumbly cornbread. They introduce me to their families at weddings and other celebrations. It’s an enormous comfort to have such an enthusiastic pack of guides to help me navigate this multilayered world.

IT TAKES A LONG TIME
for me to get to know Najma and Noor more personally. They are both shy and seem to find me intimidating despite my best efforts. My relationship with Zuhra may also be a barrier. She has a sense of ownership of me, and the other women thus defer to her and stay respectfully at a distance. (Whenever someone else makes me tea or helps me with something, Zuhra asks why I didn’t let her do it. “It’s just, I think of you as
mine,”
she tells me. “You’re
my
Jennifer.”)

By mid-January, I still haven’t seen Najma’s or Noor’s face, although Radia, Zuhra, and Enass all flip their veils back the second they cross my threshold. It takes another medical emergency for things to change.

It happens like this. One night we close the paper early. Manel and I are so pleased with ourselves that we head to his home in Hadda for a celebratory drink. Alex, Manel’s roommate, has just returned from England with a bottle of duty-free green-apple vodka. It is sweet and synthetic and awful. But this is Yemen, and you drink what is available.

I hadn’t thought I had had that much to drink, but I wake close to dawn feeling intensely nauseated. Thinking perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to skip dinner, I go downstairs and eat a yogurt. Then I remember that I have little green pills from an earlier Yemeni illness. They had worked wonders on nausea! I rummage through my drawers, find the green pills, and take two.