The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (19 page)

He nods and smiles, and then goes ahead and sends one of my reporters to cover a fund-raising event for one of President Saleh’s charities.

THESE TENSE DAYS
have unpredictable moments of brightness. One night, I am scrambling to edit a couple of election stories before closing day when Luke comes running into my office. Luke never runs. “Jennifer,” he says. “Come out and see the moon!”

I follow him outside, and we stand in the middle of the street, gazing up as the dark shadow of the sun creeps across the moon. A lunar eclipse! Farouq joins us and we all stand around with our faces to the sky and our mouths open. I run back in to fetch al-Asaadi. We stand in the courtyard breathing in the fragrance of jasmine and marveling.

“Call Mas,” al-Asaadi says. “Tell him to get photos of it.”

“Mas isn’t here,” I remind him. “He’s traveling with the president.”

“Jennifer,” says al-Asaadi. “Tell me where is Mas that he cannot see the moon?”

ON SEPTEMBER 11,
I wake up in tears. I never anticipate how much the anniversary of the attacks on my city brings all the grief and horror back to the surface. Overwhelmed, I cry straight through my shower, coffee, and the walk to work. I am dressed all in white, in honor of the Ethiopian New Year (which falls on the same day) and because I am tired of dark colors and need to cheer myself up. I wear a floor-length white skirt, a white cotton Indian shirt, a white shawl, and, in a particularly daring move in this dusty city, white socks.

“You look like an angel!” Zuhra says when she sees me. Ha! Everyone comments on my outfit, even al-Asaadi, who tells me that white becomes me. Compliments from al-Asaadi are rare and precious things. Zuhra and I draw stares when we walk down the street for lunch, negative images of each other.

“Together, we’re a penguin,” I say. “Or a nun.”

“Or I am your shadow!”

“That, we knew.”

September 11 is a Monday, and thus a closing day, so work and its frustrations divert me from personal sorrow. I’m a wee bit exasperated with the three-and-a-half-hour lunch breaks my male reporters are taking. If they could cut their lunch break down to even an hour or two, we could get out of the office much earlier. However, I know I can never suggest this ridiculously American idea without a mutiny.

In an effort to help me with election coverage, al-Asaadi hands me a new intern, a tall, broad young man named Jabr. Jabr wears his hair slicked back and dreams of becoming a movie star. In the meantime, the
Yemen Observer
will do. He has no experience, but I can’t afford to turn away able bodies.

I send Jabr out to poll people for our opinion poll column, in which four ordinary people answer a question such as “Can democracy work in Yemen?” “What is the first thing you want the new president to tackle?” or “Do you think the newly released bin Laden video is real?” This should take about half an hour, tops.

Jabr disappears before lunch and is gone for six hours. I’m wondering if maybe he has decided to quit when he returns to tell me he has quotes from only three people, and they are all men. I had told him explicitly that we must always interview two women and two men.

“Jabr,” I say, “you’ve been gone from the office for
six hours
, and you’re telling me you couldn’t find four people to talk to? In all that time?”

“Some of the women wouldn’t talk.”

“So ask more of them.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” He stands there looking large and helpless.

“Walk out to Algiers Street. Hundreds of people walk by every minute. Surely you can find
one
who will talk. And we need women. We
are
half of the population. And I would like to know what
both
halves of the population have to say.” Representative democracy begins here.

He nods and backs out of the room.

Two hours later he comes back to tell me that he can’t find anyone.

It would be generous to call Jabr a slow starter. Luke and I become so frustrated with his inability to perform even the simplest of tasks that we begin referring to him as the Missing Link. I can’t fire him though; we’re hardly paying him anything, and I suppose (though sometimes I have doubts about this) that having him around is better than having no one.

Adding to our woes, the Internet connection goes down regularly, usually on closing days, when we most need it. Ibrahim e-mails me his election stories from home on closing days, and all of the op-ed pieces and Middle Eastern news must be drawn from the wires. With the Internet connection down, we cannot finish an issue. No one seems to know what to do when this happens. Everyone stands around and complains, but no one
does
anything. The Doctor is supposed to help, but he is either out on a four-hour lunch break or useless. He will shout at people and then come tell me it’s all taken care of, which it rarely is. Only one technician can help us with our Internet, Enass says. But often when we need him, his phone is off.

Faris has promised me an Arabic tutor, who has yet to materialize. I’ve taught myself enough to get around on my own, but here are a few phrases I’m desperate to know:

“None of the power outlets in my office is working. Can someone fix them?”

“Can you tell me when the toilet will be functional?”

“There is no water in the entire building.”

“There will be no newspaper if something isn’t done about the Internet.”

“Am I ever going to get the key to open my desk drawers?”

ON OUR NEXT CLOSING DAY,
Zuhra finishes her stories before three
P.M
. and makes her reluctant departure. It occurs to me that
she
should be the person I train to take over the paper when I leave. This is one of my main goals: to train a successor to carry on my work when I leave. But Zuhra is a woman and thus cannot stay late in the office (or, probably, command the respect of the men). It’s early to be thinking about my successor, but it could take the rest of the year to properly train someone.

At three
A.M
., we’re still working, although I am having trouble reading the words on the page. I give the last of the front-page stories to our designer Samir and am about to call it a wrap and escape when I see al-Asaadi typing away on the pages I have already finished. “I’m just moving a few stories,” he says. It turns out he has also rewritten several critical election headlines, none of which is grammatical. I am convinced he is only making these changes for the same reason a dog pees on lampposts. But I have no choice but to stay until he is done; my eyes
must
be the last to see the paper before it hits the printer. Sighing, I set down my bags and pick up the pages he has altered to do one last edit.

THE PREELECTION DAYS
turn quickly into newsprint. I am now beginning to realize the peril of trying to change everything at once. I’ve been trying to get the paper on a schedule, hire staff, train reporters, edit the entire paper, write some pieces of my own, and earn the respect of my staff all at the same time. But despite my growing awareness of the impossibility of this task, I haven’t figured out yet how to do one thing at a time or what should come first.

I don’t have enough time to sit with my reporters as I rewrite their pieces and explain to them how to do better. So I am happy when I get all three health and science stories early enough in the last preelection issue not only to edit them but to discuss with Najma, Bashir, and Talha what is missing from each of them. Bashir, for one, wrote about the accelerating melting of the Arctic ice without mentioning two major studies just conducted by NASA. I am trying to get my reporters to read all of the background stories on a subject before they begin reporting the news. But they resist and don’t seem to understand why it is important. Farouq has flat-out refused, saying that he has his own reporting, so why does he need to know what everyone else is saying? When I explain that he can write a better story knowing the whole background, he simply tells me that I should read the background and fill it in myself.

Production has been slow this week, because every single staff member has had to take time off to care for a sick relative. Al-Asaadi’s mother has a snakebite on her foot that has turned into a cyst that won’t heal. Bashir’s mother is ill. Farouq’s brother is in the hospital. So is Hakim’s wife, who has stomach problems.

We are also burdened by a love letter that the minister of health has written to President Saleh for our last preelection issue. Faris insists that we put it in the paper, saying it will encourage other officials to talk to us and write for us. He also insists that it be on the back page, which he considers prime real estate. This is all communicated to me by al-Asaadi.

“I won’t do it,” I say. “Opinion does not belong on the back page.”

“You tell him that.” Al-Asaadi is unwilling to argue with Faris over anything.

I run upstairs and explain to Faris that an opinion piece belongs on the Op-Ed page, which is widely considered the most powerful page in a newspaper.

“That is not true here,” says Faris. “Here the back page is most important.”

“Really?”

“Arabic is read right to left. So Arabs will naturally turn first to what for you is the back page.”

This hadn’t occurred to me. “But we’re an English paper. And even if that is true, we lose legitimacy when we publish opinions in the regular pages,” I say. “Opinions and news must be kept separate.”

Finally, Faris suggests a compromise. “I will let you put it on the Op-Ed page,” he said, “if you will put a mention in the banner on the front page, with a little photo.”

“Done!” I say, greatly pleased.

I run back downstairs. “It’s going on the Op-Ed page,” I tell al-Asaadi, who looks at me in astonishment.

The minister’s piece, it transpires, is utter garbage. Al-Asaadi gets stuck translating it and moans the entire time. “Jennifer,” he says, “you know what it’s like when you are forced to eat something that makes you gag? That is what I am doing.” The heavily edited piece is then thrust upon Luke, who wrestles with it some more. And I still have to do further edits. It tortures all of us.