The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (27 page)

“Well, Noor can’t get in. I only have two passes.”

“I’ll get her press passes then. Who is the press contact?”

“He only speaks Arabic.”

“Fine. I’ll find someone to call him.”

Qasim is beside himself. “No! A professional journalist should cover this concert.”

I stare at him. Noor is standing right in front of him.

“Noor
is
a professional journalist,” I say coolly. “And I am sending her and Najma to cover the concert. I will buy their tickets with my own money if I have to.”

I do have to. Qasim persists in refusing to help the women, so I give Noor and Najma enough cash to cover both their tickets and transportation, along with a letter stating that they work for me. They are delighted, thank me effusively, and write a colorful feature about the event. I wonder sometimes how much more we could get done if men were not constantly trying to stand in our way.

I HAVE BEEN
at the paper for three months when the Ministry of Information telephones to ask about my specific role at the paper and for my visa number. Enass comes into my office to take my passport, sending me into a panic.

“Am I going to be thrown out of the country?”

She laughs and shakes her head.

Al-Asaadi says I must write a letter to the ministry saying that my title is merely honorary and that I make no editorial decisions at all. I agree to do this because it is illegal for a foreigner to run a Yemeni paper. But I am suspicious of the ministry’s sudden interest. Why now, when I have been on the paper’s masthead for three months? Have they just not been paying attention, or has someone tipped them off? I wonder briefly if my editorials criticizing the government are to blame, but they are unsigned.

The letter does the trick, and the ministry backs off. My title, however, has slipped down the masthead and been changed to consulting editor. Al-Asaadi must be thrilled. But it doesn’t bother me. As far as I’m concerned, they can call me staff janitor as long as I can do my job.

MY NEXT TACTIC
in my campaign to get everyone, including al-Asaadi, meeting deadlines is a written schedule. In late December, I pass this out, along with a style guide I have been compiling since my arrival. We have already begun to close pages on a somewhat regular timeline, but too many of my reporters seem consistently surprised when their deadlines arrive. Now, with a written schedule in front of them, they cannot claim to be ignorant of when their pages are due. I have made a point of making al-Asaadi’s pages due before lunch on closing day, given that he can’t be trusted to get back to work after lunch. I’m hoping this will help keep things on track when I go off to Cairo for ten days’ vacation over New Year’s.

On Christmas Eve, I decide to leave work early because it’s a holiday for me and I have an out-of-town guest. I edit manically to finish by eight
P.M
. I’ve already told al-Asaadi that I won’t be coming in on Christmas, which falls on a closing day. For once, I am going to play the Christian card and claim a religious holiday of my own.

But when al-Asaadi shows up in the office close to eight
P.M
. on Christmas Eve, he tells me that he has decided to finish the paper that night, a day early.

“Why?” I am bewildered. “There’s no reason.”

“Tomorrow’s Christmas!” says al-Asaadi.

I stare at him. “Mohammed. This is a Muslim country. There is no reason not to work on Christmas.”

“We’re all going to take a day off in solidarity with you.”

“Why?” I ask again. “Do you feel like you won’t be able to close tomorrow without me?”

He insists and says he will keep Manel with him in the office until the issue is done. This is incredibly unfair to Manel and the rest of my staff, but there is nothing I can do. I can’t stay in the office myself when someone has traveled all this way to be with me. Just as I am about to pack up to go, al-Asaadi hands me several stories to edit.

“Al-Asaadi. It is Christmas Eve, and I would like to be able to go home and spend some time with my guest,” I say.

“But I need you to edit these before you go.”

“Why don’t you just save them for tomorrow and have Manel do them?”

“We’re closing the issue tonight!”

“Look, I
never
ask for time off. Just this
once
, I want to go home and spend time with someone who is in this country for only ten days and whom I will not see for months.”

Al-Asaadi then informs me that not only has he decided to close this issue a day early, but he has decided that we should put out one more issue before Eid al-Adha, which falls just after Christmas this year. We have already decided,
together
, that we would not publish another issue before the holiday. Now everyone will have to work on Tuesday and Wednesday in order to put out that extra issue, when they have counted on having a holiday. What’s even worse is that the reason we have to publish this extra issue is that Qasim has already sold advertising for it. Qasim had done the same thing during Eid al-Fitr, and I had made him promise me that he would never again sell advertising for an issue that would have to be put out over a holiday.

Fuming, I quickly edit the stories al-Asaadi has given me and am walking out the door when he says, “So, I’ll see you here Tuesday!”

I whirl around. “Mohammed, I told you
a month ago
that I was taking time off this week. We also decided ages ago that this week was a holiday for all of us. So I am not coming in
at all
, except to collect my salary. It is nine
P.M
. on Christmas Eve, and this is the first that I have heard of this schedule change. If you want to do another issue before Eid, have fun. But I am not going to be here.”

And with that, I leave. I cannot believe that al-Asaadi would behave so abominably on what—as far as he knows—is a holy day for me. He has done the barest minimum of work since I got to this country, and now he has the nerve to suggest that I am a slacker for taking time off? I fume all the way home and, despite a pleasant dinner, the Christmas spirit fails to materialize.

I throw a party on Boxing Day for those of my friends who didn’t head westward for the holidays. Deputy U.S. Ambassador Nabeel Khoury, who has become a good friend, arrives first, with wine and flowers. Just as we’ve settled in the
mafraj
, Karim arrives, with several French friends, followed by the ever-charming Manel, a British journalist friend named Ginny, and several others. It’s a low-key night, but to me the simple act of drinking wine and eating cheese in a room full of friends feels like an extraordinary luxury.

WHEN I RETURN
to Yemen after a brief holiday in Egypt, it doesn’t take long for all of the familiar anxieties to catch up with me—as well as some new ones. I arrive home just after the second Eid holiday and Saddam Hussein’s execution to find the entire country in mourning. More than half of Yemen’s population is Sunni, and they
love
Saddam.

Yemen was one of the few Arab countries that refused to criticize Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Every other Gulf state—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman—condemned the invasion. Yemen, the PLO, Jordan, and the Maghreb, areas with substantial Palestinian populations, abstained.

I’ve noticed a few correlations between Saddam and Saleh. Like Saddam, Saleh came from a military background and surrounds himself with a close circle of advisers who are military people. He places his trusted tribal associates in key positions of power, consolidating his control over the security apparatus of the state. In some ways, Saleh’s Sanhanis are not unlike Saddam’s Tikritis. But the comparison goes only so far. Saleh did not consolidate power by shooting family members who didn’t agree with him, try to eradicate entire ethnic groups, or destroy the economy of Yemenis who didn’t concur with his political or religious philosophy.

Saleh’s support of Saddam during the invasion of Kuwait infuriated Yemen’s neighbors. Every Arabian Gulf state expelled the majority of Yemeni expatriates working within their borders. Some two million wage earners were forced to return to Yemen jobless and unable to support their families, which had a hugely damaging effect on the Yemeni economy still felt to this day. It remains difficult for Yemenis to work in the Gulf. Kuwait has never really forgiven Saleh and has obstructed Yemen’s attempts to join the Gulf Cooperation Council, the regional economic bloc.

In turn, Saddam expressed his appreciation for Yemen’s solidarity by donating large sums of money to the country, both directly to Saleh and to the tribes. Members of Saddam’s family have sought refuge in Yemen, which is home to an estimated one hundred thousand Iraqis. Not all of these were Saddam supporters; many came to Yemen to escape repression.

“Everyone in Yemen loves him [Saddam] because the official media told them to love him,” a diplomat tells me. “And he was an important source of income to Yemen during a very difficult time.”

Yemenis offer slightly different opinions. “He was good for Iraq because Iraqis need someone strong to keep them in line,” a Yemeni Arabic teacher tells me. “Otherwise they are wild and difficult people.” Posters of the dictator plaster storefronts and houses and the back windows of cars. Arabic newspapers sing his praises. Street vendors sell cigarette lighters that project an image of his face.

In the office, my men walk around with long, sorrowful faces.

“It’s best if you don’t bring it up,” Manel warns me. “They’re incredibly sensitive. Everyone here has been crying about him for days.” He had made the indelicate suggestion that Saddam was a brutal tyrant responsible for the death of thousands, and was promptly abused. “They think he’s a martyr.” For once, I keep my mouth shut.

The video of Saddam’s execution is disturbingly popular, and I keep catching the men watching it on the screens of their mobile telephones. I refuse to see it. Parents in Yemen apparently think it is appropriate to allow their children to watch such things, and in early January two young boys kill themselves in imitation of their hero. One hangs himself, and the other shoots himself. Their parents are quoted in the press as saying that their boys worshipped Saddam.

Angered, I spit out an editorial condemning the broadcast media for circulating the video and parents for letting children see it. We have just closed the issue when al-Asaadi demands to read my piece. With a sense of foreboding, I hand him the page. His face tightens as he reads. “You have to take out this part about Iraqis killing Saddam,” he says. “Iraqis did not kill Saddam. Everyone knows Americans killed him.”

He has a point. Americans have their fingerprints all over the execution, but it ultimately was Iraqis who hanged him, something no one in Yemen will admit. It doesn’t even register in Yemen that the entire Iraqi population of Detroit danced in the streets at his death.

I am personally opposed to capital punishment, and I think that killing Saddam on the first day of Eid was a
terrible
public relations move. But it frustrates me that Yemenis refuse to acknowledge that Saddam did
anything
bad.