The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (11 page)

A PILE OF WORK
awaited me the next morning. Faris had asked me to go over the most recent issue in detail and critique it for the whole staff. I spread out the paper on Sabri’s dining room table and, for three solid hours, read and took notes on every page, every story, every line. I was becoming obsessed with my students’ stories. I thought about them when I was lying in bed. I mentally corrected them while riding in cabs. I found myself thinking of a crucial prepositional phrase that would make Zuhra’s beauty parlor story perfect as I swam laps at the Sheraton.

By the time I finished writing my critique and covering the paper with circles, cross-outs, and blue ballpoint scrawl, I was zinging with energy. It was Thursday, which most Yemenis have off, as Thursday and Friday are the weekend. The
Yemen Observer
staff, however, worked every day except Friday.

I arrived at the office early, anxious to speak with Hakim before class. Faris seemed to have special hopes for him, thinking he could help revolutionize the paper. But so far he had done little to distinguish himself, other than to argue with me in class, rarely in constructive ways. He claimed that we didn’t need to use the word “said” in attributions, because
Time
magazine doesn’t. This was not only untrue but considerably unhelpful when I was trying to teach my reporters plain, straightforward language. They were hopelessly dependent on the words “affirmed” and “confirmed,” which they generally used when quoting someone who didn’t have the authority to affirm or confirm anything. They
needed
the word “said.” I wanted to explain to Hakim, as diplomatically as possible, how helpful it would be to everyone if he supported my authority and followed the same rules as everyone else.

Hakim was late, however, so I had no chance to speak to him. Instead, I cornered editor in chief Mohammed al-Asaadi, who had only made it to one previous class, and asked him sweetly if he wouldn’t mind joining us for an hour. He was the person I most needed to reach, but Theo had told me he felt threatened by my presence. Apparently he didn’t believe his journalism skills needed improving, which was disappointing. I wanted him to be able to reinforce what I was teaching and carry on some of this work after I left.

Once Hakim and al-Asaadi were both settled amidst my other reporters, I launched into my critique. To my delight, both al-Asaadi and Hakim (and the rest of the class) were quite receptive. I got through everything I wanted to say with minimal disruption. I began with praise, saying how much I liked the layout of the front page, some of the front headlines, and most of the story ideas. Baiting the hook.

I especially praised Adel, the paper’s health reporter, because his was one of the better pages. “Poor Adel,” Theo often said. “He is the lowest-caste person on staff, and the rest of them treat him like an animal, even though he is one of the best journalists they have.” Yemen is divided into several social strata, including
bedouin
(desert nomads),
fellahin
(villagers),
hadarrin
(townspeople), and
akhdam
(literally “servants”), which include Adel’s family. So I told everyone what wonderful stories Adel had picked for his page, in the probably vain hope of boosting his status.

Then I reviewed some things that needed to be done more consistently. Every story should have a byline, I told them. (Often, the stories just said “Observer staff.”)

“You all work hard on these stories,” I said. “You deserve credit for them. I want you to be proud of your work. Putting your name on your story tells your readers that you stand behind your reporting. It enhances your credibility. And it keeps you accountable. If you are ashamed to put your name on a piece of work, it does not belong in the paper.”

Theo raised his hand. “What if you are writing a story that could get you killed? So if you put your name on it, someone will come after you?”

“Well, in that case, we can make an exception. I don’t want to get any of you killed. If you are quite sure that someone will come after you with a gun or any other weapon for a story you are writing, you have my permission to withhold your byline. However, every single one of the stories in this issue should be able to safely have a byline without getting anyone killed.”

Next, we talked about the importance of spelling. “The word ‘conference’ is misspelled in a front-page headline,” I said. “As a reader, I see this and say, ‘If they make mistakes about things as small as spelling, what other kinds of mistakes are they making?’ You increase your credibility when your grammar and spelling are perfect. And you erode it when they are not.”

They nodded and scribbled.

A new fellow joined us for the critique, a blond, blue-eyed Californian named Luke, who had been hired to help with the copyediting. He radiated goodwill, and I was happy to have someone else there to reinforce the proper use of the English language.

When everyone had finally dispersed, Theo looked at me. I was crumpled against the blackboard. “Worn out?”

“I feel like I’ve just run a marathon. My diaphragm hurts.” I get so enthusiastic when I am talking that I wave my arms a lot and lunge back and forth from the dry-erase board to the table. My calisthenics seemed to worry my students, who kept offering me a chair. But they often had just as much trouble sitting still.

“I’ve only just realized this since you’ve come here,” said Theo a few days later. “But this entire nation has ADD. This is their central problem; this is why nothing gets done.”

THE NEXT DAY’S CLASS
focused just on leads. I needed to do something small and focused with them; it was too difficult to fix entire stories. If they could get just that first sentence of the story right, the rest would follow—I hoped. We went over everyone’s leads, critiquing and rewriting them until they were perfect. Or at least printable. I gave them the last fifteen minutes of class to interview me and told them their assignment was to write a lead and three paragraphs based on their interview. They’d been very curious about me and were thrilled to have permission to quiz me. They asked me where I lived, whether I was married, where I had worked before Yemen, what I thought of them, what I thought of Yemen, and who was the best student (this from Zaid). I warned them that I might lie and said that they should investigate me on the Internet, to make sure I really am who I say I am and have done the things I say I have done.

They proved a little too good at this. That night, as I was halfway through dinner, Theo texted me. Apparently my students had discovered (via Google’s image search) scores of photos of me in cocktail dresses at New York media parties. It had not occurred to me that they might find things I would rather keep concealed. I immediately panicked, worried they would think less of me after having seen me in lipstick and a low-cut cocktail dress, holding a glass of wine. I rang Theo immediately after dinner, and he assured me that they still loved me.

“For my brains?” I asked fretfully.

“Of course for your brains,” he said. “What else could they love?”

WHEN I WALKED
into the newsroom the next morning, Zaid was sitting there gazing at a photo of me that he had installed as his desktop. In it, I had an arm draped around my photographer friend David, and I was smiling through my hair, which was loose and tumbling down to my waist. I was relieved, however, to see that only David was holding a beer. I immediately apologized for my scanty outfit and the fact that I had an arm around a man, but Zaid said, “Jennifer, I lived with an American family for three years! You don’t need to explain these things to me. We understand.”

“I just don’t want you to get a poor impression of me,” I said.

“Never! We love you! We just think you are beautiful, these are beautiful,” he said, gesturing to the photos.

The women, Zuhra and Arwa, said the same thing. I relaxed slightly.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON,
I was updating Faris on my activities with his staff when he asked if I would be willing to report on a conference on democracy in the Arab world at the Mövenpick Hotel across town. I could write a story about democratic progress in the region for
Arabia Felix
, he said. Before I had time to think about it, or suggest that perhaps democracy in the Arab world was a bit broad for one magazine piece, a van arrived to sweep me off to the hotel, along with Adel, who became my translator.

We spent six hours at the hotel, interviewing professors, writers, and politicians from Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Exhausted from sprinting after interviewees and translating my questions, Adel begged for a rest. “Not until we have enough for a story,” I said. By the end of the day, we had plenty. I was most excited about interviewing Iraqi parliament member Safia al-Souhail, as I was curious to hear her views on the situation in Iraq.

“People think that it’s the Americans who are foisting ideas of women’s rights and human rights on Iraqis,” she told me. “This is not true. Iraqi women have been fighting for these things for a generation. I have always dressed like this.” She gestured to her yellow pantsuit.

She was surprisingly optimistic about Iraq’s future. The turmoil and bloodshed there were to be expected after so many years of oppression, she said. (Several other attendees had expressed similar views.) “The people don’t know how to be free,” she said. “Iraq needs help from the U.S. and other countries right now. But as soon as Iraq is independent, it will waste no time throwing them all out of the country. Just not yet.”

I BEGAN CLASS
the next day by asking Adel to describe our reporting process at the Mövenpick. We talked about how we tracked people down and about how much more efficient it had been to take notes than to use a tape recorder. My students always wanted to record their interviews, which forced them to spend hours transcribing. I loathe tape recorders and believe they should be used only as a backup, when interviewing someone who might sue the paper. I told my class how one Egyptian woman had shied away when Adel produced his tape recorder. “It can intimidate people and keep them from talking to you.”