The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (22 page)

I HAVEN’T BEEN
in my new house for a week when I slip on my uneven stone stairs and crack two ribs. I am carrying my computer in my arms, and when I fall my only thought is protecting it. My ribs catch the edge of the stone step so hard that I cannot move for nearly half an hour. I lie sprawled between my kitchen and the second floor, stunned with pain, thinking that it might be a good idea to have a roommate. Someone to call the ambulance. Were there any ambulances. At last, I roll onto all fours and crawl up the stairs to bed. There’s nothing to be done about a rib anyway, even if it is broken. I take four ibuprofen and try to sleep on my left side.

This puts an end to my swimming for several months. Every time I try—which, given my obsession with exercise, I often do—there is such searing pain in my ribs that I end up in tears. How on earth will I cope if I cannot swim to release stress? I walk to work every morning, but it is not enough to ease the strangling amount of tension that builds up in me each day.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been suffering from a flulike Yemeni virus for more than two weeks. Al-Asaadi and I have been sneezing so much we finally conclude we’re allergic to each other. I’ve already had to make one trip to the hospital, and I am not keen to make another.

I keep thinking that I should go out on my days off, or call someone, or try to meet new people, but I am just too tired and sick to do anything. Hope begins to desert me. I worry I will never be healthy, never be without pain, never get the newspaper on a schedule, never teach my reporters anything. Work is an unending struggle. Reporters are constantly missing, our Internet connection goes down every few minutes, and photographers refuse to show up when I need them.

I want to believe that there has been some progress, that something good is coming of this. My standards for success have dropped dramatically. Give me just one grammatical headline. One issue closed before midnight. One day when my male reporters get to work on time. But I am still fighting simply to fill pages—forget trying to fill them with good reporting or decent writing. I still have no one to whom I can delegate any of my work and no one to cover for Luke over Christmas when he is gone for a month. Talha vanished from the office after I caught him plagiarizing an entire story from the IRIN news service and has not been seen since. Zuhra is out sick until after Eid al-Fitr, the festive holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. Her doctor told her she has exhaustion and must rest. Whom can I turn to now to find stories at the last minute? Who will make me laugh when I am feeling cross? Who will walk me to the Jordanian sandwich shop? I miss my little shadow.

Giving up isn’t an option. After all, I have no backup plan. But I feel so tapped out I just don’t know where to turn. Everything overwhelms me. I remember that Faris gets back from a trip to Washington the next day, and I decide to talk to him. Maybe he will know where I can find good reporters. The number of applications I get from people with master’s degrees in English who can barely write astonishes me. The résumés and cover letters are riddled with typos, malapropisms, and grammatical mistakes.

I’ve just reached the nadir of my despair, however, when I have my best closing night yet. Al-Asaadi is away, so I pull the entire issue together myself, and my skeleton staff pulls through for me. Thilo, a German freelancer I hired in desperation without ever having read his writing, turns in a wonderful piece about antiquities smuggling. Hassan writes several news stories. Ibrahim sends front-page stories from his home office, and I realize I will have enough stories to fill the paper after all.

I whip out my editorial in fifteen minutes and even enjoy the process. When no pressing issue is begging to be editorialized, I indulge my pet peeves. Tonight, it’s honking.

Excessive, ear-ravaging honking of automobile horns is a pervasive problem in Sana’a, but perhaps never quite as terrible as it is during Ramadan. During the holy month of fasting, everyone in the city rushes home for iftar to break his or her fast at exactly the same time. The ensuing gridlock only aggravates the frustration of drivers, who turn to their horns to express their dissatisfaction with the situation.

But these are futile gestures. Blaring horns are powerless to move heavy chunks of automobile. Making screeching noises that harm the ears of passengers, pedestrians, and bystanders alike will not make the cars in front of you move any faster. Nor will it make other drivers behave any more kindly toward you….

Scores of medical studies have found that exposure to elevated noise such as loud horns causes a range of physical and psychological problems, including: hearing loss, high blood pressure, stress, heart problems, increased levels of aggression, as well as vasoconstriction, which can lead to erectile dysfunction. Before leaning on that horn, perhaps a man should think about what it could do to his reproductive capabilities.

(This prompts an e-mail from my mother, who is concerned that perhaps attacking men’s reproductive capabilities isn’t a wise move on my part. “But, Mom,” I protest, “that’s a surefire way to get their attention.”)

With much cajoling and limping up and down the stairs, I manage to squeeze all the photos I need out of the often-elusive Mas. He complains, but cheerfully. Noor surprises me by turning around a quick story on Eid al-Fitr, which she reports and writes in one day. It is a miraculous night all around. Perhaps I do better when I am not relying on al-Asaadi to do anything for me. We finish laying out the last page of the night at two forty-five
A.M
.—our earliest Ramadan close ever! I am jubilant. Luke looks at me with suspicion. “You’re doing unusually well for three
A.M
.,” he says. “What kind of cold medicine are you taking?”

I finish the last few captions and catch Farouq’s eye. “What?” he says, alarmed. “What do you need from me?”

I smile and make a zero shape with my fingers.
“Nothing.”

Farouq raises his eyes and hands to the ceiling.
“Al-hamdulillah!”
he whispers thankfully. Praise belongs to Allah.

My neighborhood is silent as I unlock my gate and tiptoe through my courtyard, a slip of moon lighting my way. A cat darts across my feet and disappears under the water tank. I wonder if anyone is watching me, wondering at the hours I keep. I climb the stairs, shed my shoes, and turn the lights on in my kitchen. Boxes of tea and cereal line my counter, next to an enormous bowl of oranges, apples, and grapes. I flick the switch on my electric teakettle and pad upstairs (slowly!) to change into my pajamas. Ten minutes later I am curled in my bed, a cup of mint tea by my side and a history of Islam in my hands. I am home.

AS SUDDENLY AS IT BEGAN,
Ramadan is over. During the last few days, traffic comes to a complete standstill, as everyone in the city is out every night shopping to prepare for Eid. Old Sana’a is thronged with five times the average number of people, and the markets stay open until nearly dawn.

I have never been so happy to see a holiday. For the first time, I have more than one day off in a row! For the first time in nearly two months, a piece of unscheduled time! My first morning off I sleep and sleep. Eid has quite literally saved my life. It makes me feel so festive it’s like Easter and Christmas all rolled into one. The little girls tear around the streets dirtying brand-new princess dresses, men fit themselves out with upgraded
jambiyas
, and women bake sweet cakes to feed visiting family and friends in preparation for these four days of celebration. Every single one of my journal entries during this time begins with “Eid is the best holiday
ever!”

Now I finally have time to enjoy my new home. Solitude is a luxury after long days with my staff. I like the freedom to read over dinner. I like to take my clothes off and dance around my rooms to Fountains of Wayne and XTC. I like to write in my journal in bed. I like sprawling in my
mafraj
with a chunk of dark chocolate and a pile of books and magazines. I still long for more companionship, but I trust that it will come.

My Yemeni friends have trouble understanding why anyone would choose to live alone. For instance, when Shaima drives me to the supermarket one day, I tell her I need to find a little coffeemaker. I’m desperate for real coffee—I’ve been drinking the ubiquitous Nescafé since I moved here. But all I can find are giant, exorbitantly expensive family-size Mr. Coffee—type coffeemakers. Even I could not drink that much coffee. “No one lives alone here,” Shaima explains. “They all live in big families. No one
needs
a little coffeepot.” I hadn’t thought about this. It’s true; no one lives alone. Yemeni people live with their parents until they marry, and often married people stay in the same house as their parents. The concept of “alone time” does not exist. When I tell my Yemeni friends that I wish I had a bit more time to myself, they are baffled.
“Why?”
they say. “Why would you ever want to spend a minute
alone?”

ON THE FIRST MORNING
of Eid, my elderly neighbor across the street, Mohammed, invites me over. He calls my home phone, waking me. I have no idea how he got my number, but he says he has seen me unlocking my gate, and won’t I come for an Eid visit? I have a friendly neighbor! So I dress quickly and run across the street. Everyone in the Old City is so kind to me that it never even occurs to me to be afraid of strangers. Mohammed ushers me through halls hung with oil paintings of landscapes to a
mafraj
done all in blue, with white lace draped across the cushions. Across the carpet are scattered several little silver tables covered with dishes of pistachios, raisins, pastries, and chocolates. Mohammed pushes one of these little tables in front of me and tells me to eat. I nibble on raisins and almonds while he calls for his wife and daughter. “I’ve been to Arizona,” he says. This is evidently a great source of pride.

His wife, a rounded, wide-hipped, hook-nosed woman with an enormous smile, comes in and sits beside me. Their daughter sets a glass of lime juice in front of me and settles on the other side of her mother. She’s around twenty and rather plain. Both women, according to Mohammed, speak English but are too shy to speak it around me. Mohammed does most of the talking, telling me how much he loves America and Americans.

“Do you like Kenny Rogers?” says Mohammed. “I
love
Kenny Rogers.” He gets up and puts on a cassette. Somehow I failed to imagine that an Eid celebration would involve suffering through “Coward of the County.” Whenever his wife leaves the room, he turns it up. When she returns, she turns it back down. Eventually, when the first side of the cassette ends, she gets up and replaces it with a tape of Yemeni
oud
music.

“She
likes
this kind of music,” says Mohammed disapprovingly.

“It’s pretty,” I say. “I like the
oud.”

They keep encouraging me to eat and ask me about my life. Mohammed hands me a large, illustrated book about Yemen and tells me all the places I have to visit.

“You must go to Soqotra,” he says. “Or you have only half lived.”

They ask if I have a husband and I lie. They ask if I have children and I tell the truth. “But maybe I would like some,” I say.

This sends Mohammed’s wife into fits of laughter.
“Maybe!”
she says. “Maybe!” I wonder if she simply thinks it is ridiculous for someone as old as I am—I’ve gotten so much more white hair since I got here—to consider children or if it is funny that I am not sure.

A similar scene repeats itself at Sami’s house later that day. Sweets are served, tea is poured, I am again forced to explain my childlessness, and my teeth ache with all of the sugar. But I am grateful. For the first time, I feel a sense of community. I belong to my neighborhood.