The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (45 page)

It’s been a funny week. People keep coming into my office just to sit with me. Even Qasim came in the other day as I was closing an issue and just sat watching me.

“What can I do for you?” I inquired, figuring he had come in to try to pressure me into writing about an advertiser.

“Nothing,” he said mournfully. “It’s just that you are
leaving.”
And he continued to sit there, gazing at me.

Luke visits several times, coming downstairs from his new job at
Arabia Felix
. It reminds me how much I miss him. He makes me laugh. As does Ali, who also comes in between editing stories. In my final days, I manage to talk Ali into staying at the
Observer
beyond my departure. He had planned to quit when I did. “I couldn’t survive this place without you,” he says. But I beg and plead. I tell him I can’t bear to see the paper descend immediately into chaos. I tell him that the women need him and that Zaid can’t edit. At last, in exchange for a hefty raise, he agrees to step into my shoes. Both Yemeni and a native English speaker, he is the ideal person to be editing the paper. I know he won’t last long, but at least I feel better about the paper’s next few months. “Write me,” I say. “Let me know if you need help with anything.”

Ali laughs. “You’ll get more e-mails than you could possibly want.”

AFTER LUNCH ONE AFTERNOON,
Zaid, Ali, and I are chatting in the newsroom about why tattoos will keep you out of heaven, as well as the Arabic words for bellybutton
(seera)
and monkey
(kird)
, when Zaid reaches into his black briefcase.

“I have something for you,” he says. He presses play on a small tape recorder, and I hear a familiar voice.

“I have seen quite a lot of progress over the few weeks I have been here … but I have a few recommendations as you go forward.”

It is the speech I gave to my class a year ago, at the end of my first trip to Yemen. It’s the voice of someone with answers, someone who knows a few simple steps to turn the paper around. Someone almost unrecognizable.

“… and I recommend that you create the position of assigning editor, or editor in chief…”
It is the voice of someone sentencing herself to a very interesting life.

The day of my first farewell dinner, I look around my office. The windows are tilted open, letting in cats and wind and fluttering curtains. I run my fingers across the dusty gray desk that used to be al-Asaadi’s. There is nothing particularly attractive or memorable in this room. Yet I will remember all of it. My wheeled blue chair. The dry-erase board across from my desk. The battered filing cabinet where I lock my wireless keyboard each night. I will remember the sound of men arguing in the hallway. The distant sound of prayer. The not-so distant sound of prayer. Radia and Enass’s voices, high-pitched with excitement. Their serious brown eyes peering over their
niqabs
. The Doctor screaming in the hallway.

I sit with myself. I can’t do this for long without crying, so I close my computer and pick up my gym bag, and lock my door behind me.

DESPITE MY NERVES,
the farewell dinner is lovely. Some fifty people come to bid me good-bye, including Bashir and Hassan, who arrive in suits; Ibrahim; and most of my women. Only Najma and Zuhra are forbidden by their families to come, even though I have arranged for the women to be seated in a separate room. Carolyn comes, as do my friend and fixer Sami, an American filmmaker, Shaima, Phil Boyle, and others. It’s a full table.

Most of my reporters come bearing gifts, wrapped in silver paper covered with hearts or red roses. Shaima and her friend Huda give me jewelry. Jabr and Zaki each bring me a spray of flowers tucked into crepe paper. Zaid gives me a pretty bracelet with a handwritten note.

I’ll always remember you, no matter what. I wrote this small poem for you last night. It was 3 o’clock in the morning and I hope you’ll like it. I wish you all the best and don’t worry about the paper.

I will try to hide my tear

I will try to give it a laug

You might leave Yemen
,

But you’ll never move a bit

Out of our hearts and minds
.

Zaid al-Alaya-a
your successor
Tue 3
A.M
.

Al-Asaadi fulfills a promise he made ten months ago and brings me the Yemeni raisins he claims are the best in the country. This perhaps touches me the most.

Faris is late. When he does finally come, he sits in the middle of the table, ignoring me. Despite the odds, I’ve been hoping that finally Faris will offer me a tidbit of recognition, throw me some crumb of acknowledgment that will somehow validate my year here.

I wait in vain, as I circle the table trying to talk with everyone individually and run in and out of the room where my women are dining without their
niqabs
. Everyone waits. My staff also expects Faris to say something. At least a few parting words. At least good-bye and good luck. That would give me an opening to say a few words of thanks to my staff.

But he does nothing. He sits there, complaining that the main course is too slow to arrive, and then leaves before the end of the night with a hasty “Thanks for the invitation” before practically running for the door.

I stand there in the emptying restaurant, feeling stunned. Just a few of us are left, as some of my male reporters have gone back to work, the women have curfews, and the expats have scampered to have drinks at someone’s house. They’ve invited me, but I’ve never felt less like a drink. Shaima and her friend Huda come around the table to comfort me. “He can’t even manage a
thank you?”
I say. I am so hurt that I can hardly speak properly. Shaima tries to console me, telling me that everyone else appreciates me, and isn’t it my reporters who matter? She is right, of course. My reporters are why I came, and they are why I stayed.

“It isn’t Faris’s nature to be thankful,” says one of the women. “You can’t take it personally.”

I look at them, so kind and concerned. I try to inhale their patience. They smell of frankincense. They smell of Yemen.

“Thank you,” I say, squeezing their hands. “I’m sorry to be so emotional.”

They go, and I head home for almost the last time, alone.

THE SECOND FAREWELL PARTY
is for people who drink. Phil Boyle from the British Embassy has generously consented to host and does a spectacular job of it. He places little bowls of nuts and chips on the tables and lines up bottles of wine in front of his liquor cabinet. “My farewell gift to you,” he says. He’s also filled an entire refrigerator with beer and sodas.

I wear a clingy fairy dress in sparkly green, in complete contrast to the modesty I’d demonstrated the night before. My hair is down, and I’m wearing lipstick the color of a stop sign. I’m heading back to the Western world, after all, so I must start to adjust!

Carolyn is the first to arrive, followed shortly by Tim, who comes without his wife. I perch on the arm of the sofa next to him, and we talk about my imminent trip to Jordan, as I have just gotten off the phone with a Jordanian friend who is helping me with arrangements. Tim asks me about my staff, but the second I start to talk about leaving, I am in tears.

“Sorry—we’ll change the subject,” he says kindly.

My oil worker friends arrive next, followed by a passel of other friends and neighbors, bearing food and drink. Just as the bulk of people begins arriving, Tim tells me he must leave early. He’s heading to Aden the next day. I’m sad to see him go. “But I’ll be back,” I tell him as I walk him to the door, where he kisses me chastely on each cheek. “I know I’ll be back.”

What happens next depends on whom you believe. I swear that Tim kisses me full on the lips before turning to go, but he is equally convinced that I am the one to kiss him.

“I was stunned all the way back to the house,” he says later. “I hadn’t thought you liked me like that. Like I liked you.”

I find it hard to focus on anything after that. Around eleven thirty, Phil taps on his glass to get everyone’s attention and gives a little speech, saying all the things I wished Faris had said, albeit with a wry British spin. He talks about how I have revolutionized the newspaper, turning it from a paper that was “a total rag” into one that is “just a little bit of a rag.” But perhaps the nicest thing he says is that I probably have “more Yemeni friends than anyone else here.” It’s so easy for expats to operate in their own social bubble, but I have striven to integrate myself with Yemenis. They
are
the reason I am here. Phil’s speech makes me feel, for a warm minute, that I’ve gotten something right.

THE NEXT DAY,
Thursday, August 30, is my last day of work. Tears stay close to the surface all day; I can barely hold myself together. Noor rings me in the morning to ensure that I am coming in and can edit her interview. I had stayed late at work the night before to edit Najma’s last piece before the party. She had sent me an emotional e-mail. “Please Jennifer, edit this yourself and make it a beautiful shape for me, don’t give it to anyone else to edit.” I honor their last wishes.

As a parting gift, I write recommendations for every single one of my staff members. I rather enjoy doing this, not just to help them, but to remind myself of just how far each one of them has come this year. Farouq now writes in English. Najma, who was unable to keep personal emotions out of her health stories and who had no idea how to incorporate studies into a real story, now is a capable health and science writer. Radia, who was a receptionist when I came, is now a novice reporter.

Noor and Najma come into my office together at the end of the day to say good-bye and to present me with a Yemeni purse woven from goat hair. None of us can speak for the tears. They just hug me, look at me with damp eyes, and hurry away. Even Jabr has to blink back tears as he shakes my hand good-bye. I am glad Zuhra has already left. I could not have handled all of the good-byes at once.