Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [103]
I’ve been lending the little I have quite a bit. Now that my debts are paid off and my lifestyle costs very little, I have a few dollars to play with. I’ve loaned Zuhra $200 this week, though she has already paid me back. And I had to buy Samir dinner last night because he hadn’t eaten. This is the first time in my life I have been able to do this, and it makes me happy. In New York, I could never buy anyone dinner.
I ask the Doctor to pay my whole staff, especially Manel, because he is leaving for Senegal, as well as my phone bill. I’ve made several international calls to report a story for Arabia Felix, and my phone bill is an unprecedented YR30,000 ($150). The Doctor refuses.
“But I only use this phone for work,” I say. “I made those long-distance calls for Arabia Felix, which didn’t pay me a single riyal for that feature story. If I have to fork out for the reporting that I did, you are essentially asking me to pay for the privilege of writing for Arabia Felix.”
The Doctor is unpersuadable. He tells me that the paper hasn’t been making money (of course it hasn’t—it hasn’t turned a profit since it launched, according to Faris) and thus there is no money to pay my staff. Manel will have to wait for his salary. Which is a whopping $300.
“Manel is leaving the country tomorrow,” I say. “You will pay him today!”
The Doctor tells me that I should stay out of financial matters, because they are none of my business.
“When my staff threatens to quit because they have not been paid, it is my business,” I say. “I do not expect anyone to work for free.”
Desperate to get Manel paid before he gets on a plane, I finally ring Faris.
Within minutes, he e-mails me back with one word: “Done.” Which is generally what he says when I ask him for something he thinks is reasonable. Sometimes this means he will immediately do what I want, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it means he just wants me to shut up.
But ten minutes later, Mas comes in to tell me my phone bill has been settled. An hour later, Manel has been paid. I guess the Doctor found some money. Now all I have to worry about is editing a paper.
I AM WEARY. I’m still not sleeping enough, and I wish that getting even basic things done around the paper didn’t require a full-scale battle. I’m also lonely. I’m without a roommate again and my nonstop schedule hasn’t allowed many social excursions. So when the cowboy Marvin (who had first stopped by my office months ago and has since become a friend) and his wife, Pearl, invite me to join them for a week in Soqotra later in the month, I accept immediately. It will still be work; Marvin wants me to write about his livestock program, and I imagine Soqotra will have other stories to offer. But I will get a break from Sana’a.
“Just make sure you arrange for everything to run smoothly while you are gone,” Faris says. Right. Like that has ever happened.
Jabr and Bashir try to hug me good-bye, but I won’t let them. “Why?” they complain.
“Because you’re Yemeni. And it’s not the sort of thing Yemenis ought to do.”
Really, it’s that Yemeni men interpret casual physical contact much differently than Western men do. Western men don’t think twice about being embraced by a woman, but a Yemeni man might immediately assume my morals were coming loose and that he could take advantage of this. I also refuse to hug my male reporters because I am scrupulous about leaving no room for misinterpretation of my relationship with them. Nothing is more important to me than maintaining this boundary and being taken seriously as a boss and a woman. I cannot bear the thought of them thinking of me sexually.
It already makes me uncomfortable that Jabr constantly proposes articles related to sex. He writes me reports on the increasing use of Viagra and other sexual stimulants, the rising popularity of pornography, the sexual side effects of Red Bull, and how young men and women are beginning