Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [113]
“It will be destroyed.”
“Great, destroy it! That’s fine. But you can bring me the rest of the things, right? All the rest of it is legal? Because I am expecting some very important computer parts and medicine.” I am desperate for the rest of that package. My battery has been recalled, and Luke and I have been sharing a power cord for weeks.
“I don’t know,” says the customs man.
“Look, there is no reason why you can’t bring me things it is legal for me to receive. I want the rest of that package, okay?”
The man mumbles something and I hang up. I have a story to write after all, and I am on deadline. I push aside the unsettling conversation and go back to work.
Haleema Mohammed, 45, of Galkayo realized that staying in Somalia was no longer an option one unforgettable night in 1991, when she was forced to watch as her brothers were slaughtered in front of her eyes.
“Forty people were killed that night in Galkayo,” she said. “Five were my brothers.”
Mohammed, sitting in a tent at the al-Kharaz refugee camp in Yemen’s Lahej Governorate, speaks with calm stoicism, her gaze defiant and unwavering. Her eyes, which she says were black in Somalia, are now blue. They were bleached by Yemen’s merciless desert sun, she says….
I am deeply engrossed in my writing when Radia comes into my office and hands me a DHL slip. “Where is the package?” I say.
“No package.”
“No package?”
“No. At customs.”
Now I’m worried. Why would they drop off a package slip but no package? What are the customs agents planning to do with my things? What am I supposed to do?
“Radia,” I say, “I have to find that package.” I explain to her that something that was in the package offended the customs agents and that I told them to throw out that item and bring me the rest of it. I cannot see why this would be a problem.
“I will send a driver,” says Radia. “Salem can get it for you.”
But a few minutes later she is back in my office. “The Doctor won’t let us have a driver,” she says. “He says you should go.”
“I can’t go! I’m on deadline!” Not only do I have to finish writing my refugee story, I still have to edit the rest of the paper. Work on my story has already slowed me down.
Radia shrugs. “He says you have to go.”
The Doctor has been sulky and resentful ever since I forced him to pay my employees, which I must say I don’t think was an unreasonable request. “It’s a closing day! Tell him that if I have to go to the airport myself, the paper will close four hours later.” The Doctor hates it when we close late.
She disappears again.
When she leaves another reporter comes in to tell me that my phone bill is overdue. Sabafon has changed the amount of my bill four times in the past month, by wildly varying amounts. I have no idea how to tell which total is accurate.
I’m stewing over this when a series of reporters come into my office asking for my camera, which we use for almost every story now because the photographers rarely can be bothered to work. But I can’t give it to them, because I have two hundred photos of refugees in my camera. I can’t download them because my computer has no memory or battery left. “Go tell one of the photographers to do his job,” I say crossly.
Zuhra comes into my office, anxious to help, but I am so distraught I am almost inconsolable. “You need someone to do things for you,” she says. “Faris should hire someone just for you, so you don’t have to cope with all of these things.”
I manage a weak smile. “That is unlikely,” I say. “I can’t even get him to pay for business cards for my staff; forget an extra employee.”
Still, I run upstairs to ask Faris for help. I explain to him why I need a driver to go to the airport and fetch this package, which contains computer parts we need for work. The entire paper runs on my computer, after all. I don’t mention the vibrator. Faris promptly sends Salem off to the airport.
An hour later, Zuhra comes into my office looking anxious. “Salem is calling from customs. They need to know, the power cord that is in your package, is it