Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [135]
“There would be mutiny!”
“No, the men would thank you for it in the end.”
Oh really?
This lunch leaves me feeling even more relaxed. At last, I have someone willing to help me! At last, I can begin to shift a bit of my burden and begin to think about the future.
AT HOME, I’ve started building a family. My new Scottish housemate, Carolyn, whom I met at the Soqotra airport and who had originally planned to stay for just a month, moves in for the rest of my time in Yemen. This delights me, as I’m not eager to evict someone who does my laundry, occasionally cooks, and entertains me endlessly with her adventures following in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta and leading tour groups through Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Tashkent.
Just when I’ve settled into domestic life with Carolyn, my Dutch friend Koosje rings one morning while I am making coffee.
“Remember how you said that maybe I could live with you if I had to move out of my house?” she says.
“Yeees …”
“Well, I do actually have to move out. So, would it still be possible?”
“When?” I stir my coffee.
“Twenty minutes? I’m already packed.”
What can I do? I can’t leave a pretty blond Dutch girl to the streets. So half an hour later, I have a second housemate. They bookend me agewise; Carolyn is forty-nine and Koosje twenty-two. Koosje is an intern at UNHCR.
It surprises me to find that I love living with other people. For years I have thought I could only live alone. After all, I have lived alone quite happily for the better part of twelve years. Now I find I am a communal creature after all. I love coming home and sprawling in my mafraj with Carolyn or Koosje. I love the flurry of their comings and goings. I love that there are always other people around to help, say, fix the washing machine. Funny how you can get to thirty-eight and still find out so many new things about yourself.
We all get on famously, spending our free evenings lounging in our mafraj, talking over drinks. My friends are more diverse than ever before: Dutch students, German development workers, Ethiopian housecleaners, Kenyan consultants, and Yemeni economists. It occurs to me how insular my world was in the cosmopolitan city of New York. I could not have anticipated, for example, that it would be a Republican oil company executive from Texas, a man named Don, who would become one of my most loyal friends in Yemen.
OF COURSE, my life is never quite trouble free. Just when my reputation is beginning to recover from my little run-in with customs, it suffers a new insult. One Thursday afternoon, Floor rings. She has the alcohol left over from Kamaran; may she drop it off for the party we are throwing at my house that night? No problem, I say. Swing by the office. There are three bottles of whiskey and two of vodka, which clank suspiciously as I trot from Floor’s jeep back to my desk. I stuff them into my gym bag, which is sitting on a chair by the door, and go back to editing a front-page story.
A few minutes later, I hear a sharp clang, followed by the shattering of glass. My gym bag has thrown itself from its chair, as if offended at being asked to carry the contraband. I look up, horrified to see the spreading pool on my carpet. Immediately, my office smells like an Irish bar at closing time. I panic. I’ve wasted alcohol, in a dry country! I should be taken out back and shot. Worse, my door is open and any minute a reporter is going to walk in and step into a puddle of vodka. Just one bottle has broken, thank god. I vault over my desk and begin to frantically pick up the pieces of glass. I am grateful it wasn’t the whiskey.
I am still on the floor, my knees soaked in booze, when Qasim walks in.
“Dageega!” (One minute!), I say. “Law samaht, ureedo dageega.” (Please, I need one minute.) I wave my hand at him, trying to send him away, but he just walks all the way in and looks over my shoulder at the three bottles of whiskey I have just rescued from certain ruin.
“Oh!” he says.
I curse my ineptitude. Qasim leaves my office, probably to go tell Faris I’m a mad dipsomaniac bent on destroying