Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [146]
“I’d love to talk longer,” he whispers. “But I am supposed to be meeting all these people.”
“Right. Sorry! I’ll leave you to it then. I’ve got a few people to meet myself.”
“I’m ever so pleased to meet you. Here—I’ve even got my cards already.” He hands me one.
“How efficient. It took me three months to get mine. And now I’m out. But it’s terrific to meet you.” He takes my hand one last time, and I reluctantly release him to the queue.
Feeling slightly dizzy, I head to the bar. It takes forever to get there. Every person I have ever met in Yemen is at this party. There are close to a thousand guests. I feel like I end up talking to most of them.
But there is only one conversation I record in my journal.
TWENTY-TWO
pomegranate season
Zuhra comes flapping into my office one late spring day at twice her normal speed. “I got it!” she says, her smile so big I can see it through her niqab. “They gave it to me!”
“What?” I say. “Who gave what to you?”
“The embassy! The fellowship!”
“Which one?” Ever since Zuhra was rejected by Columbia, she has been madly applying for every fellowship that might take her out of the country.
“Your embassy!” Zuhra says. “They are sending me to America!”
“They are?” I hug her. She’s too excited to stand still and is bouncing on her toes as if her grubby sneakers have grown springs. “Zuhra, that’s fantastic news! Tell me about the program.”
The Near East and South Asia Undergraduate Exchange Program is offering Zuhra full tuition and living expenses at an American university for one semester. Zuhra already has an undergraduate degree, but this does not disqualify her. Besides, given what I know of the Yemeni education system, a bonus semester couldn’t hurt. The embassy won’t tell her the exact dates of travel or where she will be placed until later.
I’m thrilled, and relieved that I will not be leaving her behind when I go. How could I walk out of the Yemen Observer while she was still there? How could I leave her in the hands of Zaid, whose inability to fill my editorial shoes grows more apparent every day? We cross our fingers and hope she gets sent to New York, where I think I will be in autumn and where her oldest brother, Fahmi, lives. A friend of a friend has offered me a free apartment in Manhattan for two and a half months, which at least gives me somewhere to land and sort out my future. Zuhra and I talk about what she will need to take with her. “I need some long skirts and shirts!” she said. “Modest things.”
I laugh, because the things Zuhra ends up buying to go to the United States are the same things that I bought to come here. Because Yemeni women wear abayas over their outfits every day, many hardly own any modest clothing. Underneath those polyester sacks are usually tight T-shirts and jeans, nothing they would want men to see.
Packing up to go is easier now that I know Zuhra will also be leaving. Not that I’ve done much packing—I’m still working the same schedule and haven’t had time. Nothing about these last couple of months feels final. There is no gradual decline of workload, no slowing of pace. I work flat out until the day I walk out the door. Is there any other way to do it with a newspaper? Issues still have to be closed, on the same deadlines. There is little time for reflection and no easing of pressure. I feel a desperate need to experience as much as possible before I go.
Thus, when my friend Phil Boyle calls from the British Embassy to offer me an interview with Shahid Malik, parliamentary undersecretary of state for international development and Britain’s first Muslim minister, I jump at the chance. Malik is in town for just a couple of days, and Phil is offering interviews to only the Yemen Observer and an Arabic paper. “I’ll do it myself,” I say. I suppose by now I should trust my staff to interview ministers, but I want this one. Editors shouldn’t get too far away from reporting, I rationalize. I don’t want to forget how to do it.
So a little before six P.M.