Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [15]
The classroom was plain but comfortable, like the building that housed it. While the three-story Yemen Observer office building, protected by high walls and a guard, was a less charming, more modern version of the Old City’s gingerbread houses (factory-made qamaria instead of handcrafted windows, simple stone instead of mud bricks), it still managed to be pretty. Filigrees of white wrought iron shielded the dozen or so arched front windows, and the large, sunny courtyard was draped with a canopy of grapevines. Three marble steps led to a spacious central hallway, where Enass, the newspaper’s zaftig secretary, served as gatekeeper. To the right was the newsroom, to the left the conference room I was using for my class. Upstairs was the office of the mysterious Faris al-Sanabani, whom I still hadn’t met, as well as the office of Arabia Felix, the glossy magazine he owned in addition to the Observer.
“So, why do we have a press anyway?” I asked, turning to my class. “What kind of role do you think it should play in society? Why is it important?” The hand holding the marker trembled slightly, and I lowered my arm to hide it.
Silence. I could hear the sound of water running outside in the courtyard, where a tall man was spraying the rows of flowering plants with a hose. Finally, a small pillar of rayon piped up.
“Press is the consciousness of the public.”
“Okay,” I said, turning to her with relief. “How?”
She leaned forward, releasing a sudden torrent of words that tumbled over each other in their hurry to leave her lips. “It is a judge without a court; its authority comes from people. Therefore, people have to respond to journalists; otherwise they hide the truth. Press people know that they are the mouthpiece of people. People do not understand that we are like messengers; our mission is to deliver the message. If we deliver the message, without any faults, protecting the message from being changed during the way, and hand it over to the right people, in the right manner, we are doing the best favor to people and to those who sent the message.”
She went on, without taking a breath, without even looking around her, the words flying out as if she had been waiting for someone to ask her this question for years. Her tiny hands stretched across the table, making rapid, birdlike gestures to give emphasis to her words.
“Life is a cycle. Each one of us has his or her part; if we are able to do that successfully, we will have a successful life. For example, how many nominees for the U.S. election fail because there are some journalists who reveal some truth about them? So, if there are not some good journalists, those people might win these posts and then make a damage to the country. Take the Abu Ghraib scandal as an example: If there were not good journalists to dig up the truth, no one would find out. After the journalists reveal that prison’s scandals, the role of the NGOs and others follows. It is like the players at the opening ceremony of the Olympics: Each one gives the other the torch until they light up the biggest torch. If someone fails, there will not be the Olympic torch.”
At last she took a breath, her eyes anxiously searching my face. For a moment, I was rendered speechless. Her classmates stared at her. Two of the men, Farouq and Qasim, began laughing.
“Hey,” said Theo, who in high school would have been laughing alongside of them, “we have to respect everyone’s opinion here if we’re going to learn. If you want us to listen to you, you have to listen to everyone else.”
“That’s right.” My mind was slightly eased by this reassurance that Theo was on my side. “Everyone’s opinion is equally valuable to me. I want to hear what all of you have to say.”
The men quieted down.
I turned to the woman I would quickly come to know as Zuhra and smiled at her.