Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [151]
Noor works on me next, greasing and powdering each of my wrists and hands before sticking my hands into plastic bags and tying the ends tightly around my wrists.
“How long do I have to keep these on?” Losing the use of my hands and fingers makes me mildly panicky.
“At least an hour.”
“An hour!”
“But you really should leave them on all night.”
“All night!” I am invited to a dinner party later, and I don’t think I’ll want to attend with plastic mittens dangling from my arms.
When at last we’re finished, we wait for Rasha, the bride, to emerge from one of the back rooms, where she has been suffering body waxing in preparation for her wedding. Yemeni women take everything off—leg hair, arm hair, pubic hair, everything.
It’s been hours since we got here, and we’re growing restless. The girls and women around me began to whoop and clap, prompting Rasha finally to begin her slow progress down the hall to a chair that has been set up for her. She wears a dress of gold lace and a gold tulle veil over a black ski-mask kind of hat. Once again I regret not being able to take a photo. Her eyes are very serious.
I stand around with the other women a while, clapping and attempting the distinctive Yemeni ululation, before pulling on my shirt over my plastic-bag-wrapped arms. I can only ululate for so long before tedium overwhelms me. Najma and I share a taxi. I ask about her family’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, and she says that they hope to do umrah to Mecca. “I love this place,” she says passionately. “I cannot tell you how much I love it.” I ask about what she will be doing there, if it will be mostly praying. She said yes, mostly praying. “I pray to my God for things,” she says.
“Like?”
“I pray to him for a good husband,” she says, laughing.
TWENTY-THREE
she’s leaving home
Zuhra hasn’t even left yet, and already I miss her. She is suddenly very busy, with all kinds of visa interviews, doctors’ checkups, and shopping for her trip to America. We still don’t know when she will leave, and I am in a panic at the thought of going even a couple of weeks without her. Whenever I am short of stories on a closing day, Zuhra says, “I will find you one.” And she does. Luke said that on the rare occasions I am gone from the office, she takes over control of the copy flow, running around with a chart of stories and bossing people.
Now Zuhra is preoccupied with her own problems. Once the thrill of receiving the fellowship has dimmed, she starts to worry about her family. She will not be able to travel to the United States unless she gets permission from her male relatives. It never occurred to me that she might not be able to go. I feel sick at the thought of anyone keeping her from this opportunity.
Strategically, she first tells Fahmi, her eldest brother who lives in New York. Fahmi is the most westernized and open-minded of her siblings and is utterly devoted to his little sister. He is thrilled and promises to speak on her behalf to her other brother. Aziz, who still lives with Zuhra in Yemen, is initially resistant.
“I am afraid that if they say no I will lose a chance,” Zuhra frets, rocking back and forth on her sneakers. “If I don’t go, I might not be given a fellowship again.”
Zuhra had thought she’d be sent to Washington, DC, because the administration of the fellowship program is there. Her family fretted about the safety of the city, but Fahmi worked hard to reassure them. “It’s safer than Yemen,” he told them. Then she found she was being sent to Mississippi, and no one knew quite what to think about that.
At last, Aziz relents. “He was only afraid that I would be alone in the U.S.,” Zuhra says. “But Fahmi convinced him after long discussion that I would be okay and that he would take responsibility for me.”
Amazingly, Zuhra, who has never been on an airplane or spent a night away from