Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [153]
Even my new business reporter Zaki is inconsolable. One day, I am working on the business page with him for one of my last issues, chastising him for forgetting to use quotation marks and to attribute important contentions. He also uses too much incomprehensible business jargon.
“You have to understand that politicians and government officials speak in bullshit,” I tell him. “It is your job to translate that bullshit into something anyone can understand.”
Zaki laughs but says that his story is meant for businesspeople, who are sure to understand this technical jargon. It’s his customary argument.
“Any story in a newspaper is a story for all people,” I say. “Business can be fascinating even to people not interested in business if you write it engagingly. The more complicated the story, the more important it is that you make it clear to your readers.”
Zaki looks at me, his eyes solemn behind his glasses.
“It will be bad when you go,” he says. “I learn so much working with you. No one else will help me like this. You have improved me so much.”
These conversations always make me feel like a traitor.
“But why do you have to leave?” my reporters ask me. “What are you going to do now?”
I have no answer for them. Perhaps I will find another country that needs a journalist trainer. I’ve noticed that an NGO in Sierra Leone is hiring, and I’ve sent in my résumé. How scary could Sierra Leone be after Yemen? The idea of being a journalist trainer to the world at large, moving from one chaotic country to the next, is rather exciting, too.
My only other prospect is the book proposal I’ve been putting together about my time here, which I am hoping to show a friend with a brilliant agent in New York. But I can’t pin my future to a pipe dream like a book contract.
Faris has finally agreed to give my reporters press IDs, which I’ve been requesting for eleven months, but this leads to new problems, because now everyone wants one. Hadi walks into my office one day and demands one.
“Why? You aren’t a reporter. They are for reporters, so they can get into government events.” Hadi’s duties don’t take him out of the office.
“I want one,” he says like a child demanding candy.
“But why do you need one?” I cannot imagine what use it could be to a designer.
“I just want one,” he says, pouting.
“Hadi, I am prepared to give you one if you can tell me why you need it.”
“I want one!” he says, stomping out of my office. “I want one!”
I sigh. Two more weeks, I think. Just two more weeks.
I INVITE TIM TORLOT to my first farewell party. It’s almost all staff, but several of my friends are coming, and I suppose I am looking for an excuse to see him again. He responds immediately. He’s terribly sorry, but he has a dinner engagement that night he cannot escape. But he adds how sorry he is that I am leaving and promises to call me before I depart.
I sit at my computer rereading this and finally respond that there’s a second farewell for me later that week, at my friend Phil’s house. Could he come to that one? He writes immediately that he could! He also says that he will see me even sooner, at his deputy’s house the following night, as we’re both invited to yet another (nonfarewell) party there.
The next evening, I am nervous as I dress in the black-and-gray sundress I’ve been wearing to parties for about seven years now. It’s a bit shabby around the edges, but I trust the lights will be dim.
At the party, I talk with a friend for a while on the porch, where Tim eventually joins us. My friend fades away and then there is just Tim, standing close to me, his pupils dilating into saucers. I have no idea what we talk about. The newspaper, probably. The vacation to Jordan, Beirut, and Ethiopia I am planning before returning to New York. Things he hopes to do in Yemen. But really, I have no idea. Everything that happens between us has nothing to do with words. I know his wife is somewhere in the room, but I am never introduced to her. I wonder why. Not that it matters.