Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [154]
It’s been a funny week. People keep coming into my office just to sit with me. Even Qasim came in the other day as I was closing an issue and just sat watching me.
“What can I do for you?” I inquired, figuring he had come in to try to pressure me into writing about an advertiser.
“Nothing,” he said mournfully. “It’s just that you are leaving.” And he continued to sit there, gazing at me.
Luke visits several times, coming downstairs from his new job at Arabia Felix. It reminds me how much I miss him. He makes me laugh. As does Ali, who also comes in between editing stories. In my final days, I manage to talk Ali into staying at the Observer beyond my departure. He had planned to quit when I did. “I couldn’t survive this place without you,” he says. But I beg and plead. I tell him I can’t bear to see the paper descend immediately into chaos. I tell him that the women need him and that Zaid can’t edit. At last, in exchange for a hefty raise, he agrees to step into my shoes. Both Yemeni and a native English speaker, he is the ideal person to be editing the paper. I know he won’t last long, but at least I feel better about the paper’s next few months. “Write me,” I say. “Let me know if you need help with anything.”
Ali laughs. “You’ll get more e-mails than you could possibly want.”
AFTER LUNCH ONE AFTERNOON, Zaid, Ali, and I are chatting in the newsroom about why tattoos will keep you out of heaven, as well as the Arabic words for bellybutton (seera) and monkey (kird), when Zaid reaches into his black briefcase.
“I have something for you,” he says. He presses play on a small tape recorder, and I hear a familiar voice.
“I have seen quite a lot of progress over the few weeks I have been here … but I have a few recommendations as you go forward.”
It is the speech I gave to my class a year ago, at the end of my first trip to Yemen. It’s the voice of someone with answers, someone who knows a few simple steps to turn the paper around. Someone almost unrecognizable.
“… and I recommend that you create the position of assigning editor, or editor in chief…” It is the voice of someone sentencing herself to a very interesting life.
The day of my first farewell dinner, I look around my office. The windows are tilted open, letting in cats and wind and fluttering curtains. I run my fingers across the dusty gray desk that used to be al-Asaadi’s. There is nothing particularly attractive or memorable in this room. Yet I will remember all of it. My wheeled blue chair. The dry-erase board across from my desk. The battered filing cabinet where I lock my wireless keyboard each night. I will remember the sound of men arguing in the hallway. The distant sound of prayer. The not-so distant sound of prayer. Radia and Enass’s voices, high-pitched with excitement. Their serious brown eyes peering over their niqabs. The Doctor screaming in the hallway.
I sit with myself. I can’t do this for long without crying, so I close my computer and pick up my gym bag, and lock my door behind me.
DESPITE MY NERVES, the farewell dinner is lovely. Some fifty people come to bid me good-bye, including Bashir and Hassan, who arrive in suits; Ibrahim; and most of my women. Only Najma and Zuhra are forbidden by their families to come, even though I have arranged for the women to be seated in a separate room. Carolyn comes, as do my friend and fixer Sami, an American filmmaker, Shaima, Phil Boyle, and others. It’s a full table.
Most of my reporters come bearing gifts, wrapped in silver paper covered with hearts or red roses. Shaima and her friend Huda give me jewelry. Jabr and Zaki each bring me a spray of flowers tucked into crepe paper. Zaid gives me a pretty bracelet with a handwritten note.
I’ll always remember you, no matter what. I wrote this small poem for you last night. It was 3 o’clock in the morning and I hope you’ll like it. I wish you all the best and don’t worry about the paper.