Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [157]
This, it turns out, is exactly what happens.
During my three-week trip in September to see friends in Jordan, Lebanon, and Ethiopia—my victory lap of the region to celebrate surviving the past year—I find myself horribly homesick, for Yemen. I miss my gingerbread house. I miss the Old City at dusk. I miss my reporters. I miss Carolyn and Koosje. I find myself eager to get back to Sana’a, although I will have only three days there before flying to New York.
I’m obviously not ready to leave. But there’s no question of changing my ticket. I now have a meeting with an agent in New York; I have a free apartment and a large orange cat waiting for me to take care of them; and my family would kill me if I didn’t return. But I’ve started to think of the upcoming months in New York as a visit rather than a permanent move.
Going back to The Week does not even cross my mind. To return to that office would be to resume being someone I no longer am. What new challenges would there be for me there? The things I want to learn can’t be learned doing a comfy job in a comfy First World country. I need new cultures, new people, new languages. I couldn’t go back to a predictable work life. Having survived the hardest year of my life, I am suffused with a new sense of confidence. Got a difficult job in a chaotic country? Bring it on.
The Sierra Leone job looks good, if they decide to offer it to me. I haven’t spent much time in Africa, but I know I could handle the work. In fact, despite the myriad challenges of the Observer, the idea of training a whole new staff at a whole new newspaper is thrilling. It’s particularly alluring because I wouldn’t also have to be editor in chief. I could focus just on training. It sounds positively cushy.
I decide to give up my Manhattan apartment, which I’ve been subletting. While I have no idea where I’ll end up living, I know I am not done traveling. If I sell my book proposal, I’ll have to come back to Yemen anyway, at least for a few months to do research. How much fun it would be to live in Yemen while not running a newspaper! I’d get to travel more around the country, spend time with friends, and focus on Arabic. Most important, I’d have time to write.
Of course, I don’t have to decide just yet. These three weeks I spend traveling are supposed to be pure pleasure, pure respite, before plunging back into New York life and the decisions that await me there. But it’s tough to keep my brain from dwelling on these thoughts. It keeps trying to figure out how I could stay in Yemen a bit longer and how I could earn enough money to support myself while writing a book.
And then there’s Tim.
DURING MY TRIP, I strike up an unexpected correspondence with Tim. I first write to him from a dingy little Internet café in Amman, to thank him for attending my party and to tell him a bit about my visit to the spectacular ruins of Petra, where I spent three happy days climbing around ancient temples with bedouins. He writes back immediately and at length. Thus begins near-daily communication that continues the entire time I am gone.
Every night before I go to sleep in another strange bed, I write him about my day, and just about every night, I dream about him. Vivid, passionate dreams. I don’t understand it. I’ve never dreamed so much and so intensely about someone I hardly know. I dream that I go to his house. I have a piece of paper with notes on it, which I show him. We talk about these notes with great excitement. He is happy to see me. Then his wife comes in. At first she is kind and then sees right through me and realizes that I am in love with her husband. She looks at the notes I have written and she knows. Her face darkens. She begins to yell at me and at Tim, saying