Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [165]
I kept busy. Nothing seemed to settle in me. I read the news stories streaming onto the Internet, trying to make it sink in. BRITISH AMBASSADOR SURVIVES SUICIDE ATTACK, said one. Survives. The word sent a shudder through me. Survives. Meaning, he might not have.
Finally, I heard our gates clatter open at five minutes before five P.M. I slid sock-footed across the marble floor to the door. We waited until he was inside, away from the eyes of his Yemeni guards, before we embraced. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “But in five minutes the entire staff of the embassy is going to descend.”
We ran upstairs. Tim took Theadora from me and cradled her in his arms. “Hello sweetheart,” he said. “Looks like you’re stuck with me awhile longer.” We’d exchanged only a few words before the doorbell rang. When Joanna, the head of the UK Department for International Development, arrived, she apologized. “I got here early but was waiting outside, so you and Tim could have some time together, but then I saw everyone else coming in… . Did you get any time with him?”
“About a minute and a half?”
The rest of the evening was a blur. There was the meeting, at which Tim told the staff what had happened and announced some changes in security. There were drinks afterward, people lingering over beers and Tim’s famously strong gin and tonics. There were concerned hands patting my bare arms and a whirl of voices. At 6:30 I went upstairs, fed Theadora, and put her to bed. For the first time in two months, she went to sleep without a murmur.
Only hours later, when the last guests had left and the staff had gone home, were Tim and I at last alone together.
THE NEXT MORNING I was about to get into the shower when I looked out our bedroom window to see one of our bodyguards and his AK-47 sitting on a bench right next to Rahel and the baby. Rahel was reading a story to Theadora, who lay kicking on her playmat. The sight of my tiny daughter waving her green rattle at the foot of a man so heavily armed shook me. Dear god, in what kind of place am I raising my daughter? I ran downstairs.
When I got to the playmat I was suddenly unsure of what to say. “Please,” I said to Mohammed. “You are careful with the gun? I mean, I know you are. But I just want to make sure it wouldn’t go off accidentally? With the baby here? And Rahel?”
“Aiwa (yes),” he reassured me, smiling and moving the gun to the side of the bench. “Careful.”
“Okay.” I paused, feeling confused. I didn’t want to leave Theadora outside surrounded by men with guns. And I didn’t want to deprive her of fresh air and sunshine. And what if the house were attacked? I was trembling and nauseated. “Rahel? If the guards tell you to go inside, go inside, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will take care of her.”
A few minutes later, the rains began, and Rahel gathered the baby up to rush her inside. Only then could I relax enough to finally get into the shower.
Things had been getting worse for the last couple of years. Attacks on Westerners had escalated, and our movements around the country had become increasingly restricted. I was grateful I had done so much traveling on my own before I moved in with Tim and became subject to embassy regulations. Then in August 2009, when I was six-and-a-half months pregnant, I was held at gunpoint by eight Yemenis tribesmen while hiking with four other women. There’s nothing like having an AK-47 pointed at your head—a cocked AK-47—to make you re-evaluate your decision-making. I had been hiking all over Yemen for three years without incident. You don’t really think it can happen to you—until it does. We were fortunate to escape an extremely tense situation unharmed after swift intervention by the