Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [169]
Tim, Theadora, and I are now happily ensconced in a (much smaller) new home in London. Though as I write, almost all of our belongings arestill in Yemen. Since the parcel bombs mailed from Yemen were intercepted, the UK has refused to accept air freight from Yemen. Including all of our worldly goods.
I miss Yemen every day. I miss its beauty, I miss the openness of the people, and I miss my former reporters, who write to me regularly on Face-book. Zuhra and I send each other long letters and photographs of our children. I still hope that someday it will be safe enough to take Theadora back there. I want her to see the country where her parents met and where she was first imagined.
Only occasionally do I read newspaper articles on Yemen. It’s pointless, as no one ever gets it right. No major newspaper has a full-time correspondent actually based in the country, so most stories are written by reporters parachuted into Sana’a for just a few days.
After running a newspaper in Yemen for a year, I was only just getting to grips with where to find information and which sources to trust. It’s not a country a reporter can figure out in a flying visit. So I don’t trust anything I read. The only way to stand a chance of knowing what is really going on in Yemen is to be there.
And even then the truth is elusive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JENNIFER F. STEIL spent a year as editor of the Yemen Observer, a twice-weekly English-language newspaper published in Sana’a, Yemen. Before moving to Yemen in 2006, Steil was a senior editor at The Week, which she helped to launch in 2001. She has also worked as an editor at Playgirl and Folio and as a reporter at several newspapers. Her work has appeared in Time, Life, Good Housekeeping, and Woman’s Day. Steil has an MS in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in London with her fiancé, Tim Torlot, and their daughter.