Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [23]
Still, there were moments when the size of the task overwhelmed me. I was expected to achieve something lasting during my short stay, but when I saw the stories my reporters wrote about my staged fight with Theo, that suddenly seemed impossible. Almost all lacked a coherent first sentence. Most got the facts wrong. And not one of them used anything approaching proper English. This last problem was not something I could fix. No matter how dedicated I was, I could not perfect the English of fifteen reporters in a few weeks. So I focused on what I could change: structure, reporting, and accuracy.
We began our second class by reading these pieces aloud. Here is Zaid’s, in its exuberant entirety.
It was very surprising for everybody to see Theo acting that way. The exchange that people heard between the two, Theo and Jennifer is anything but understood. Theo talking to Jennifer or let’s say quarreling with her over a fifty dollars that she owed him or he give it to her, we don’t exactly know. The quarrel heated a little and we all saw Theo snatching Jennifer’s purse and rushed outside after asking for her camera. What did he do with her purse outside we all didn’t know if really did something from her purse.
I myself was perplexed as I have never seen Theo in this manner especially with a nice woman like Jennifer. We all knew Theo very well. To him money is no object and will never quarrel over it with anybody specially those who are very close to him. Probably Jennifer is the last person who would quarrel with over it. She is the one who responded to his call and came to Yemen in order to train us. She left a dying grandfather and rushed to middle of a place she never knew about. She can never ever be treated this way. It was more of a joke I reckoned in second thought.
But when I looked deeply inside the eyes of the two I saw chemistry. I learned that they both were together in grade 11 and 12 and very competitive. So the whole thing happened between the two is Theo recollection of the memories that he terribly missed back in his school days that were brought back to his mind with the presence of Jennifer. Jennifer brought back all the sweet memories and things that Theo was craving. One could see that from the way he talks and the active attitude he took since the arrival of Jennifer.
Theo and I were laughing too hard to talk at first. “So,” I finally managed. “I see you’ve written an opinion piece. Or was that news analysis?”
After all, I had not told them what kind of news story to write. I wasn’t quite sure where to start.
“Um, Zaid, I guess I wasn’t looking for quite so much interpretation. I want to see all of you write a straightforward news lead, with that who, what, where, when, and how that we talked about. Tell us what happened without your personal views interfering with the action.”
Zaid nodded and wrote something down in his flowered notebook. (Yemeni men were quite comfortable carrying around notebooks festooned with flowers, hearts, or cartoon characters, something that charmed and amused me, given how macho their culture seemed from the outside.) I noticed a tape recorder on the table in front of him, its red light flashing.
“Zaid? Are you tape-recording me?”
“Yes!” He smiled. “I am going to memorize everything you tell us. I need to have it to refer to.”
“I see.” I was flattered, but now I’d have to watch what I said.
“Okay then, who is next? Let’s look at Arwa’s story.”
Arwa had written a newsier piece. “In her first class as a trainer in Yemen Observer, Jennifer’s camera is taken by Theo Panderos who work also as an editor of Arabia Felix magazine,” her story began.
This illustrated a few more of my challenges.