Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [25]
AS THE DAYS PASSED, my relationships with my students grew warmer. When I arrived at work on my third day, Zaid met me at the door, wearing a long white thobe and jambiya, with a flash drive dangling from his neck. “Look, Jennifer!” he said, pointing to the jambiya and the flash drive. “I am both old-world and new-world!” He then followed me into the newsroom and bombarded me with questions about word definitions and how things were done in the West until my lesson began.
Now that we had all grown at ease with each other, I had no trouble getting anyone to speak up in class. They were so eager to tell me what they knew that they were continually interrupting each other.
The men often behaved like schoolboys, hiding each other’s shoes in wastebaskets, stealing each other’s chairs, and trying to one-up each other. They asked me things like “My lead was better than Zaid’s though, right? Mine was the best? Jennifer! Tell us who is the best!”
One morning, Qasim and Farouq would not stop taunting each other. Qasim dialed Farouq on his cell phone while holding it under the table, just to get Farouq in trouble for having his phone on in class—which I had strictly forbidden.
“That’s it,” I said, extending my open palm. “Hand them over.” Both men sheepishly handed me their phones, which I tucked into my purse. The women gazed at me in awe.
Qasim also handed me a television remote control that was lying on the table. “Great idea,” I said. “Now you can only talk if I am pointing this at you!”
This helped enormously.
Theo, to my surprise, turned out to be one of my most enthusiastic cheerleaders. Not only did he help me to steer classroom discussions in constructive directions, he also cooked me dinner most evenings and helped me to plan out my days. Life outside the Yemen Observer offices (what little there was) was rarely more relaxing than life inside them, given how unfamiliar everything remained. I had to negotiate fares with taxi drivers in Arabic several times a day, for one thing. Grocery shopping was still beyond me and I never saw women eating alone in restaurants, so I ate only when either Sabri or Theo fed me. There was no time for me to meet people outside of work. I wondered how single foreigners survived the seeming dearth of romantic possibilities.
AFTER CLASS ONE DAY, Zuhra, who was showing herself to be the most passionate of my reporters, asked me to sit and go through yet another story line by line. There were many corrections to be made, but she was learning quickly. Her questions had no end. She was a starving little plant and she thought I was the rain.
The office was empty; everyone else had gone home for lunch and a couple hours of qat-chewing. When we were finally finished, at close to three P.M. (too late for me to get to the pool before the evening class), she grasped my arm with both of her tiny hands and fixed me with fierce brown eyes. “Jennifer. You have to tell me. Please. Do you think I can do it? Can I be a journalist? A real journalist? I want to know, because this is the career I have chosen for myself and I want you to tell me if you think I can do it. So I am not wasting my time. I do not want to delude myself.”
“Zuhra. I have no question that you can do it. But—”
“But?” Her eyes grew anxious.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I don’t understand yet enough about you, enough about Yemen, to know your particular challenges. As a woman, I mean. Aren’t there things you are not allowed to do? Like, could you interview a man?”
“Not alone. My family would be upset. Maybe in a group?”
“Okay.” I thought. “Could you interview a man on the phone and over e-mail?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation. “But I cannot go out at night.”
“So you can work a day shift. This is something that can be worked