Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [27]
“So people can appreciate you for your brains and not your beauty?” I said.
She laughed. “Yes. But there is more. I can talk to you for hours about the hijab if you would like.”
“I would!”
“Careful!” said Arwa. “She can talk to you forever about the hijab!”
“She can talk to you forever about anything,” said Enass.
“That’s okay,” I said. “There’s an awful lot I need to know.”
THREE
an invitation
Faris summoned me to his office a few days later. He had given me a copy of a long, dull, and confusing interview he did with a man from USAID and wanted me to critique it. I hardly knew where to begin; there was so little clarity or interest in the piece. I would never have let it run.
I dragged my feet up the stairs. Sleep deprivation and information overload were sapping my strength. Little pieces of cultural knowledge and news and Arabic were continually escaping from my head and scattering about me on the ground. I was exhausted from constantly trying to pick them all up and stuff them back in. It’s only three weeks, I told myself. It’s not forever.
I staggered into Faris’s office, where he welcomed me with a broad smile, waving me to a chair. “Tell me,” he said without preamble. “Tell me what you think of this interview.”
I perched on the edge of my chair and pressed my palms against his desktop. “Now, it’s okay for me to be totally honest with you?” Exhaustion tends to vaporize my ability to speak anything but the naked truth. I didn’t have the energy to coddle him.
He spread out his arms again. “Totally honest. This is what I want.”
I took a breath. Why was I scared? It wasn’t like he was really my boss or anything. He wasn’t even paying me! “Your lead …” I pointed it out on the paper spread between us. “It says nothing.” And we went on from there. I had nearly twenty pages of notes and took his story apart piece by piece and told him how to make it better. To his credit, he never got defensive and expressed deep gratitude for my help, so I relaxed as we carried on.
The interview really contained several stories, so we talked about how the information could be better reported and organized. He nodded and said he understood. But every time I explained anything to my students, they would say the same thing, regardless of whether they truly got it. But I was grateful for the chance to spend time with Faris so that he could get an idea of the kinds of things I was telling his staff and perhaps help to carry on my ideas after I left.
Looking back, it’s incredible that I was ever that naïve.
THEO RESCUED ME from work that night and took me to the British Club, a bar next door to the British ambassador’s residence in the upscale Hadda neighborhood, where most diplomats live. I’d hardly been anywhere outside of the Yemen Observer offices, and the mere prospect of encountering a pint glass and perhaps a native English speaker filled me with wild euphoria. We caught a cab down a long dusty road past neon-lighted supermarkets, travel agencies, furniture stores, spice markets, and bright windows displaying pyramids of honey jars.
The taxi turned left at an anomalous Baskin-Robbins creamery and dropped us off at a black-and-yellow-striped concrete barrier. Men in blue army fatigues clutching AK-47s stood around on street corners and at the gates of walled mansions along the street. Just beyond the British Club, I could see the Union Jack flying over a massive green building. As we approached the large black gates on our left, a small window flew open and a Yemeni man peered out. Theo flashed his membership card and the gate swung open to admit us to—a miracle!—a bar.
The warm scent of stale beer and fried food greeted me as we walked in, and I inhaled deeply. I love bars, everything about them. Though I am not a big drinker, I love the community, the chance for unexpected encounters, the eclectic mix of people. In New York, I spent nearly