Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [28]
Operated by the British Embassy, the British Club draws an assortment of expats—diplomats, oil workers, development workers, teachers, and the odd journalist—desirous of escaping Yemeni prohibitions. It was relatively empty when we arrived. The World Cup was playing on television screens at either end of the room, and a scattering of Brits sat at the small tables with pints of forbidden beer. Beyond a long porch out back was a tennis court and a pool hidden by a row of shrubs.
Theo introduced me to the bartender, a slim, smiling Yemeni-Vietnamese man named Abdullah. My first—and likely only—Yemeni bartender! Theo ordered us a couple of Carlsbergs, which we had only just tasted when his French friends Sebastian and Alain arrived. Theo promptly abandoned me to go play tennis with them.
I didn’t care. I was just happy to sip my beer and amuse myself with strangers. The beer made me tipsy nearly immediately—a combination of the altitude and the fact that I hadn’t had time to eat. There were two men next to me at the bar, so I turned and asked them what they were doing in Yemen—thrilled to be able to talk to strange men without the risk of being thought a shameless harlot. Well, with slightly less of a risk of being thought a shameless harlot.
“Construction,” the man next to me said. “Embassy specialists.”
The two of them told me about the British embassies they’d built all over the world. We traded stories about our travels and love affairs. One man wore a wedding ring but was not married. The other was married but not wearing a ring. The ring wearer explained to me that a long time ago his Norwegian girlfriend gave him a wedding ring as a gift. When he left her and moved to Amsterdam, his jealous Dutch girlfriend bought him a second ring. And when he moved back to Britain, his British girlfriend bought him a third. He lost that one, so she bought a replacement ring, the one he still wore although he’d just broken up with her and sent her back to England. This is why I love bars. Maybe living here wouldn’t be so difficult after all, if there were oases like this one.
After a second beer, I joined Theo and his friends. The night was delicious, cool and breezy. Stars flickered on over the tennis courts. We ordered another round of beers and some fish curry. As we talked, it occurred to me that the last time Theo and I had spoken French together was in 1986, in a small classroom on the top of a hill in Vermont. And that if I had not been on that Vermont hilltop in 1986, I would not have been in Yemen some twenty years later. Interesting where one teenage romance can lead. Eventually the Frenchmen left, and I sat talking with Theo until long after dark.
I was surprised by Theo’s unabashed enthusiasm for my class. “They love you, you know,” he said. “Zaid told me, ‘Jennifer is the best American in the world.’”
“Really?”
“I was interviewing him for the article I wrote about you, and I wanted to move on to another subject, but he said, ‘No! I want to talk more about Jennifer!’ He asked me if he could marry you.”
“Isn’t Zaid already married?”
“Yes, but he wants to marry you too.”
“I don’t think I could get around the teeth.” Zaid’s teeth, like those of most Yemeni men I met, are stained dark brown with qat and tea and tobacco. Many Yemenis do not brush their teeth at all, though some chew on a stick called miswaak to clean their teeth. As a dental hygiene fetishist, I was horrified by the crumbling, putrid teeth and rotting mouths.
“Well, he loves you. They all love you. And it’s funny how the girls have taken you in. You’re like their leader now.”
“I love them, too.”
“I can’t tell you how happy they are with your work, how happy I am with what you are doing. I don’t know what I am going to do when you leave.”
This was a historic first. Theo had never, to my recollection,