Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [31]
“I’ve only just realized this since you’ve come here,” said Theo a few days later. “But this entire nation has ADD. This is their central problem; this is why nothing gets done.”
THE NEXT DAY’S CLASS focused just on leads. I needed to do something small and focused with them; it was too difficult to fix entire stories. If they could get just that first sentence of the story right, the rest would follow—I hoped. We went over everyone’s leads, critiquing and rewriting them until they were perfect. Or at least printable. I gave them the last fifteen minutes of class to interview me and told them their assignment was to write a lead and three paragraphs based on their interview. They’d been very curious about me and were thrilled to have permission to quiz me. They asked me where I lived, whether I was married, where I had worked before Yemen, what I thought of them, what I thought of Yemen, and who was the best student (this from Zaid). I warned them that I might lie and said that they should investigate me on the Internet, to make sure I really am who I say I am and have done the things I say I have done.
They proved a little too good at this. That night, as I was halfway through dinner, Theo texted me. Apparently my students had discovered (via Google’s image search) scores of photos of me in cocktail dresses at New York media parties. It had not occurred to me that they might find things I would rather keep concealed. I immediately panicked, worried they would think less of me after having seen me in lipstick and a low-cut cocktail dress, holding a glass of wine. I rang Theo immediately after dinner, and he assured me that they still loved me.
“For my brains?” I asked fretfully.
“Of course for your brains,” he said. “What else could they love?”
WHEN I WALKED into the newsroom the next morning, Zaid was sitting there gazing at a photo of me that he had installed as his desktop. In it, I had an arm draped around my photographer friend David, and I was smiling through my hair, which was loose and tumbling down to my waist. I was relieved, however, to see that only David was holding a beer. I immediately apologized for my scanty outfit and the fact that I had an arm around a man, but Zaid said, “Jennifer, I lived with an American family for three years! You don’t need to explain these things to me. We understand.”
“I just don’t want you to get a poor impression of me,” I said.
“Never! We love you! We just think you are beautiful, these are beautiful,” he said, gesturing to the photos.
The women, Zuhra and Arwa, said the same thing. I relaxed slightly.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I was updating Faris on my activities with his staff when he asked if I would be willing to report on a conference on democracy in the Arab world at the Mövenpick Hotel across town. I could write a story about democratic progress in the region for Arabia Felix, he said. Before I had time to think about it, or suggest that perhaps democracy in the Arab world was a bit broad for one magazine piece, a van arrived to sweep me off to the hotel, along with Adel, who became my translator.
We spent six hours at the hotel, interviewing professors, writers, and politicians from Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Exhausted from sprinting after interviewees and translating my questions, Adel begged for a rest. “Not until we have enough for a story,” I said. By the end of the day, we had plenty. I was most excited about interviewing Iraqi parliament member Safia al-Souhail, as I was curious to hear her views on the situation in Iraq.
“People think that it’s the Americans who are foisting ideas of women’s rights and human rights on Iraqis,” she told me. “This is not true. Iraqi women have been fighting for these things for a generation. I have always dressed like this.” She gestured to her yellow pantsuit.
She was surprisingly optimistic about Iraq’s future. The turmoil and bloodshed there