Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [34]
We met in the morning and took a taxi together to the fish market to pick out lunch. A little nervous to be heading home with a complete stranger, but curious to get a glimpse of Yemeni home life, I wandered around taking photographs of children. I was fascinated by the little girls, the dirty little street princesses, their bright taffeta dresses streaked with grime.
Dr. al-Haj’s brother-in-law Khaled, sister Leila, and niece Chulud fetched us from the market in their car, and we drove to Dr. al-Haj’s home, a two-room apartment up a flight of stairs and across a rooftop. After we removed our shoes and stepped inside, Leila and Chulud immediately stripped off their abayas, emerging looking like two Western women. Chulud wore skintight blue jeans and a loose short-sleeved shirt over a black bra, like any American fifteen-year-old, while Leila wore a checked shirt over loose plaid pants. They took over the kitchen, while Dr. al-Haj settled me in the living room/dining area. The room was carpeted with oriental rugs and lined with sitting cushions. A TV hulked in the corner, blaring a Friday sermon. Khaled came in wearing his long white robe and switched the television to an American channel showing a swimsuit fashion show. “Amreekee!” he told me, smiling. I ought to have been grateful for some American television, so I smiled, though the reverse was true. I have never owned a television, I have no interest in fashion, and it made me uneasy to watch women in bathing suits in the company of Yemeni men. In fact, I’d become rather taken with this whole modesty thing. Why should I let a man who is not my lover see any part of me? I was getting used to hiding.
Dr. al-Haj disappeared for a moment and returned with a gift for me: a lovely woven bag stuffed with something soft. I opened it to find a long, silky abaya and matching scarf, with glittery flowers along the edges. I was overwhelmed by his generosity.
“So you will be safer,” he said, though I was already covered from tip to toe in loose black, so much so that when Dr. al-Haj saw me that morning, he had said, “Ah, so you are Yemeni now!”
“If you don’t like it you can throw it away,” he said. “And if it’s the wrong size I will buy you a new one.”
“I would never throw it away! I love it. Thank you. Shukrahn.”
The neighbors heard that I was visiting and came by to take a look at me. First came a little girl, dressed up like royalty in a frothy green dress. She was shy at first, and then impish, stealing someone’s cell phone and playing with it. Then three boys came in. Each one solemnly took my hand and greeted me, and then the third boy kissed me on each cheek and then once on the top of my head. If I lived here for a year, would I ever cease to be a curiosity? Or would I simply adjust to being an object of study?
When lunch was ready, Chulud carried each of the dishes into the room. “This is salatah,” she said. “This is roz. This is chobes. This is samak.” I nodded approvingly and repeated the Arabic words after her.
Dr. al-Haj took me to the kitchen to wash my hands, and then we began to eat. Yemenis are lightning-fast eaters, so it was hard for me to keep up. We started with the yogurt-drenched spongy bread called shafoot, pouring chopped salad and chili sauce on our little corners of it and picking up clumps with our hands. Then there were roasted vegetables, potatoes, flaky white fish (the best pieces of which were flung in front of me, the guest of honor), and bint al-sahn—“the daughter of the dish.” This was my favorite. It resembled an enormous flaky pancake, made with flour and butter and drizzled with honey. I ate until I could eat no more, despite the urging of my hosts. All of this we washed down with tiny glass cups of gingery tea. I could live with eating meals like this one every week.
Now that our stomachs were lined with