Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [47]
SEVEN
my yemeni shadow
Zuhra has adopted me. Never mind that she is twenty-three and I am technically old enough to be her mother. When she isn’t out running after a story, Zuhra is chronically at my elbow, asking me what I need. A back-page story? The telephone number of the foreign minister? Lunch? She’ll help me get it. When I head to the small grocery store at the end of our block in search of matches, milk, and peanuts, she won’t let me go until she has written me a shopping list in Arabic—even though I have become quite capable of asking for what I want in Arabic.
“Zuhra, I already have a mother!” I protest. “Really, I can manage.”
“Motherhood is a feeling,” she says. “It is not an age.”
When other people try to take me tea or walk me to the sandwich shop, she bristles. “You are my Jennifer,” she says. “I want to be the one to take care of you.”
All of my women must be home well before dark, and so their work day ends earlier than the men’s, at one P.M. But this stretches later and later throughout the year, until the women only rarely leave before three P.M. and sometimes stay until five P.M. It makes Zuhra anxious that she has to leave me alone at night, especially when I am closing an issue. She wants to be there to help me. When I arrive at work the day after my first endless close, Zuhra is waiting. “I can stay with you until three P.M.!” she announces with as much excitement as someone who has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
It is a long time before I truly understand how much it means to Zuhra to be in the office of the Yemen Observer at all, a long time before I understand her improbable journey to me.
The other reporters tease her for her possessiveness and call her Jennifer’s Shadow. She is certainly dressed for the role. Her sisters, she tells me later, also tease her about her newfound passion for work. “When are you and Jennifer getting married?” they ask. It takes Zuhra months to tell me this, because she is afraid I will think they are implying I am a lesbian and that I will be offended.
She is just as energetic about chasing stories as she is about following me around. While Noor and Najma are timid about leaving the office and cling to each other for support, Zuhra often waltzes off on her own. She takes the dabaabs (small buses) around town, walks, or cajoles a friend into giving her a ride. When I am at a loss for a back-page story, Zuhra always finds one. Rummaging around in the back alleys of Old Sana’a, she comes up with, say, a story on the demise of Yemeni lanterns called fanous, which are being replaced by electric lights. Zuhra’s story-shopping in the souqs of Old Sana’a also results in pieces on jewelry and fashion fads, the persistence of the illegal trade in rhinoceros-horn jambiyas, and the increasing popularity of Indian goods over Yemeni products.
She is even better at finding front-page stories. I like to have a minimum of five on every front page, and this always involves a lot of last-minute scrambling. When I need hard news, Zuhra heads to the courts. Or to the streets. Or to anywhere she can find a bit of news to bring triumphantly back to me.
I FIND OUT Zuhra’s personal story gradually. Not until late fall, when she and I are curled up in my mafraj looking over her essays for an application to graduate school, do I finally piece together the general outline of her life. This is a different Zuhra than the little black shadow who trails me around the office. In an aqua jogging suit with her hair in a ponytail, she looks like any Western girl kicking back at home on a weekend afternoon. I try not to stare. Though I’ve seen her a few times without the abaya and veil, I’m still not used to seeing the contours of her body, the strands of hair falling across her dark eyes.
We sit side by side on my red and gold cushions as the late afternoon sun streams through