Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [48]
“My father died when I was ten.” This is the centerpiece of her story. It is the root of all of her pain, the beginning of her struggle, and the explanation for her loneliness. “I get depressed because I have an unbalanced life,” she says. “I have no men in my life.”
Her father, Sultan, lost his own father when he was twelve and took off alone for the southern port city of Aden, then part of South Yemen. He was a socialist, a revolutionary against the British, and a supporter of unification. In Aden, Zuhra told me, he arranged many secret meetings. Yet the details of this part of his life remain a mystery to her. After marrying and divorcing his cousin, Sultan met Zuhra’s mother, Sadira, a young teenager known for her beauty, who hailed from his home village of Ammar in Ibb Governorate. They married. But she became increasingly worried about her husband’s political activities and the safety of her family. After the first three children were born, the family moved north to Sana’a and Sultan took a job with the government water corporation.
Zuhra is the fifth of eight children, two of whom are dead. One was miscarried, and the other died in her first few years of life. The surviving six are tight. Zuhra worships her oldest brother, Fahmi, thirty-five, who lives in Brooklyn, and her sisters are her dearest friends. Their early life, Zuhra says, was idyllic. “My father treated us equally, girls and boys. He insisted that the younger respect the older, not that the girls have to respect the boys. Maybe for that we have some kind of problems in our life, because this was the way our father raised us. This is why we have trouble with the restrictions of society. He hates us to wear a veil.”
Because Sultan never had the chance to finish his own schooling, it was deeply important to him that his children receive an education. “He was desperate to make all of us study,” said Zuhra. “He wanted Fahmi to be a doctor. He was amazing. He really fight for us. To be educated. He was a very modern man.”
Nearly all of Zuhra’s siblings have a university education, except for Ghazal, who is still at school, and Shetha, who married young. But it was a condition of Shetha’s marriage that she be allowed to finish her studies. Sultan refused many suitors who came calling for his daughters’ hands. “He yelled at the suitors and said, ‘Are you crazy? They are too young! They must finish school!’” said Zuhra. “He was so protective, but not authoritarian.”
Everything fell apart when Sultan died from a heart attack while visiting his home village.
“He went to attend a funeral of my young cousin. Then he died there, alone,” said Zuhra. “He went there alone, and for lack of treatment—his brothers never got him to the hospital—he died. They lied and said our aunt died and that we had to come to the village. Then when we got there, all of us knew it was our father who died. He died without anyone next to him, even his brothers. It was really horrible.
“My mom, for twenty days she didn’t speak. She cried day and night. She did not sleep. We were all afraid that she will die. She knew that. She held on because she felt that the uncles might try to take the children, so she became strong. She and Fahmi.”
When Yemeni women and girls have no father or husband, their lives are handed over to their uncles or brothers. Women cannot be trusted with the reins of their own lives. This Yemeni emphasis on controlling and defending women is a result of the importance of sharaf (honor) in society. Nothing is more important to a Yemeni tribesman than his honor. Honor is communal as well as individual; when one man is shamed, his whole tribe is shamed. An assault on honor