Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [60]
“Can you tell me when the toilet will be functional?”
“There is no water in the entire building.”
“There will be no newspaper if something isn’t done about the Internet.”
“Am I ever going to get the key to open my desk drawers?”
ON OUR NEXT CLOSING DAY, Zuhra finishes her stories before three P.M. and makes her reluctant departure. It occurs to me that she should be the person I train to take over the paper when I leave. This is one of my main goals: to train a successor to carry on my work when I leave. But Zuhra is a woman and thus cannot stay late in the office (or, probably, command the respect of the men). It’s early to be thinking about my successor, but it could take the rest of the year to properly train someone.
At three A.M., we’re still working, although I am having trouble reading the words on the page. I give the last of the front-page stories to our designer Samir and am about to call it a wrap and escape when I see al-Asaadi typing away on the pages I have already finished. “I’m just moving a few stories,” he says. It turns out he has also rewritten several critical election headlines, none of which is grammatical. I am convinced he is only making these changes for the same reason a dog pees on lampposts. But I have no choice but to stay until he is done; my eyes must be the last to see the paper before it hits the printer. Sighing, I set down my bags and pick up the pages he has altered to do one last edit.
THE PREELECTION DAYS turn quickly into newsprint. I am now beginning to realize the peril of trying to change everything at once. I’ve been trying to get the paper on a schedule, hire staff, train reporters, edit the entire paper, write some pieces of my own, and earn the respect of my staff all at the same time. But despite my growing awareness of the impossibility of this task, I haven’t figured out yet how to do one thing at a time or what should come first.
I don’t have enough time to sit with my reporters as I rewrite their pieces and explain to them how to do better. So I am happy when I get all three health and science stories early enough in the last preelection issue not only to edit them but to discuss with Najma, Bashir, and Talha what is missing from each of them. Bashir, for one, wrote about the accelerating melting of the Arctic ice without mentioning two major studies just conducted by NASA. I am trying to get my reporters to read all of the background stories on a subject before they begin reporting the news. But they resist and don’t seem to understand why it is important. Farouq has flat-out refused, saying that he has his own reporting, so why does he need to know what everyone else is saying? When I explain that he can write a better story knowing the whole background, he simply tells me that I should read the background and fill it in myself.
Production has been slow this week, because every single staff member has had to take time off to care for a sick relative. Al-Asaadi’s mother has a snakebite on her foot that has turned into a cyst that won’t heal. Bashir’s mother is ill. Farouq’s brother is in the hospital. So is Hakim’s wife, who has stomach problems.
We are also burdened by a love letter that the minister of health has written to President Saleh for our last preelection issue. Faris insists that we put it in the paper, saying it will encourage other officials to talk to us and write for us. He also insists that it be on the back page, which he considers prime real estate. This is all communicated to me by al-Asaadi.
“I won’t do it,” I say. “Opinion does not belong on the back page.”
“You tell him that.” Al-Asaadi is unwilling to argue with Faris over anything.
I run upstairs and explain to Faris that an opinion piece belongs on the Op-Ed page, which is widely considered the most powerful page in a newspaper.
“That is not true here,” says Faris. “Here the back page is most important.”
“Really?”
“Arabic is read right to left. So Arabs will naturally turn first to what for you is the back page.”
This hadn’t occurred to me. “But we’re