Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [68]
I ask her if there is really no contact at all between men and women before marriage. “Oh, everyone here is in a relationship,” she says. “They are just underground. Like people everywhere, they find a way.”
“What kind of relationship?”
“Like by texting. People have relationships by texts or by e-mail. Or they Bluetooth each other.”
This intrigues me. I wonder if Shaima has such a relationship, but she assures me she doesn’t.
WE START THE IFTAR MEAL with dates, of course. Then comes shafoot with salad, and sambosas filled with vegetables and cheese. Shaima has made the whole meal vegetarian on my account, which touches me. No one seems to mind—there is such a vast amount of food. After shafoot, they go one by one to pray before eating the rest of the meal.
Shaima serves us bowls of Ramadan soup, which is made from coarsely ground wheat, milk, and onions. “High in fiber,” Nada tells me.
I am already getting full. But there are still roasted vegetables with cheese, couscous and yogurt, and several breads. I keep protesting they are feeding me too much. Yet somehow, when Shaima brings out the crème caramel, I manage to squeeze it in.
Desi interrogates me in a friendly fashion. He’s very interested to hear everything about my life and work. I’m curious about him, because of the other woman. He makes us Italian coffee after dinner, and he and Nada compete to see whose coffee I like better—Nada’s Yemeni or his Italian. I pick Nada’s in solidarity.
After dinner, he heads to work teaching English. The rest of us have just retired to the living room when all of the power goes off. This happens every day during Ramadan, often for hours at a time. Nada is on her feet in a shot. “Ola will cry,” she says. “She hates this.”
Sure enough, a second later we hear a wail from upstairs, where the girls are playing. I dig a flashlight out of my purse for Nada, who runs upstairs to fetch the girls. Once they join us, Mumina starts to dance. She is wearing a long, pink princess dress with spaghetti straps. Ola, who is wee at a mere one and a half, dances with her, making me want to kidnap them both for my own.
I HAVEN’T BEEN in my new house for a week when I slip on my uneven stone stairs and crack two ribs. I am carrying my computer in my arms, and when I fall my only thought is protecting it. My ribs catch the edge of the stone step so hard that I cannot move for nearly half an hour. I lie sprawled between my kitchen and the second floor, stunned with pain, thinking that it might be a good idea to have a roommate. Someone to call the ambulance. Were there any ambulances. At last, I roll onto all fours and crawl up the stairs to bed. There’s nothing to be done about a rib anyway, even if it is broken. I take four ibuprofen and try to sleep on my left side.
This puts an end to my swimming for several months. Every time I try—which, given my obsession with exercise, I often do—there is such searing pain in my ribs that I end up in tears. How on earth will I cope if I cannot swim to release stress? I walk to work every morning, but it is not enough to ease the strangling amount of tension that builds up in me each day.
It doesn’t help that I’ve been suffering from a flulike Yemeni virus for more than two weeks. Al-Asaadi and I have been sneezing so much we finally conclude we’re allergic to each other. I’ve already had to make one trip to the hospital, and I am not keen to make another.
I keep thinking that I should go out on my days off, or call someone, or try to meet new people, but I am just too tired and sick to do anything. Hope begins to desert me. I worry I will never be healthy, never be without pain, never get the newspaper on a schedule, never teach my reporters anything. Work is an unending struggle. Reporters are constantly missing, our Internet connection