Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [80]
“How do I get you out?” This is a serious question. I wonder if I should pay the fine myself, so that we can take him back to the paper with us. But I don’t have enough riyals on me. Where the hell is Faris?
“I will be out in a little while, after we make the guarantee. Go back to the paper and get the story online.”
“Of course. Zuhra is on it. Do you need money?”
“No, not now.”
“Well, I can get you some if you need it.”
“Thank you.”
I find Zuhra and try to take her to the van, but she keeps spotting new sources to tackle. We are about to make it out of the gate when she sees one of the men who want us dead.
“There’s one of the fanatics!” she cries, recognizing a man she met in court before. “I have to get a quote!” I watch her flap away, bursting with pride.
Finally, we all pile into the van to go back to the paper. Zuhra and I decide that it will be fastest to write the story together. She has all of the quotes from the judge and other sources, and I have descriptions of the proceedings and quotes from al-Asaadi. We run to my office, and Zuhra pulls a chair up to my desk. We send someone out for tea.
“Have you had breakfast?” I said.
“No.”
“Eat this. We can’t have you falling over before deadline.” I hand her an energy bar, a package of peanuts, and a parcel of toast from my secret food drawer.
We are a good team, working fast and efficiently, me typing, Zuhra reading and translating her notes for me. Our story is online within an hour—and we are the first to break the news, beating Reuters, Agence-France Presse, and the BBC.
I am very pleased and flushed with manic energy. Zuhra and I high-five each other and toast ourselves with sugary tea.
Ibrahim calls in the afternoon to congratulate me. “It was so brilliant, so professional, and you even got a quote from a fanatic!” he says.
“That’s all Zuhra,” I say. “She did all the real reporting.”
“I called al-Asaadi to tell him what a wonderful job you did.”
“You did?”
“I said, ‘She even mentioned your tie!’”
“Well, it was a very nice tie!”
Al-Asaadi sends me a text later to thank me for my support and the story. I glow with happiness.
OF COURSE, our busy morning means that we fall behind with the rest of the paper. So, feeling quite like Sisyphus, I put my shoulder to the stone and begin, slowly, to roll it back up the hill.
TWELVE
tug-of-war
Unfortunately, the solidarity al-Asaadi and I experience during our day in court is short-lived. Now that we have been reprieved, we resume our slowly escalating power struggle. I’ve tried my utmost to avoid conflict, but it’s hard when al-Asaadi refuses to acknowledge deadlines. By now, I’ve realized that the first thing I need to achieve is a proper schedule. Not until I get the paper moving in an orderly way, with pages coming in at predictable times and issues closing on time, will I be able to turn my attention to the development of my staff’s journalistic skills.
By December, the only thing standing between me and a regular schedule is al-Asaadi. The rest of my reporters now turn in their pieces on time, so we could close every issue by eight P.M. But al-Asaadi purposely withholds his stories until the last minute and drags out our closes for hours. To make a point, Luke and I finish absolutely every page, send everyone else home, and ring al-Asaadi to tell him we are just twiddling our thumbs waiting for his story, which is the last thing we need in order to close. This has little effect. Al-Asaadi still refuses to come to the office before eight P.M. on a closing day. He doesn’t seem to care that he is holding us all hostage. Thursdays are particularly bad, because he spends all afternoon chewing qat with his friends and is reluctant to come to the office at all. When he gets there, he is so wired that he is perfectly happy to stay up all night—and keep us up with him—closing the paper.
Things come to a head during the Consultative Group for Yemen’s donors’ conference in London, held to encourage foreign aid to Yemen. Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, but it