Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [81]
Al-Asaadi has traveled to England with Faris to attend the conference and has promised us a front-page story. The biggest news, that a total of $4.7 billion has been pledged, breaks on a closing day. This is a major increase over amounts pledged at previous donors’ conferences. Yemeni officials (and Faris) are euphoric.
But we hear nothing from al-Asaadi. All day, I edit the rest of the issue and wait for his news. We cannot run the issue without it; the donors’ conference is the biggest story in the country. By seven P.M., we have edited everything else. I grow anxious. Just in case, I tell al-Matari to start putting a story together from the wires and calling local officials for comment.
We are still waiting when Luke begins vomiting. He thinks it’s the pesticides on his qat. Pesticides illegal everywhere else in the world have a way of sneaking across Yemen’s borders and ending up on qat plants. Luke chews Yemeni quantities of qat and by deadline can hardly speak, his cheek is so packed with greenery. “He’s more Yemeni than most Yemenis,” Zuhra says.
I send him home. Manel, a twenty-four-year-old Senegalese-American I recently hired to share the copyediting, stays to help me. Manel speaks fluent Arabic, French, and English and brims with infectious good humor. His copyediting is patchier than Luke’s, but he has such a sunny attitude that his mere presence in the office inspires all of us. Handsome, with a lean wiry body and neatly cornrowed hair, Manel is particularly inspiring to the women in the office. But everyone loves Manel, who wouldn’t even know how to go about getting stressed out. I’m hoping some of his Zen will wear off on me.
I have already written several e-mails to al-Asaadi, asking him how the conference is going and when I will receive his copy. No reply. When the rest of the issue is done, I write again to tell him that if I don’t hear from him in the next half hour, I will have to run a wire story.
He rings me in response. “Zaid and I will have the story to you in a couple of hours,” he says.
“A couple of hours? Al-Asaadi, the rest of the issue is completely done! Please get it to me in the next hour.”
Our conversation is cut off just after that, and I get an e-mail from him that says, “I am the editor in chief, and if I tell you to hold the paper until I send you the story then you have to hold the paper. I don’t have to answer to you.”
Actually, I want to say, you do have to answer to me. It is in my contract that I am to have complete editorial control over this paper. Thus far, I have purposely avoided saying such a thing. I have never pulled rank on him, in an effort to preserve his dignity and our diplomatic relations.
Even Faris has warned me about al-Asaadi. “He doesn’t like it when anyone else gets too good,” he told me. The reason al-Asaadi has been sabotaging every issue, Faris believes, is that he can’t stand to see me get the paper on a schedule. To see me succeed where he failed.
I do not respond to his e-mail. I sit and stew, while Manel holds my hand and tries to keep me from erupting into flames. As it becomes clear why we are stuck in the office so late, my staff also grow impatient. It’s midnight by the time we get the story and photos from al-Asaadi. He fails to send me photo credits and doesn’t respond when I ask for them by e-mail. I am forced to run the photos without credit and send everyone home. I’ve been at work for twenty hours.
I indulge