Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [9]
Sabri rejected all the fish in the first shop, and we moved on to the second. A man in a bloodied apron held up a medium-size hammour and opened the gills for Sabri’s inspection. This fish passed muster and was placed in a plastic bag and handed over.
The next stop was a small, foul-smelling fish restaurant. We stepped through the doorway and Sabri handed our catch through a window to the kitchen, where it was split open, painted with red-orange spices, and shoved down into a deep, cylindrical oven. Men in stained aprons rushed platters back and forth to the small dining room, where tables of scrawny men (obesity was obviously not one of Yemen’s problems) were tearing off strips of bread and fish with their hands and stuffing them into their mouths. In the kitchen, other men stirred chunks of fish into orange sauces or kneaded bread into large disks to be roasted. In the back room, Sabri directed a worker in the preparation of a salsa (called zahawek) for the fish. Garlic, tomatoes, peppers, and a slab of white cheese were pushed through what looked like a hamburger grinder, and the resulting sauce was poured into a plastic bag. I stood in a corner, watching, trying to stay out of everyone’s way.
The white-clad, dagger-sporting men eating lunch stared at me, despite the fact that I was draped in black from head to toe, my hair covered. Their eyes made me feel like I had accidentally left the house in a sequined bikini. I had never felt quite so conspicuous. “Welcome to Yemen,” each said when he first caught sight of my pale blue eyes. “Where are you from?”
One bearded man told me he had lived in New York for two years, but he left because there were too many drugs on the street. Another man told me he was a neighbor of Sabri’s. A third man asked me if I had children and if I was married. They were so curious and excited to see me that you’d think Julia Roberts had walked in. Only these men probably had no idea who she was.
I said that I was married, and the men insisted that I have children. I promised to try. (Not only was I unmarried, but the thought of it terrified me. And at thirty-seven, I was still ambivalent about children.) Not a man in the place took his eyes off me until I turned to walk away. Maybe not even then.
Our fish at last was cooked, and Sabri collected it, along with bread and sauce. We headed out to a chorus of good-byes. “Ma’a salaama!” the men cried. “Welcome to our country!” Their attentions were flattering and sociable, but I was relieved to escape. There are no compunctions about staring in Yemen; none of the men are the least bit self-conscious about it. But for a woman to stare back was (I had read) ill-advised. This would be one of my greatest challenges. I am the kind of person who makes eye contact with strangers on the subway, flirts with men I meet on planes, and gives my phone number to random bus drivers. I can’t help it. But now I would have to help it. Being too social a butterfly was likely to get my wings singed.
BACK IN THE CAR, Sabri cranked up the air-conditioning although it didn’t feel very hot. Sana’a is so high and dry that the heat never really gets unbearable. The car filled with the scents of cumin, roasted fish, and bread. We headed to the fruit market, where we picked out mangoes, skinny Yemeni apples, oranges, and cigar-sized bananas. Sabri split open a fresh fig and offered it to me. It tasted refreshingly like grass.
I was beguiled by the mounds of pomegranates, which didn’t look anything like the small, red pomegranates I knew. These were enormous, yellow-green, and grapefruit sized, with just the faintest pink blush. I wanted to ask Sabri to get some but was afraid of looking greedy. Besides, pomegranates are terribly difficult to eat. The thought of peeling off all that tough skin and prying loose each little juicy seed was, at that particular moment, exhausting.
We stopped once more to pick up spiced saffron rice and headed home. I was relieved to return to the security of his