Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [93]
Despite their challenges, it doesn’t take long for me to realize that my women are the paper’s most reliable strength. While they have no more training than the men—indeed, often less—they have the requisite will. They are harder and more persistent workers than the men, and none of them chews qat or smokes. They arrive promptly and do not disappear for three or four hours during lunch. They either eat sandwiches in the back room or wait until they finish their work to go home and eat.
The discrepancy between male and female work ethics is not limited to the Yemen Observer. Friends who manage oil companies, NGOs, or embassies often rave to me about their female Yemeni employees and decry the sloth of the men. This is partly because the women don’t have the same sense of entitlement that the men do; they feel fortunate to have the opportunity to work. It is still unusual for women to work outside of the home in Yemen, and it takes a tough, driven woman to convince her family to allow her to pursue education and seek employment. By the time women get to the workplace, they are already seasoned fighters, whereas men are often handed jobs simply because of family connections.
Najma is lucky; her mother has always encouraged her to do what she wants. “And your father?” I ask. She hasn’t mentioned him. She waves a hand dismissively. “He’s not like my mother.”
But she still has to fight to prove to the men at the office that she is as capable as they are. In fact, she is quickly growing more capable, solely as a result of her determination. By late autumn, her Health and Science page is at last improving. One Saturday, she turns in a three-thousand-word breast cancer story. I had told her that the story must be at most a thousand words. “Most readers won’t read past five hundred,” I say. “Please make this a thousand words and then give it back to me. I want you to make the cuts yourself. And I need you to put the news up front. We are not producing a medical textbook; you can leave out these lengthy and technical medical explanations. What I want to know is, what is happening in Yemen? How many Yemeni women have breast cancer? And what treatments are available to them in Yemen? This is what our readers care about—not women worldwide.”
Najma looks at me as though I have just shot her mother.
“Okay,” she says bleakly.
“And I want it back before you leave today.”
Her eyes widen over her kheemaar.
“You can do it,” I say.
And she does. It takes her until nearly six P.M., working nonstop, but she does it. When she hands it back to me, it is twelve hundred words long (close enough) and she has reworked the structure and reporting exactly as I asked her to do. How far she has come! And Najma has found some real news, in that Yemen has just acquired its first clinic specializing in the treatment and prevention of breast cancer.
I am so proud of her! I thank her for staying late, and she tells me her mother is very upset with her. “Please tell her it’s my fault,” I say. “I promise to send you home early tomorrow.”
When I arrive the next morning, I make a beeline for her.
“Najma, I was really happy with your rewrite of your story. You did exactly what I wanted you to do. So shukrahn.”
Her eyes crinkle with happiness over her veil. That look is enough to make me think, Well, maybe I’ll try to survive another month.
I GIVE NAJMA her biggest challenge yet on World AIDS Day, celebrated on December 1, which hands us a news peg for writing an update on the progress of the disease in Yemen. This is Najma’s first attempt at tackling this subject, and I am curious to see how she will handle it.
This is how Najma begins her story:
A Muslim scholar has reached a result concluded by thought and study. AIDS is regarded as one of God’s strong