The Woman Who Fell from the Sky by Jennifer Steihl (Broadway Paperbacks)

When her old high school sweetheart persuades Jennifer Steihl to spend three weeks in Yemen’s capital city, Sana’a, as a volunteer journalism trainer at an English-language newspaper, she has no idea this will change her life. After all, she’s a fast-talking, flirtatious New York woman who is one of the founders of The Week and has been a senior editor there for the past five and a half years. Her life is successful and established, but when the owner of the Yemen Observer offers her the position of editor-in-chief, making $1500 a month at a newspaper where reporters’ salaries top out at $200, it takes her only a few months to give up her $60,000 a year position in Manhattan.

Steihl has succumbed to Sana’a’s 2500-year-old charm and she’s captivated by the Observer’s reporters, especially the young women who have taken a large step in becoming journalists. Her New York confidence keeps her from being quelled by the city streets that are filled almost exclusively with men, all of them wearing the traditional dagger, the jambiya. She’s done her research and knows that neither the abaya that obscures women’s bodies, nor the hijab that covers their heads, nor the niqab that veils their face is mandated by the government or the Qur’an. It’s a cultural practice, not a religious one, and the women who wear these shrouds usually are clad in jeans and t-shirts beneath the outer covering. The women she meets tell her the coverings are “a statement of identity, an important defense against men, and a source of freedom.”

Out of respect for the culture she’s immersed in, Steihl wears the hijab but forgoes the veil. Like Lawrence of Arabia, her blue eyes immediately brand her as an object of curiosity and the niqab would do nothing to forestall attention, even though it hides her pale skin. Without realizing it, she picks up a larger physical change within a matter of weeks. Her walk is transformed from a New York stride to a gait that prevents her hips from swinging and her face stares at the ground. Facing declarations of love each time she walks outdoors has taught her not to return a man’s gaze and she realizes she’s become “someone else” under unflagging public scrutiny.

Within the newsroom, she’s faced with deeper challenges. Although the men she works with treat her with deference, that, she knows, is because for them she’s not really a woman--she’s the human equivalent of a giraffe. The women reporters long to be recognized as professional journalists yet social restrictions keep them from interviewing men, until Steihl persuades them to work in pairs. The men use their freedom to prolong their daily lunches with bouts of chewing qat, a mild stimulant that’s an ingrained feature of Yemeni culture and is indulged in for a minimum of two hours.Although the reporters have all studied English and speak it with ease, their writing is lengthy, stilted, and subjective. Deadlines are a foreign concept and stories are often intended to bolster the government or enhance the status of advertisers. 

With fleeting episodes of a personal life, Steihl works twelve hours a day, six days a week, not only as the paper’s editor but still working as a trainer, while negotiating unforseen hurdles. Within her first two weeks she’s faced with “kidnappings, stampedes, and suicide bombings.This,” she decides, “is a news junkie’s paradise.” But within this paradise, one reporter refuses to cover a story because it could get him killed. When the Observer reprints three Danish cartoons, each obscured with a black X and placed next to an editorial that condemns them, Steihl’s Yemeni co-editor is briefly imprisoned and is on trial for ten months. The owner of the paper insists that opinion pieces should be placed on the back page because that’s the most important part of the paper. “Arabic is read right to left. So Arabs will naturally turn first to what for you is the back page.” Only by pointing out that the Observer is an English paper does Steihl retain an Op-Ed page in its customary place.

When her contract is up at the end of a year. Steihl is reluctant to leave Yemen. The story of how she is able to remain gives her work-laden life a romantic twist and provides a happy ending to a book that skillfully handles serious matters with a light touch. Jennifer Steihl is far from being Bridget Jones but her book wouldn’t be out of place on a sunny day at the beach.~Janet Brown