The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen [Hardcover]

In 2006, Jennifer Steil was a successful journalist, working as senior editor of The Week, a fair-to-middling sized news magazine. She'd had some interesting reportorial adventures around the world and was on the cusp of settling down...and then she got the call. A friend wanted to know if she would be willing to relocate to Sana'a, capital city of Yemen, and train some reporter wannabes how to turn out a magazine. Steil jumps at the chance.

Remember now, we're talking Yemen, where women look like lampshades. This is not Dubai or Jordan, where you can at least get a martini after work. This is whole hog (you should pardon the expression) full tilt boogie Islam, heavy on the `slam.' Of course, we are going to have culture shock, and Steil knows how to make the most of it. She's funny, bright, never demeaning to her subjects, and keeps her fast-paced story moving right along.

First, she encounters the reportorial staff of The Yemen Observer. Their idea of news? Lets just say they prefer to err on the side of a good story and not let all those silly facts get in the way. Her team of would be Jimmy Olsons also confuses plagiarism with reportage. They change the facts to suit their own opinions. They misquote if they don't like a quote, or simply forgot to ask the right questions.

In addition to whipping The Gang that Couldn't Write Straight into shape, Steil finds herself dumped into one of the most conservative Arab countries on the planet. This is a place, as she says, where a typical excuse for skipping the morning editorial conference is "I have to pick up my machine gun and go defend my village." It's funny and hair-raising and, while Steil may take a few liberties with her facts as well, the book is not over the top and doesn't egregiously ridicule her staff, their country or its customs.

As a westerner (and western journalist, in particular), she has to develop self-censorship both professionally and personally. The Yemeni concept of Freedom of the Press isn't quite up there with John Peter Zenger's. In and out of the office, she must abide by Islamic law. Women are not second class citizens, they non-entities. If you think it's tough for a woman to crack the Glass Ceiling in the U.S., try doing it in a country where you're forced to dress like a tea table.

Invariably, Steil's students (mostly) become (somewhat) capable journalists, she is able to shed some of her own misconceptions, and Yemen itself is revealed as a beautiful and exotic (in the real sense of that word)conundrum. It's an ancient city where half the population wants to wear Commes de Garcon and the other half wants to stone them for it. Of course, what we come away with is that (outside of the fanatics, of which no country nor population is free), people are pretty much the same all over, no matter how odd we find their cultural and social practices (and vice versa). The book is jam packed with rich detail and well-drawn personalities, it sheds light on an unfamiliar society. AND it's a love story. For me, it just doesn't get any better.

Having lived for many years in the Arab countries and also read many travel narratives on the region, I was pleased to come across this account. I'm particularly interested in Yemen (because of the excellent Tim Mackintosh-Smith's books) but have never found an account written from the female perspective. Jennifer Steil's wrote this memoir of a year in Yemen heading up a local English-language newspaper. More than most expatriates, Steil came to know and have many friends in Yemeni society, and her accounts of her interactions show considerable openness to participating in a completely different social milieu. She also seems to have been very willing to use people as either journalistic material, lovers, or unpaid cooking staff. The lead in to the book was rather strange; I had to read it twice. First, there is the description of a wedding that actually took place towards the end of the narrative. Then, Steil dives into her arrival in Yemen, without explaining much about how she got there. Overall, I liked this book and Steil's spirit of adventure and was willing to overlook her various cultural gaffes, but when I got to the end and she poached another woman's husband and had her and her teenage daughter summarily kicked out of the country, the whole story felt rather tainted.

THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY: AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST'S ADVENTURES IN THE OLDEST CITY ON EARTH is the memoir of Jennifer Steil, a 37-year-old journalist who goes to Sana'a, Yemen in 2006 to teach a three-week crash course in journalism to the reporters of the YEMEN OBSERVER ... and ends up staying for a year. Her time there will change the course of her life and she meets a cast of wonderful, exasperating, funny, interesting, annoying, generous, stubborn, and complex characters.

Steil starts off with dreams of drastically transforming the struggling English-language newspaper into a well-written, well-oiled machine that could be a force for democracy in a country where freedom of the press is questionable. Shortly after embarking on this venture, she realizes that this goal is beyond her - or any single person's - reach, however the significant temporary changes she manages to implement during her tenure there and the drastic lasting impact she has on the skills and lives of her reporters are undeniable. This was a very enjoyable and enlightening read and one I would definitely recommend to friends - especially my female ones, though this is a book everyone can enjoy.

AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST IN YEMEN:
One of the most fascinating things about this book was reading about the country of Yemen and how one American woman experienced and observed it. Steil includes intriguing details about Yemeni life, gender relations, attitudes, beliefs, culture, habits, etc. There were also touching, memorable, and some very sad side stories that she relates, glimpses into the lives of different people she meets or learns about during her year there.

Additionally, it was interesting reading about certain current events (the maelstrom over the Danish cartoons, Saddam Hussein's execution) and comparing my experience of them here - with the American media and the American reactions - to Steil's experience of them in Yemen - with that country's media and that population's reactions. Other "exciting" events include Steil visiting a mostly-Somali refugee camp, having one of her co-workers tried and risk the death penalty for publishing an editorial, and being almost-sued by the Ministry of the Interior.

In trying to transform the YEMEN OBSERVER, Steil has to deal with different work ethics, conceptions of time and deadlines, and journalistic standards; a belief that plagiarism can be journalism and anything you find on the internet must be true; and poor (or nonexistent) English language and writing skills. However, we see the change that occurs in both the paper and the reporters and despite many obstacles that Steil has to deal with up until the end - her staff sometimes not being paid, her successor quiting anew every day, being told to retract certain articles or not cover certain topics - there is no doubt that her time and efforts were not in vain.

HUMOR GALORE:
It must be said that about the second half of the book has some of the funniest passages I've read in a long while; I was laughing out loud on *several* occasions. I'm sure you will react the same way, between the English mistakes (ex: the Ministry of Tourism is referred to as the Ministry of Terrorism), Steil being told to go through a dusty pile of x-rays when they can't find hers and "see if you can find one of ribs" (she's cracked hers), and the unbelievably hysterical episode that results from a surprise vibrator.

WOMEN, MEN, AND GENDER RELATIONS:
The differences between gender roles/relations in American and Yemen were sometimes fascinating, sometimes horrifying, and sometimes surprisingly nonexistent. The women reporters in this book were absolutely wonderful and I'll agree with Steil: they were my favorites too :-). I loved Zuhra (I'll admit I was thrown by a twist at the end) and wanted to cheer her, Adhara, Radia, Enass, Najma, and Noor as they become the "professional journalists" they aim to be. For me this was a window into a new world - and an eye-opening one at that.

NOT REALLY A LOVE STORY:
Steil remarks somewhat caustically midway through the book that it seems Yemeni men are as faithless as American ones, though instead of having secret mistresses they marry the other women they fall in love with; she then later becomes the girlfriend/lover/mistress/whatever of the married British Ambassador, Tim Torlot. This apparently caused an uproar and slight diplomatic crisis in Yemen, a country where adultery is punishable by death. I was not looking forward to reading about a love triangle in which the protagonist is "the other woman," however Torlot only comes on the scene at the way end of the book (perhaps the last 1/6, if even that), and so is not a central part of the story (which personally I preferred).

MISCELLANEOUS:
The story is written in vignette form, divided into twenty-four chapters and including an epilogue. ~ There is a beautiful poem at the beginning of the book: "she was a woman / who fell from the sky in robes / of dew / and became / a city". ~ On April 26, 2010, Ambassador Tim Torlot (now Steil's fiance) narrowly escaped an attempted assassination by a suicide bomber.
[This review is of an advanced copy format of the book]