Undercover Muslim Page 6

  Within the hour, the qat chewers’ patience with the outside world would have faded a bit, and after the first hour, the patience and the chewers themselves were gone. If a foreigner or a non-qat-chewer approached to ask a question, the journalist would open his mouth and stare, like someone on the verge of a seizure.

  There wasn’t much you could do then except breathe in the odour of mown grass and silage that poured from the mouth of the chewer, and repeat your question.

  Probably, on balance, qat did help produce the newspaper. It brought on bouts of sustained concentration. From time to time, it brought the journalists out of the newsroom to spit, to drink water and to curse the gatekeeper, Obadi, who was a good-hearted countryman whom everyone loved. Out in the cool of the evening air, the reporters collected their thoughts, chatted with each other, refuelled on qat, and smoked. When they returned to their computers, they focused like fiercely bright graduate students sitting an exam. This drug-induced concentration was the only way anything ever got done.

  By three in the morning, news was being written. If the president had addressed a military college – and usually he had – a gloss of his remarks appeared on the front page. Everything the fisheries minister had announced, and some parts of some of the announcements that had been made by the planning ministry, appeared on the inside pages. A handful of college students from America and the UK, under Gabriel’s supervision, tried to clean up the inscrutable Arab bureaucratese in which the Yemeni journalists – who were really not journalists, but ex-English-language students from the local university – wrote.

  Usually by dawn, though sometimes not until twelve the next day, the staff had produced an object that bore a physical resemblance to a conventional Western newspaper. It didn’t at all read like one, but legible or not, every production felt like – and in some ways really was – a triumph of the human spirit. Hours before there had been qat. And fish bones in the courtyard and cursing. Now black marks – not quite news, not quite English – had appeared on white newsprint. Plus photographs. A rough kind of justice had been done to the president’s speech, the fisheries minister, and to the planners at their ministry. Probably, they had got what they deserved.

  When the disks had been dispatched to the printers, the staff spilled outside, into the bright sunshine of Thursday morning. They blinked and yawned. On their way out of the gate, they bid the security guard good morning and he returned their greeting. Their voices had the thickened, swaggering tone of athletes who’d pulled off yet another unlikely victory.

  9

  IT WAS A stroke of luck for an ex-English-teacher like me to happen on an institution like this. Technically, the journalists wrote in English but often their sentences were so long, so arabesque and so filled with ten-part terms translated directly from the Arabic that the sentences were, to all intents, still in Arabic. The bigger, underlying problem of our newspaper was that the sentences hadn’t meant much in their original language. When they were rendered into English, they meant less. Native English speakers stared at the major stories of the week as if the journalists had produced a cubist word collage. The point? The point? they wondered. My instinct was to help. But every sentence had been written in the same mood of vagueness, passivity, and zero information content. How to help with that?

  I found out later that all Arab newspapers read this way, even when they’re written in Arabic – especially when they’re written in Arabic – and that this is because journalism in the Middle East is a low-status profession, whose employees are too little equipped (poor education, no budgets, no institutional and little popular support) to confront the always multifaceted, always shifting facts on the ground. But I didn’t know this then. I knew – because I was an overconfident American ex-teacher of people with drug problems – that I could offer some well-meaning words of advice. I decided that I would follow the twelve steps. First, the people would have to admit that they had a problem. After that, they would have to acknowledge a superior power, namely intelligible writing, after which they would have to renounce ongoing mistakes and correct those that could be corrected and so on, and so on, through to the final stage of adapting a new code of conduct.

  One evening, I took a walk with the most fluent, confident English speaker at the newspaper. I meant to kick this ‘twelve steps to better journalism’ programme into high gear.

  ‘Look, Zaid,’ I said when we were out in the street, by ourselves. ‘We’re friends, right?’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘So I can offer some constructive criticism?’

  ‘You are welcome,’ he said.

  ‘Those first five or six sentences in your article this week – they’re too long – they’re like mazes, Zaid. They mess with the reader’s head.’ He stared at me. ‘Go easy on this reader, man,’ I said. ‘Give the poor guy a break. Put the most important stuff first. Start with a bold statement. Then use examples. Example, example, example. New statement.’ We were standing beneath a street light. His eyes darkened. The glow of the lamp made his skin look yellow.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘In journalism, they value directness. No ceremonies. Just give the customer the goods. It doesn’t mean you can’t be poetical, Zaid. You can be, my brother.’ I told him that the best writers in America had been journalists first, before they were anything else: Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Walt Whitman. ‘Whitman was very direct and yet poetical as hell: “Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.” What could be more direct and poetical than that?’ My lecture was carrying me away a bit. ‘If I stop ten seconds with you, I’m in ten mazes. Every sentence leads nowhere. Every sentence leads everywhere. Why do you do this?’

  I paused. I smiled. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. His eyes glinted. ‘You know what I’m talking about, right?’ He craned his neck and squinted at me out of the corner of his eye as if I were a stranger.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Are you laughing at me? Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I’m just trying to help,’ I said. ‘Constructive criticism.’

  He thought about that for a moment. ‘What the fuck?’ he said. ‘Can you write in Arabic? Can you come close in Arabic language on your best day to what I do from myself in English language on my worst?’

  ‘No, Zaid,’ I said.

  ‘No, of course no,’ he said. ‘So you should … quiet your mouth.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Piss off,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to come to the store with me. I can buy cigarettes on my own.’ Without smiling, or even looking at me, he hailed a cab, climbed in, and was gone.

  In my cab on my way home, I thought about the incident. I had ruined things with Zaid – maybe not for ever, but for now. The argument had flared up from nowhere, over nothing. I hadn’t even broached the bigger issue, which was that there was no news, not a hint, but rather drivel from the information ministry, in his article. How to bring that up? I didn’t know.

  I did know, and this episode confirmed, that collaborating with Zaid – and with the other journalists, too, for that matter – was going to require a delicate touch. Perhaps, I thought, the journalists were not as eager to be enlisted in my twelve-step programme as I’d imagined. It also occurred to me that the difficulties I was having winning over my colleagues were nothing in comparison to the real goal: influencing Yemeni public opinion. The Yemeni public didn’t read English, nor, for that matter, did it go in much for newspapers at all.

  The next morning Zaid greeted me in the newspaper courtyard. His attitude towards me made me wonder, at first, if I had arrived in the right courtyard. Was this the right Zaid?

  ‘Theo, the American,’ he exclaimed. ‘From my eyes,’ he said, ‘if there’s anything I can do for you, I will do it.’ He touched the fingertips of his right hand against his right eyelid and then pulled them away as if he was plucking a flower of truth from the inner regions of his brain. ‘From my eyes and from the top of my head, from my
legs and my hands – anything. I will do it. I love you! I’m going to try riding your bike,’ he announced, and pulled it from my hands.

  He pedalled around the courtyard to the amusement of Obadi, the guard. He got off. He kissed me on the cheek. ‘You’re the best American we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘Best foreigner, period.’ He turned to Obadi and, gesturing at me with his elbow, announced: ‘What a teacher this man is! He can teach me anything, any time he likes. A poet! That’s what he is. An American poet! Were you really a teacher in America? Would you do a class for us? Walt Whitman! Dead Poets Society! Anything you like you can teach. We will learn. In exchange, I’ll teach you Arabic. Deal? Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, slightly dazed, but happy.

  From this episode I concluded that, as a teacher, I was mixing around in a cocktail of volatile emotions: love and hate, envy and admiration, curiosity and contempt. I concluded that it was an unexamined, occasionally dangerous mixture and that it did not want my interference. Zaid was charming and he wanted to do well in my eyes. That’s why he had come on the walk with me in the first place. That’s why he wanted me to teach him about Walt Whitman.

  One thing neither Zaid nor anyone else at the newspaper, for that matter, wanted from me was deeper expertise in journalism. Their work was good as it was: they were being paid. They were employed. They were improving their English. Perhaps, in due course, they could move to a better-paying job at a cellphone company, an embassy or an oil company. The well-born children of Yemen never bothered with a newspaper. They went straight to where the money and the connections were.

  In the wake of this incident, I thought to myself: perhaps I can allow Zaid to continue teaching me. The reverse arrangement, which had seemed like an urgent idea once, was now less urgent. Furthermore, it wasn’t working. Furthermore, it was endangering the little influence I had over my colleagues, which came entirely from their affection for me.

  Later on that day, to cement our newfound fraternal feelings, Zaid gave me a CD on which a Sana’a oud player sang songs about love. ‘This is the best way to learn Arabic,’ he said. ‘Listen every day. Learn to sing these songs and you will become Yemeni. This singer’ – he tapped the CD case – ‘is our teacher, too.’

  I put the CD tracks on my iPod. It turned out that Abdul Rahman al-Akhfash sang about temptresses, about men being tortured by love, forbidden love, and the way the wind in Sana’a whispered to lovers, confusing them, inspiring them, and seducing them. I tried to memorise the lyrics.

  Random people helped me. The taxi drivers, qat sellers and waiters knew the lyrics well and prompted me when I forgot.

  Sometimes, when I found myself in a convivial place – a friendly restaurant or qat market – I repeated what I had learned out loud, and as I did, bystanders crowded round. ‘A wind is rattling the door of my house. The rattling makes me think my lover has come,’ I sang to them and immediately everyone knew who I was quoting, and burst into laughter. ‘Who is rattling really?’ they asked me. ‘Is it Abdul Rahman al-Akhfash?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. Should I check?’

  ‘Yes! Check!’ they said, slapping their thighs and burying their faces in the backs of their friends to hide their mirth.

  ‘More! Bravo aleyk!’ they called out. ‘More! What else does Abdul Rahman al-Akhfash say? Sing!’ I produced more lyrics. Often I had only the vaguest idea of what I was saying, but at this time I was delighted to be saying anything in Arabic.

  Of all the songs on that album, the one about the wind battering the door of a mountain cabin seemed to have the most resonance with my audience of waiters, cab drivers, and bored newspaper journalists. I couldn’t quite understand what the song was about – something to do with a man listening to the wind while waiting for his lover – but it had a pretty melody and was therefore easy to learn. Bringing out lines from the song in conversation was like bringing out a secret password that opened the hearts of the meanest taxi drivers and the most sour qat sellers. Suddenly the fare cost nothing; suddenly people were trying to give me bags of their expensive drugs.

  10

  IN MY FIRST months as an employee of the newspaper, I felt I had stumbled into an Arabian Alice in Wonderland. All the employees were minor variations on the theme of Zaid: they were all loving, brotherly and, as journalists, indifferent to Western standards. Maybe they were wise to be so. Anyway, they were intensely proud of themselves. Most of them had bad drug habits. They were proud of this, too, but not in front of the boss. If Faris turned up as they were chewing qat – and he did turn up every day as they were chewing qat – a look of shame and panic passed through their eyes. ‘Still chewing qat!’ Faris would shout. ‘Donkeys!’ He would turn to a secretary. ‘Bring me tea!’ A black form with a slit over her eyes would rise to fetch tea.

  When he had ensconced himself in his office, the reporters would pull their qat from their pockets and devour more leaves, in a quicker, more desperate rhythm as if only additional quantities of stimulant could make them feel better again. ‘Qat makes you strong,’ they would say. ‘Hiya! Chew!’ Then, later in the evening as the sadness that qat brings on hit them, they would murmur to each other and to me, ‘It’s too expensive these days. Everyone is addicted. Qat is ruining Yemen. We are already bankrupt. Now things are getting worse.’

  * * *

  As an employee of the government newspaper, I did want to fight for the country. If I squinted at the crowds in the streets, and tried to focus on the big picture, which I often did, I could see things in a sunnier light. Yes, there were farm animals marching down the pavements, even in the diplomatic neighbourhood, and sewage coursing through the lanes in the poorer ones, and rednecks from the countryside crowding the banks and the restaurants. Preachers, not a few of whom were charlatans, bellowed from the minarets.

  And so? In the 1840s, when democracy was taking root in America, we had had similar problems: a sea of faith, unscrupulous politicians, and sewage – which led to cholera epidemics – in the streets. Our pavements too had been crowded by farm animals.

  In America, at that time, a grand, forward-looking political movement, namely democracy, had risen from this chaos. It grew strong partly because every city had a scrappy newspaper, filled with scrappy journalists who worked for nothing but had good intentions and probably also had a wonderful time writing up the news.

  With thoughts of the fledgling American democracy in mind, I threw myself into the work. I went to meetings, press conferences and rallies at the journalist union for oppressed journalists. I wrote articles about everything that seemed urgent: street children, micro-finance projects, disease outbreaks, fires, and new forms of cooperation between the Yemeni government and Western NGOs.

  I paid special attention to the American ambassador since his words carried a lot of weight with the Yemeni government officials who were our bosses.

  I did not mention that most American diplomats were too frightened to leave the embassy compound. I did write what the ambassador said to me in our interview: that while Washington was committed to helping the reformers in Yemen, Washington also felt that there was much work to be done in Yemen. The American government, he said, would be a lender, a donor and a partner, especially in the war on terrorism, provided Yemen helped itself.

  Faris noticed that I liked my work. He allowed me to write whatever I liked. To pass the time he put me in charge of the tourist magazine. I went on trips around the countryside and wrote cheerful articles about tourists, castles and the undiscovered island of Socotra, where the inhabitants lived in caves and hunted for honey in the forests.

  As I wrote, I felt good about my work, though there were signs that the reality of the newspaper was not as I supposed it to be. Many of the signs were easy to ignore but some were not.

  For instance, I found it odd that in a newspaper whose purpose was to push for a fairer, more modern, more Western society, the journalists, most of whom were young men, were not paid enough to accomplish the one
thing they really longed for in life, namely marriage. They made about $200 a month – enough to keep them in a state of dependence and sexual blockage.

  Other things were odd. I found it strange that no one was really in charge of editorial content. Every week, each one of five full-time journalists pulled the paper in a different editorial direction. When the Canadian editor asserted his will, he pulled or tried to pull the paper in a sixth. Employees came and went, not really hired, never fired. Mistakes were made. No one was held accountable. Everyone knew that Faris was the real boss but he preferred to let the institution drift like a ghost ship. Why?

  It also seemed strange to me that our newspaper was printed in English. The illiteracy rate in Arabic in Yemen was about 50 per cent, and higher among the women. Only a tiny fraction of the population could read English. The newspaper did appear at the kiosks but I never once saw an actual Yemeni reading it.

  One evening as Faris and I were rolling through the streets in his Mercedes sedan, he happened to mention that he was spending $80,000 a month to produce the newspaper. This can’t be, I thought. The brideless reporters, their $200 a month salaries, the hungry street children tapping on the windows of the car whenever it slowed – and we were spending $80,000 a month for a newspaper no one read? What was the point? Why?

  By far the most important monthly event that occurred at our newspaper was the unveiling of our tourism articles. In our glossy magazine supplement, French, Italian and German tourists trekked through faraway mountain villages. They admired precipices and waterfalls. When the articles were ready to be published, Faris’s friends from the presidential palace came to review them. They arrived in BMWs and Lexuses, often with armed guards following in jeeps and Land Cruisers. As the VIPs filed into our office, the guards milled about in the courtyard, saying nothing but keeping a close eye on their Kalashnikovs.