Now I feel her slipping away. Her whole being leaves, floats toward serenity and beyond. The wet gurgle in her chest goes quiet, and the nurse, taking her vitals for the last time, covers her head with a blank sheet.
“It’s over,” she tells me.
On my way out, I feel Yameelah’s spirit atomize into particles and soar over my head like a flock of birds.
“Ego te absolvo!” I shout into the air. “In the name of your God and mine, I absolve you, Yameelah! You’re forgiven, rest in peace!”
Zahra Bayda strokes my head, ruffles my hair, and tells me to keep it together; if I’m going to stay here, I have to understand that these things happen. I ask her whether this means I can stay.
She says that Pau, the head of the mission, has agreed to offer me lodging while I’m in Yemen, and that I can work for them in exchange for food and shelter. I’ll have to be available for whatever is needed, whether that’s transporting drums of water or gasoline in the SUV or helping with cleaning or grocery shopping, and maybe, little by little, also with the psychological support of women and children; people liked the way I handled Yameelah’s confession, and I suppose that’s really why they’ve decided to let me stay and be put to the test. I accept these terms immediately, it’s a good deal as anexchange for the chance to learn about this place and take notes for my thesis. I also offer to keep a written record of daily events. This sounds pretty useless to Zahra Bayda, but also harmless, so she assents, and the arrangement is made.
I’m given the same room as the night before, in what’s referred to as the house of expats. Expats, the expatriated, are the part of the medical personnel that comes from abroad and takes up residence here to offer reinforcements to local staff. I’m told the labor isn’t always easy; the most radical Islamic tribes are wary of anything or anyone Western, including doctors, engineers, artists, and humanitarian workers. There’s no shortage of problems. A couple of years ago two team members were kidnapped, and it took the support of international governments and institutions to get them released. You have to be careful about avoiding threats, and the highways are always dangerous.
The house of expats has only what’s strictly necessary, and it’s as clean and orderly as the house of the Three Bears. It’s housed up to ten expats at a time, but right now there are only four more or less permanent ones: Zahra Bayda, who is Somali; Pau, a Catalan; Olivia, Irish; and a Mexican doctor who’s roaming far off these days. They’re all in tight quarters in this miniature Tower of Babel where each person speaks their own language and everyone communicates in English. Because mine is the tiny room that lets out onto the patio, everyone else has to walk through it to get to the bathroom, and it’s not like I can hang aDO NOT DISTURBsign on the door, like in hotels. But my housemates are discreet, they’re careful not to wake me in the middle of the night, and in the end the situation is more uncomfortable for them than it is for me. Men and women sleep separately so as not to scandalize the Yemeni population, who keep close tabs on everything that happens in the house.
“This way of living has a bit of Big Brother about it,” says Olivia, the Irish pediatrician with short purple hair.
Days pass, and I remain here, cradled in this everyday domesticityin the midst of chaos. The expats are used to a routine as ascetic as the one I had at the monastery, with one difference: Here hell isn’t a question of doctrine; here hell is real and spreading just outside the door. The team does what it can to help the local people survive tragedy and endure the passing of days. There are never enough doctors or nurses, and even though they break their backs working around the clock, for every sick or wounded person they manage to attend to, ten are left without care.
I ask Zahra Bayda: Isn’t this unending work demoralizing, given the scope of the disaster? and she replies with a story. It’s about a father and a small son who go to a beach and find it carpeted by thousands of sea stars the tide has cast out of the water. They’re going to dry out and die, the father says. The boy picks up one of the sea stars, throws it back to the water, and says, Not this one.
After thinking about it for a while, I confess to Zahra Bayda that I find her lovely parable of dying stars unconvincing.
“I do too, if I’m honest,” she says. “But it’s all we’ve got.”
It’s all we’ve got: In the face of failures and scarcities that can’t be solved, Zahra Bayda repeatedly speaks those words, a thought to hold on to, to keep from succumbing to a jadedness or despondency that would lead to inaction. “It’s all we’ve got,” says Zahra Bayda, but she redoubles her efforts to try to make it so we have a little more.
Pau, the head of the mission, a Catalan man around forty years old, a specialist in infectious diseases, is curt and abrasive but not altogether hostile, though he is bossy to the extreme. He tells me tomorrow is Zahra Bayda’s birthday, and we’re going to celebrate with a dinner Leyla will prepare. The official cook is Pau himself—an intriguing combination, head of mission and cook—but, for this party, he’s placed Leyla in charge of a Yemeni feast.
I’m struck by this Leyla, the way she moves through the house as a silent, incredibly discreet presence. I haven’t seen her face, nobody here has seen it because she covers everything with a veil except her eyes, which blink like a pair of prisoners watching the worldbetween the bars of their cell. It’s explained to me that Leyla belongs to one of the clans that forbid women to show even a centimeter of skin, and for that reason she wears black from head to toe, even over her hands, which are always gloved.
“She doesn’t even remove her gloves to clean?” I ask.
There are things she only does when no men are home. The women tell me that, in front of them, she unfurls. She frees herself of the gloves, hitches her abaya up to her knees, and mops the floor barefoot. Among women, she doesn’t mind. Olivia, the pediatrician, tells me that one day she walked in on Leyla washing her hair with the patio hose, and she assures me that she didn’t know such extraordinary hair could exist, a black silk curtain (her words) never seen before, literally never seen, always hidden beneath the hijab. It seems incredible to Olivia that such a slight, short woman could have such a great cascade of hair, that it must consume all her lean body’s energies. It’s interesting that this fascination with Leyla’s long dark hair should come from Olivia, who wears her own hair shorn and purple. Me, I’ll confess that women’s hair is my weakness, and I like it all the different ways, whether biblical like Leyla’s or punk like Olivia’s.
Today the quiet Leyla appears at the house with a basket full of tomatoes, onion, parsley, and other fragrant herbs, and she shuts herself into the kitchen to prepare tomorrow’s dinner. I hint to Pau that it would be a shame not to accompany such a meal with wine.
No way, wine is out of the question, alcohol is forbidden in Yemen. The expats speak in euphemisms: They say the Black Turban’s watchful eye monitors the house, and though it tolerates the presence of MSF, because it admits to the essential nature of medical care—through gritted teeth—it does not approve of foreign doctors behaving outside the norm. Phantasmagoric and somber, Black Turban is everywhere and sees everything.
Another character who roams around here, as part of the local folklore, is old Mirza Hussain, the grandpa, also known as the carpet seller. In contrast with Black Turban, his presence is helpful and welcome.It’s said that he speaks all the languages and that, in his day, he was a rich merchant. Later he ran out of carpets to sell but still kept appearing here and there on his hundred-year-old camel laden with trinkets made in China. Instead of valuable carpets, he sold ordinary watches, soaps, rattraps, cosmetics, and synthetic cloth. He doesn’t have any of that now either, but he still shows up occasionally with his old camel, carrying nothing, coming around more since the time he showed up asking the nurses to cure the incessant chilblains on his feet, and the nurses succeeded. Since then, he arrives and sits in silence on a mat not far from the house, waiting for someone to emerge so he can strike up a conversation. Here he’s given a plate of food and a glass of water, his ailments are attended to, and he receives medicines and salves.
I finally get the chance to meet him in person. He’s an old man burnished by many suns and steeped in eternity, who every other sentence quotes the Koran. I find him seated on his mat, by the door of the house. I offer him a cup of coffee.
“Here I am, waiting,” he says.
“Waiting for what?”
“Haven’t you heard the refrain? Sit at your door and you’ll see your enemy’s corpse pass by.”
“And I’m your enemy?”
“I’m only repeating an old refrain. You’ve offered me a cup of coffee and I’ve accepted it, we’ve demonstrated trust between us. The hospital is a noble undertaking.” He raises his cup in thanks, nods his head. “The Koran says that venerable men have been generous since the earliest times. The great Suleiman, hospitable and giving, sumptuously hosted the Queen of Sheba in his palace.”
Hail, Lady of Sheba, I say to myself, so soon you appear? You’ve come to welcome me through this old merchant’s toothless mouth.
“You’re new here.” Mirza Hussain studies me with piercing amber eyes, I’d better be careful or they could hypnotize me, so penetrating is their gaze.
“I arrived a few days ago,” I tell him.
