in the current crisis, whatever it was. Still, I had to call. A woman answered in Arabic.
“Hello? This is Elizabeth Darcy. May I speak with Miss Halima?” I threw in a few Arabic words, but I’d never been good in the language and was rusty, at best. A long pause ensued. I heard women’s voices in the background, then footsteps running toward the phone.
“Elizabeth? You’re here? Oh, thank Allah, you are here!” Halima’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But I can’t talk to you now. I will contact you when I can.”
“Halima?”
Like a ghost, she was gone.
CHAPTER 9
She thanked us for our poor wishes with a gratitude for the kindness of words alone, which one is apt to forget after an absence from Arabia, and went her ways uncomplaining, a sad and gentle soul.”
Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia
Halima’s heart pounded in her chest after the call from Elizabeth. Had anyone heard? By “anyone,” she meant her father, or government wire-tappers.
Not that she feared her father. Sheikh Abdullah was, on the whole, the kindest of men, and someone who wanted equality for the women in his house. Since the death of Halima’s mother two years ago, the sheikh had been morose and had refused to marry again, though society—meaning the friends who came to chew qat with him every afternoon—had urged him to do so.
It had, as happens more often than one might think in an arranged-marriage situation, been a love match.
Zuheyla had answered the phone and was breathless with questions. “Who is Elizabeth? Is she your American friend? Do you think she can help us?” Zuheyla had an enormous vested interest in Ali’s affairs, as they were engaged to be married. And, perhaps because Ali had a role model like Sheikh Abdullah, they were also in love. As daughter of Abdullah’s younger brother, Zuheyla was the ideal bride for Ali. Tribal barriers need not be addressed in such a case.
But would such a wedding ever happen? The household lay under heavy apprehension that it would not. And the bigger question was, would Ali live to see his twentieth birthday?
“I must see Elizabeth as soon as possible,” Halima told Zuheyla. “She may be our only hope.”
CHAPTER 10
But, and there is no end to but,
Even if you see that the wind is calm.
Calm, do not suppose it is calm;
No doubt the powerful will make heads roll
And return the people to their senses.
Traditional Yemeni poetry translated by Steven C. Caton, “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”
Since I couldn’t talk to Halima by phone, I decided to check in on the organization she’d founded to help empower women while also conserving history. Friends of Yemen was Halima’s baby. She’d even defiantly kept it open during much of the civil war. Woman power would not be stopped by a little thing like war.
I also had to start gathering material for Mac back at the Trib.
As I stepped out of the small hotel lobby, a thin man with a scar on his face watched as I asked for a taxi. An old Chevy pulled up and the driver opened the door. I could swear the taxi driver and Scarface exchanged a look. Paranoid already? You just got here!
Before stopping at Friends of Yemen, I had some shopping to do. I would be prepared to shroud my identity with a body-concealing balto, as well as a burqa to mask the face. It might help to protect Halima in some way. The taxi driver seemed a little put out that I wasn’t going where I originally told him, but stopped where I told him to, at a shop near the Dar al-Hamd.
I got out of the taxi and moved to pay the driver, but he said, “No. I wait.”
“No. I don’t need you to wait.”
“No charge. I wait.” The man’s face was impassive as he spoke—not characteristic of most Yemenis, who are full of drama and poetry except during the catatonic late-afternoon state after chewing qat.
I shrugged and entered a shop that had black gowns draped all over its front, looking like scarecrows blowing in the breeze. Inside it smelled of the incense women use to smoke their hair. I selected a shapeless black balto made from some indestructible synthetic fabric that would be sweltering in the sun. They also had the black headscarf to wrap around the hair, and the face piece, the burqa, to tie in back.
The shop-owner was jovial as I tried it all on, clearly enjoying my Yemenization. “Now you look like a real woman!”
“Americans can be women, too,” I said, trying to keep the sharp edge out of my voice. “I’m just trying to fit in.”
“No, no,” he insisted. “You look beautiful dressed as a real woman.”
Since “real” women in Yemen are covered from head to foot, with just eyes peering out a small slit, how on earth could he tell? Our cultural gap was showing. To the shopkeeper’s dismay, I didn’t emerge from his shop with my new outfit. I had him make a bundle of the clothes and walked back out into the street. I must not be seen to have a balto and burqa if I wanted to use them later to my advantage.
The taxi driver had, indeed, waited. Was I being watched? And if so, by whom? I wanted privacy, both for my sake and for Halima’s.
There’s not a lot one can do in this situation, but again, I played the woman’s card. I ducked back into the alley where I’d bought the balto. This shopkeeper was a man accustomed to dealing with the vagaries of women. I stepped in and asked if I could put on the black outfit I’d purchased. He was delighted. No doubt he thought his manly opinion had changed my mind.
This time when I went out, I floated into formation with other black forms and went farther down the street, where I could find a different taxi. My original guy wouldn’t get paid, at least by me. Well, that was just too bad. I’d offered.
The second taxi driver, who had not given me even a look in my black disguise, dropped me off at Tahrir Square, where I darted down a pathway leading toward the Old City, heart thudding. If only I could catch a glimpse of Halima. I needed to know she wasn’t being held hostage. Our phone conversation had rattled me.
No luck. The Friends of Yemen office was closed, with a big padlock on its front door. It looked as though it had been closed for a while. Halima must be in a lot of trouble. She wouldn’t leave the girls who depended on her any more than a mother would leave her child.
Three years ago, Nello had first sent me to Friends of Yemen to meet Halima.
“Go see Professor Halima,” Nello had said. “She knows everything. She has an organization near here.”
I’d followed Nello’s directions to the Friends of Yemen office. A small open door between a cloth shop and a vegetable seller led directly from the sidewalk to an inner stone stairway. The sign was in English and Arabic: ‘Friends of Yemen, Saving Our Country’s Heritage.’
Upstairs, there was a closed door. On hooks outside, black baltos had been piled. I knocked tentatively, and a young woman’s voice answered.
