bounced off, and the noise stopped. Sami normally had a healthy appetite, but despite his triumph, and congratulatory e-mails from both his editor and the publisher, he was not enjoying his breakfast. The food was dry in his mouth and he could barely swallow it. The two laudatory notes and his front-page story had exacted a high price: burning the best UN contact he ever had, and the dream, perhaps even the prospect, of something more personal. But once the e-mail had landed in his inbox, he had no choice except to use it. One part of him thought she would never speak to him again, another that she would storm in any moment and slap him. He would prefer the latter.
Sami opened up his e-mail inbox and scrolled through their brief correspondence, surprised at how nostalgic he suddenly felt. Yael always wrote to him from her Gmail account, and never, obviously, from her UN e-mail address. There were only a handful of messages, mostly brisk thank-you notes for the coffees he had bought her, and a longer one after he took her for lunch at Byblos, a Lebanese diner just off Union Square, where she had charmed the owner with her Iraqi-English-accented Arabic. Sami had recently tentatively suggested going for dinner at a superb Syrian restaurant he knew in Brooklyn. Yael had given him a searching look, trying to figure out if this was a ploy for extra inside information, or something different. Sami was fairly sure he was asking for the latter, but he was not very experienced with women. He had blushed and blurted out that he was not âtrying to hit on her, or anything like that.â Yael had said she would think about it. He put his sandwich down and touched the screen where she had signed off her last e-mail: âYael, xxx.â
It was time, he told himself sternly, to stop mooning around and start working. He closed his inbox and looked at the pile of papers balanced perilously on the edge of his desk. The UN spewed out documents by the truckload every day: briefings, press releases, addenda, amendments, reports, revisions, new reports about the progress of earlier reports, drafts of revisions, and proposals for the next tranche of reports. Perpetual motion did exist, in the self-propelling UN bureaucracy, and this was just the New York headquarters. Throw in the organizationâs regional headquarters in Vienna, Geneva, Nairobi, and Bangkok and the vast constellations of satellite organizations like the World Health Organization, and it was clear, if not scandalous, that an organization supposedly committed to the environment was pulping too many trees, especially in the digital age.
Wasnât that a story? He grabbed a pen and scribbled a couple of lines in his reporterâs notebookâ Story idea: How many forests die in thickets of UN bureaucracy?â before picking up a two-page press release from the Vienna office. He scanned the headline, barely paying attention. âSecretary-General Appoints Akbar Kareem-Zafreedi as the Director of Office for Outer Space Affairs.â He blinked, frowned, and reread it slowly. Outer Space?
The door swung open and Samiâs heart raced.
Y ael stopped walking and stared at the woman clasping her elbow. She was trying to steer Yael down a badly lit, narrow side corridor to a part of the 38th floor of the UN headquarters Yael had never seen, away from the SGâs office.
âHave we met?â Yael demanded, looking her escort up and down.
The woman shook her head. She had blue eyes and sharp features that were made more pointed by the onset of middle age. Her short, dark-blond hair was expensively cut, and she was well dressed in a navy two-piece business suit, cream blouse, and a simple gold necklace. She was brusque, almost hostile, but Yael also sensed a definite undercurrent of uncertainty. She could work with that.
âNo, we have not,â her escort replied with a strong French accent.
Yael removed the womanâs hand from her elbow. âThen
Sami opened up his e-mail inbox and scrolled through their brief correspondence, surprised at how nostalgic he suddenly felt. Yael always wrote to him from her Gmail account, and never, obviously, from her UN e-mail address. There were only a handful of messages, mostly brisk thank-you notes for the coffees he had bought her, and a longer one after he took her for lunch at Byblos, a Lebanese diner just off Union Square, where she had charmed the owner with her Iraqi-English-accented Arabic. Sami had recently tentatively suggested going for dinner at a superb Syrian restaurant he knew in Brooklyn. Yael had given him a searching look, trying to figure out if this was a ploy for extra inside information, or something different. Sami was fairly sure he was asking for the latter, but he was not very experienced with women. He had blushed and blurted out that he was not âtrying to hit on her, or anything like that.â Yael had said she would think about it. He put his sandwich down and touched the screen where she had signed off her last e-mail: âYael, xxx.â
It was time, he told himself sternly, to stop mooning around and start working. He closed his inbox and looked at the pile of papers balanced perilously on the edge of his desk. The UN spewed out documents by the truckload every day: briefings, press releases, addenda, amendments, reports, revisions, new reports about the progress of earlier reports, drafts of revisions, and proposals for the next tranche of reports. Perpetual motion did exist, in the self-propelling UN bureaucracy, and this was just the New York headquarters. Throw in the organizationâs regional headquarters in Vienna, Geneva, Nairobi, and Bangkok and the vast constellations of satellite organizations like the World Health Organization, and it was clear, if not scandalous, that an organization supposedly committed to the environment was pulping too many trees, especially in the digital age.
Wasnât that a story? He grabbed a pen and scribbled a couple of lines in his reporterâs notebookâ Story idea: How many forests die in thickets of UN bureaucracy?â before picking up a two-page press release from the Vienna office. He scanned the headline, barely paying attention. âSecretary-General Appoints Akbar Kareem-Zafreedi as the Director of Office for Outer Space Affairs.â He blinked, frowned, and reread it slowly. Outer Space?
The door swung open and Samiâs heart raced.
Y ael stopped walking and stared at the woman clasping her elbow. She was trying to steer Yael down a badly lit, narrow side corridor to a part of the 38th floor of the UN headquarters Yael had never seen, away from the SGâs office.
âHave we met?â Yael demanded, looking her escort up and down.
The woman shook her head. She had blue eyes and sharp features that were made more pointed by the onset of middle age. Her short, dark-blond hair was expensively cut, and she was well dressed in a navy two-piece business suit, cream blouse, and a simple gold necklace. She was brusque, almost hostile, but Yael also sensed a definite undercurrent of uncertainty. She could work with that.
âNo, we have not,â her escort replied with a strong French accent.
Yael removed the womanâs hand from her elbow. âThen