ABOUT THIS BOOK

Stone's moving debut collection of verse is inspired by her encounter with perhaps the last cohesive, traditional Jewish community in the Middle East and North Africa. According to their story of origin, a handful of exiles arrived on the island of Djerba, Tunisia, in 586 B.C., carrying a single stone from the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. Drawing from this cosmology, the poems follow a stranger who arrives into an ancient community that is both at home and deeply estranged on the island. Its people occupy the uneasy space of all insular communities, deciding when to let the world in and when to shut it out. The poems are about the daily lives and deeper cosmos of the Jews of Djerba as well as the Muslims next door. In her exploration, Stone sees vivid recurring images of keys, stones, homes, the laughter of girls, the eyes of men, the color blue, and the force of blood or bombs. With this journey of faith, doubt, longing, and home, Stone has brought readers a rare look into a story that resonates powerfully with questions of cultural preservation and coexistence.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

NOMI STONE is an assistant editor at the Middle East Journal. She has a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Oxford and was a Fulbright Scholar. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

REVIEWS

"Stone is a genuine poet, with the capacity of seeming artless while being extremely artful." —Alicia Ostriker

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"Nomi Stone brings to life the searing heat, the balance of superstition and tradition, and the flow of history that has built up to become the tremendous monument that is daily life. Stone speaks from a point both inside and out, letting us see the frame and stand inside it at the same time. It's an electric place to be." —Cole Swensen

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
Beginnings	000
I.
The Stranger, Preparing for a Long Journey, 2003	000
The Fall of the First Temple, 586 B.C.E., Jerusalem	000
Notes on How They Came	000
La Ghriba ("The Stranger") Tells How and Why	
Jerusalem	000
End of Time	000
II.
From Her Notes: The Village	000
Trapped on Djerba, Island of the Lotus Eaters	000
Day of Repentance, Day of Forgiveness	000
The Girls / First Day of School	000
Learning Hebrew/ Learning Hebrew	000
Welcome Party	000
This House	000
What We Ask the Messiah to Save	000
III.
Us and Them	000
From Her Notes	000
Many Scientists Convert to Islam	000
Us and Them	000
The Wound	000
A Prayer		000
Jewish New Year	000
IV.
How We Recognized Our Longing	000
Practicing Stoicism	000
Haram	000
Parable	000
From Her Notes	000
Women and Men	000
From Her Notes	000
V.
When the Messiah Did Not Come	000
Ways to Be Redeemed	000
Saturday Twilight	000
Outside of Time	000
The Sabbath		000
Why I Came		000
The Path of the Boy-God's Arrow	000
Purim, Spring Festival: How to Escape Massacres	000
Purification Rite	000
Time Ends	000
Djerban Folk Song	000
VI.
Arriving	000Where		000
Taking Notes	000
Dancing in Ashqelon		000
A Map		000
The Closest Thing	000
In the Songs and the Homes	000
Acknowledgments and Notes	000

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