If you feel apologetic for not understanding the ins and outs of conflict in Palestine, this book will not educate you. But it will make you feel less guilty, as it reveals the layers of a place with too much history.

Imagine starting married life in a 19th-century house on Nablus Road in Jerusalem, near the invisible line splitting the city between Palestinians and Israelis. Built by Arab Christians at a height commanding both sides of the city, the house was owned by a Franciscan convent. On one side it looked down on the courtyard of a Mexican convent and across the street on a German girls’ school. The front steps were occupied daily by a Palestinian vendor of sesame bread, who became the family’s protector, and various hangers-on.

Stephanie Saldana’s ancestors were originally sent by Spain to colonize San Antonio before the French could encroach. She has traveled widely as a journalist and in the ‘90s was studying Islamic literature in Damascus. At a monastery 350 steps above the Syrian desert she came to know Frederic, a novice monk from the French Alps. Love blossomed and they were married by and with the blessing of Fr. Paolo, the redoubtable Italian abbot. (Fr. Paolo was expelled from Syria for criticizing the Assad regime. In 2013 he returned to negotiate the release of hostages with the IS. He has not been seen since.)

Imagine, too, that you choose to give birth to your son, Joseph, in Bethlehem at Christmas time, in spite of the checkpoints to be navigated. This book is in the form of letters to Joseph and reveals Stephanie’s self-doubt about bringing up a child in a place so fraught with conflict. At the same time, he is beloved of everyone on Nablus Road, who call him Yusuf, Zouzou, Jose, Yosef, Giuseppe, and Hovsep. When Stephanie wheels him down the street, he is handed gifts from date sweets to toy camels to rosaries. She comes to realize that to many of the shopkeepers and street vendors, who must leave their homes early and return late, he represents the children they miss.

These shopkeepers have deep roots in the history of Jerusalem. The Freij family were Greek Orthodox and had been residents for perhaps 1000 years. The 1945 war had cut them off from their house in West Jerusalem and from most of their co-religionists.

The Baramkeh family, whose shop sold a bit of everything, were believed to descend from Buddhist priests in Afghanistan. They were called by the Abbasid caliphs to move to Baghdad, where they converted to Islam. One became the mentor to the fabulous Harun al-Rashid. Eventually exiled to Turkey and Greece, they converted to Christianity and became such famous icon painters that they were brought to Jerusalem to decorate the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Abu-Khalaf family grocery store boasted a portrait of a Kurdish ancestor who had come with Saladin. The family continued to be in charge of organizing the annual hajj from Jerusalem to Mecca.

A Country Between is not preachy or political. Rather, it is a poetic and poignant love song to Joseph and to Stephanie’s exemplary father, who dies of cancer far too young; to a noisy, nosey, chaotic neighborhood which no longer exists; to the birds that stop off on their migration from Africa to Europe; to Syria as it used to be. And of course it is a love song to Frederic, who left the monastery to become a husband. In the end, he becomes a priest in the Syrian Catholic tradition, which, like the Greek Orthodox, welcomes married clergymen.

Review by Maurine King

Beautiful recollections of time spent living near the Damascus Gate, outside the wall, in Jerusalem. Saldana writes it as a letter to her son, sort of a how I met your father, if that were a story of spiritual seekers. The author really brought home life in this community, both as it was occurring, and what it grew from. Fascinating.

From the publishers:
When young mother Stephanie Saldana finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus road―the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem―she sees more than a Middle Eastern flash point. She sees what could be home.

Before her eyes, the fragile community of Jerusalem opens, and she starts to build her family to outlast the chaos. But as her son grows, so do the military checkpoints and bomb sirens, and Stephanie must learn to bridge the gap between safety and home, always questioning her choice to start her family and raise her child in a country at war.

A Country Between is a celebration of faith, language, and family―and a mother's discovery of how love can fill the spaces between what was once shattered, leaving us whole once more. ( )