4. Frédéric and Stephanie have strong ties to the Catholic Church. How does the church act as a support system for the newlyweds? How does this connection shape their lives?
5. Stephanie describes the different languages that make up Nablus Road, and the different languages that are a part of her own life (Arabic, French, Spanish, and English). How does Stephanie use language to maneuver through the delicate Middle Eastern world? Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had to adapt to a new language? What was it like?
6. Describe Stephanie and Frédéric. How are they similar? How are they different? Do you find them to be a compatible couple?
7. How do the different religions, nationalities, languages, and politics all come together to make up the fabric of Nablus Road? Based on Stephanie’s descriptions, do you think it is constantly tense or overall peaceful? Do you think a place like this sounds difficult to manage or exciting?
8. How does Stephanie react when she finds out she is pregnant? If you were in her situation, do you think you would return to Jerusalem to have your child, or remain in France? Why?
9. Why do you think Stephanie writes letters to her unborn child? If you were about to have a child, what would you write to him/her?
10. Describe how Nablus Road changes after Stephanie has Joseph. How does the community evolve to include the new family?
11. Do you think living in a war zone influences Joseph’s otherwise happy childhood? Imagine if war broke out in your own hometown. Would you stay? Why or why not?
12. After Sebastian is born, how does the language spoken change in their home? Do you think it’s beneficial for Stephanie’s children to learn all of these different languages? If you could speak any language, which would it be?
13. How do Stephanie and her family define the word “home”? How would you define the word “home”? How is your home different than the one Stephanie and Frédéric built in Jerusalem?
14. What do you think Stephanie ultimately learns from her time on Nablus Road? Do you think her children benefitted from living there? Would you live there?
A Conversation with the Author
What inspired you to write A Country Between?
When I found out that I was pregnant with Joseph, I began writing letters to him, even before I knew if he was a boy or a girl. I had no idea what these letters would lead to—I only knew that I needed to express something of the love I felt for my child and something of my uncertainty about bringing him into such a troubled world. Those letters formed the seed of what would eventually become A Country Between.
Describe your process when writing a memoir. Do you keep notes? A diary?
This memoir was very different than my first memoir. I wrote it over a seven-year period, and in the process of writing it, the stories contained within it were still happening. I had no idea at what point the story would end. My drafts of this book—of which there are many dozens—are in a sense a diary of a very tumultuous period of my life and of the modern Middle East. Contained within it are letters, notes I wrote down on scraps of paper and later turned into scenes, and chapters written in full. There is also a component of journalism, as I had to interview my neighbors to learn some of the details of their histories. I actually wrote many of the scenes about Nablus Road when I was in the Alps because I found that distance and solitude allowed me to see the street and the characters more clearly.
A Country Between ends with your family moving out of the house on Nablus Road and relocating. How has your family grown or changed since then? Have you continued to live in Jerusalem?
I had my third child—my daughter Carmel—just as I was finishing the very last edits of A Country Between. As I write this, we are still living in the Old City of Jerusalem, in our small, Crusader-era house in the Christian Quarter. Frédéric is just finishing his studies for the priesthood, and Joseph and Sebastian are growing up and teaching their little sister how to speak English and French. Frédéric and I just celebrated our ten-year anniversary, and in what seemed impossible at the onset of this book, I am actually about to officially become French.
Do you ever find it difficult to reconcile your home and the safety of your family with the war that divides your country?
Of course I do. This past year in particular saw a wave of violence around the Old City of Jerusalem, and I narrowly missed shootings on two occasions—once while taking my son to the doctor, and another while on the way to pick up my daughter from day care. Yet, unfortunately, this is the drama of mothers around the world. My friends in America also live with anxiety about school shootings and random violence, and there are many neighborhoods in America that are at least as dangerous as Jerusalem. Paris—another city where we might have presumably raised our children—was rocked by terrible terrorist attacks this year. We have friends from Syria who have fled terrible violence—and others who have decided to stay in Syria despite the war. I try to teach my children that love is stronger than violence—and that the single most important thing we are meant to do in our lives is to love others, especially when there is violence around us.
Do you find solace in writing?
I started writing when I was about seven years old. Since then, writing has always been a part of how I live in the world. I would not say that writing brings me solace—sometimes, especially when I am trying to sort out the structure of a book—writing is a source of anxiety. But ultimately, it is my way of interpreting the moment in which I live. It does not give me solace so much as it gives me purpose.
We know from the story that you teach literature at a local college. Who are your favorite authors to teach?
There are texts that I can teach over and over again and discover them anew each time: Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, the book of Genesis, the Gospel according to Luke, The Conference of the Birds. Yet the real gift of teaching comes when students connect texts to their own lives in unexpected ways. In the past few years, my students have been blown away by such diverse texts as The Dead by James Joyce, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean Dominique Baubel, The Trojan Women by Euripides, and If This Is a Man by Primo Levi. These are all very different stories, but what they have in common is that they are about characters or real people trying to navigate their ways through seemingly impossibly situations. My students—who have lived their entire lives in the midst of conflict—read these books and feel less alone.
Who are your favorite authors to read?
What a question! As someone who moves so often between cultures, languages, and disciplines, I am always working my way through very different books. I try to read the poet Czeslaw Milosz at least once a year, as well as Rainer Maria Rilke and Simone Weil—and I keep them all near my writing desk. I’ve just started studying Greek, so I enjoy trying to fumble my way through the Gospels in the original. When I have time to read for pleasure instead of work, I will read anything written by Geraldine Brooks, Kathleen Norris, Rabih Alameddine, or Orhan Pamuk. As for journalism—Anthony Shadid was my hero. Travel writing? The descriptions in Out of Africa by Karen Blixen astonish. Give me a cookbook written by Claudia Roden any day: the food is poetry. With my children, I have recently rediscovered the brilliance of Dr. Seuss.
Language plays a huge part in your family’s life, especially Joseph’s—he grows up speaking multiple languages. What languages do you speak? What about your children?
I grew up speaking English, but Spanish was my mother’s native language, and she was a Spanish teacher by profession. Even if I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish, the language and cadence of it had an enormous influence on the way in which I live in the world and my own approach to language. I speak English, and with my husband and children, I have learned to speak decent French. I also speak Arabic, notably in the Syrian dialect, even though I have been away from Syria for more than a decade. This year, I decided to learn Koine Greek and Syriac, both in immersion programs that teach ancient languages as spoken lan
guages, and this has been a frustrating and immensely beautiful experience, sort of like learning a difficult instrument in adult life.
My children are native French and English speakers. Sebastian, who has a passion for languages, speaks Arabic fluently. It is fascinating to hear them move from one language to the next. The Old City of Jerusalem is full of languages, and for a child this is magical: Sebastian can say “hello” in ten languages.
How would you describe your family in one word?
Miracle.
Your country?
Jerusalem.
What would you like readers to take away from your memoir?
This book was a way of passing on to my son the wisdom that my father and Paolo taught me: hope exists even in the darkest places, and there is always beauty to be found, even in the midst of war.
And I have known no greater hope in my lifetime than the hope that comes in the form of a child.
About the Author
Stephanie Saldaña received her BA from Middlebury College and her MTS from Harvard Divinity School. She was a Watson and Fulbright scholar and has won several awards for her poetry. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children and teaches at Al-Quds Bard College, a partnership between Al-Quds University and Bard College in New York. She is the author of The Bread of Angels.
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