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chapter one
We Followed the Turtles
Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas
1807
RACHEL POMIÉ
I always left iven I rarely did as I was told According to my mother, this had been my response to life ever since my birth, for it took three days for h the night, and I certainly didn’t follow any rules But I was a girl who knehat I wanted
Other people shivered when the rains caed for cold weather Nights on our island were pitch dark, the air fragrant and heavy, perfect for dreaan to fade it was possible to hear the swift footsteps of lizards rattling through the leaves and the huh the s Inside our stucco houses, we slept within tents ,water we kept ss these pests laid atop the water’s surface so there would be fewer of thee clouds of insects drifted through the heat, especially at dusk, bringing a fever that could burn athrough the still air to drink the nectar of our flowers, until even they disappeared, settling into the branches of the trees When they were gone there was only the quiet and the heat and the night Heat was at the core of our lives, a shape-shifter that never was too far from the door It made me want to step out of my clothes and dive into another life, one where there were linden trees and green lahere women wore black silk dresses and crinolines that rustled when they walked, a country where the moon rose like a silver disc into a cold, clear sky
I knehere such a place could be found Once, it had been the country of randparents They had co with them an apple tree to remind them of the orchards they’d once owned Our very name, Pomié, came from the fruit that they tended My father told me that our ancestors had searched for freedoal, then in Bordeaux, the only region in France that accepted people of our faith at that ti in France; our people were jailed, then murdered and burned Those who escaped journeyed across the ocean to Mexico and Brazil, ator Fernando de Noronha, who hid his faith from those in power Even Colu it, was said to be one of us, searching for new land and liberty
In 1492 Queen Isabella expelled our people from Spain on the Ninth of Av, the worst day in the history of our people It was on this date when the first Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylonia and the second Temple was destroyed by Rome It was on this very day, in the year 1290, that all Jews had been expelled froland Thousands of our children were baptized and shipped to the island of St Tome off the coast of Africa, then sold as slaves In the year 1506 four thousand wereto practice their religion underground I pitied those who had stayed behind, forced to take on Christianity My father had told h; such persons were called Conversos, and were looked down upon and degraded, their property and rights taken from them Those who survived were the ones who knehen to flee
The Inquisition followed our people across the ocean, where they were once again randfather was aue, and it was there both my parents were raised But there was no peace in societies where sugarcane was king and people were enslaved In 1754 the King of Den that all ions freely on St Thohts of otherthem admission to associations such as the brotherhood of Masons, which allowed our people to do business with non-Jews My parents came, then, to the island of the turtles, for more free people could be found here than anywhere in the neorld, and people of our faith were accepted as Danish citizens, in 1814 Nearly everyone spoke English or French, but all were grateful for the Danish rule In 1789 there were fewer than ten Jewish households listed in the tax registers, but in 1795, the year I was born, there were seventy-five people, withon our shores each year
Once he arrived ht along the apple tree, and my mother, and the one man as loyal to him
OUR ISLAND WAS A small speck of land, little reen sea The original population had all vanished, destroyed by disease and murder The native people, called the Caribs, believed their ancestors journeyed to this island froive it light, traveling through the clouds, drenching our island with color, so that shades of orange and blue and red were scattered everywhere But the Caribs’ ancestors were trapped here by storms and had no choice but to stay in a place where they never belonged They wound their long, black hair into plaits of ht to ht freedom here, the island’s history was one of injustice and sorrow, a society built by convicts and slaves