Henna House Quotes

“Hope is not a sin, neither is fidelity.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“Hope is not a sin, and neither is fidelity.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“My family had been in a refugee camp for a year and I was thirty-one years old when the government of Israel arranged through secret channels to fly all the Jews of Yemen to Israel. It was unofficially called Operation Magic Carpet, and officially called Operation On Wings of Eagles. When our people refused to enter the airplanes out of fear—for especially our brethren from the North had no experience with modernity—our rabbis reminded them of divine passages. “This is the fulfillment of ancient prophecy,” they said. “The eagles that fly us to the Promised Land may be made of metal, but their wings are buoyed aloft by the breath of God.” Between June 1949 and September 1950 almost fifty thousand Yemenite Jews boarded transport planes and made some 380 flights from Aden to Israel in this secret operation.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“That first night I was a novitiate. Soon, like the others, I would learn about the stars in the heavens by reading the astronomical tables they inscribed on my feet, shins, and fingers. Soon, I would grow to believe that I myself was an actual text, and that my skin without henna was like a holy book without words—a shameful, almost blasphemous, thing. Without henna, I wouldn't know how to read myself. With henna, I was as sacred as a sanctified Torah. With henna, I was the carrier of ancient tales—a living girl-scroll replete with tales of sorrow, joy, and salvation.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“But when I looked into my aunt's eyes, I saw oceans and deserts. I saw a world not yet created, and worlds that had died long before I was born.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“In Rahel's song, henna was blood and blood was henna.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“We were each other’s armor. And in that moment, we each became the other’s lance, sword, and shield.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“I knew that if the subject were to arise, I would once again speak words that would cut my friend, little ceremonial slashes to his soul, not to cause a mortal wound, just to draw blood and to relieve myself of a nameless burden.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh, that lieth betwixt my breasts. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyards of Ein Gedi. —SONG OF SONGS, 1:13–14”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“Thank you, but I take no joy in my wedding.” “Of course you don’t, but still, you must act the part. I often take no joy in my spinsterhood; I have no babes to fill my arms, and yet by acting the part of it, I convince myself that I am not lonely. And sometimes it works.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“The great Tolstoy wrote of families. He said that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House

“From the late 1940s through the early ’60s, the Arab world had disgorged its Jews. Just as it had rescued us Yemenites, Israel rescued whole communities, flying myriad secret and perilous missions into the heart of Arabia.”
― Nomi Eve, Henna House