Before kings fear her eyes and before the name Zarqa' al-Yamamah gathers around her, she is simply Yamama, a girl of Jadis who refuses to stop looking. The novella reconstructs the domestic and material world behind the inherited legend: wells, date groves, livestock, grain, pottery, leatherwork, tribal obligation, family, and long-distance travel. Her extraordinary perception becomes both usefulness and burden as the traditions of Tasm, Jadis, Hassan al-Himyari, and the warning of the moving trees move toward the moment when a human warning becomes permanent legend.
