Al Jinnah

A dream Christmas

Fewer things could have eased my mind more, as I wandered between the empty supermarket shelves with the Lozenge after the snowfall, than a phone call from the Duke inviting us all to Christmas lunch at his farm nestled beneath the Golan heights, near Umm Qays in northern Jordan.  This meant that my first turkey was instead a very manageable dinner of poussins for 6 on Christmas Eve. The pudding had travelled all the way from Tasmania with Uncle Frank and Auntie Odile, complete with the finest possible brandy for the butter, carried in a Lancome demaquillant bottle, and a photograph tube of mince pie cases made by Odile with the finest Tasmanian flour. Not one had cracked on the journey. The dinner was extremely merry since we'd arrived a little early for the evening carol service in the Anglican church off Rainbow Street, and filled the time in a bar overlooking Amman, drinking extremely strong cocktails.

The following morning, unusually, I was awake first, at 5.30am, as I suddenly remembered that we hadn't put the bottles of Prosecco in the fridge, which was part of our alcohol contribution to the Duke's lunch. So by 6am J and I were happily unwrapping our stockings, a whole hour before the dwarves. What else would a travelling dwarf have asked Father Christmas for, than a 'wolling thootcase'? And the Lozenge, reminiscent of a diminutive air steward, has been wheeling his new suitcase proudly around our marbled flat, filled with toys which he wants to take to 'the new houthe' in Jerusalem. We broached the subject of a new school the other day. And while waiting for the little orange bus, the Lozenge asked J, 'Will Washimi be coming to my new school with me?' J replied: 'Not this term, but maybe next year.' 'Good', said the Lozenge. 'Then I won't be afraid.' Perhaps there are merits to having a little brother in an itinerant lifestyle.

So on Christmas morning, we set off to the Duke's 'jinnah' (paradise), we were a 2 car convoy complete with 'Aunteeeee Fwank!' (as Rashimi calls him), Odile, Gran Gran and Grandfather, the dwarves, J and I. The sky was a cool, eternal blue and as we approached the city of Irbid, makeshift home to thousands of Syrian refugees, the light accentuated the small houses of pale purple, pink and yellow, buried in amongst the beige. It was one of many small reminders that day, of the turmoil that surrounded our happy bubble of family and friends, only a few kilometres over the border. We showed our passports at a couple of check points (the farm is almost on top of both the Israeli and Syrian borders) and drew up through a metal door painted royal blue, where the Duke was standing with his wife Basma, with lots of other guests milling about.

We wandered up the path, lined with palm trees, through a very low, fat door, made of volcanic stone with a cushion tied onto the top to save a scrape on the head, and before us steamed a huge rectangular pool of water from the natural hot spring that feeds the site. Surrounding the pool were a smattering of the Duke's installations, a couple of changing huts, a long table covered in a cloth for lunch and a round bar area slowly being charged with drink. People were already splashing about in the steamy water, swimming between a floating raft with olives and drinks on it, and a stone column with a champagne bottle perched on top. The Lozenge and J jumped into the pool almost immediately where they stayed for most of the morning, while Rashimi had a 2 hour sleep in a small stone house with a domed roof which serves as the Duke and his wife's living area when they stay here, which is most of the winter. In all we must have been about 30 people. As J's father put it: 'Only with the Duke could I be swimming in a thermal pool on the Syrian and Israeli border, on Christmas day, talking to a Chinese girl about her Grandparents' experiences during the Japanese invasion.' There was an expansive range of people including the Chinese girl, the German and Egyptian ambassadors, a historian, and archaeologist, an academic, a Jordanian architect and her husband, and many more besides. The Lozenge spent the day, (between a couple of Harrods alcohol-free mince pies that had been given to the Duke by one of the Jordanian princes, and handed on to our delighted dwarves), making 'thculptures in the jungle' in the surrounding vegetation which was as much of a child's paradise as an adult's.

The faded colours and the steaming pool only make the memory of the day more of a dream sequence in our minds. And sitting back in my den in our flat, now some of our family have left, and we await the arrival of more, I will have to look back in years to come at this entry and the photographs, to believe it really happened.

Kite

Flying a kite at Amman's Citadel on Christmas eve.

Trojans and Syrians united

For young photographers and documentary makers, shooting a time lapse sequence is one of the most boring things you can do, (according to one of the above who I spoke to here). You decide where you want to point the camera, put it on a tripod, set the time frame up, focus, and then the camera does the rest for you by taking a photograph every however many seconds or minutes you want for as many hours as you want.

But for a mother of dwarves who also dabbles in a bit of camera business, the thought of having 3 uninterrupted hours in a high place above a city, watching the sunset, all alone, is one of the biggest luxuries conceivable.

I set myself up on the 'Duke's panorama' which looks north west over Amman, towards the gallery I'm making the film about. The question was, what to do in these precious three hours other than admire the changing view and think my thoughts. I read a bit of book, sipped a bit of water, did a bit of walking about to keep warm. But the best bit, was being able to look from above as the light gradually changed and ebbed, onto a city that has been our home for nearly a year now.  There were all the little landmarks we've come to know, from the newly built skyscrapers on the horizon that were our helpful guides when we first arrived, to the central fruit and vegetable market which throngs late into the night. From my viewpoint, I could see the trolleys laden with shining oranges, their colour almost matching the orb of the sun as it dipped below the skyline. And there were the people milling, and talking and squeezing and haggling. Physical distance from people allows you to wonder who they all are. What are their hopes, their fears, their politics? This country whose demographic has changed consistently each decade since its conception in the '20s as it has absorbed Palestinians, then Iraqis, now Syrians - all escaping their own conflicts and beginning again right here in this city. Slowly the headlights and houselights began to pierce the dusk and I thought at the very best, this country could become richer and prouder with this absorption of human potential. At the very worst…I didn't want to think in those terms, as I looked down on this place that has provided J, I and the dwarves with so many happy moments.

In 'A Life of Montaigne' the book I dipped into from the panorama, there are accounts of the brutal civil conflict between Protestants and Catholics that ran roughshod through much of his lifetime in the 1500's. Many of the descriptions are chillingly familiar, and could be superimposed into much of what we're reading about Syria today.

Harking back even further to 415 BC, there is also clear current relevance within Euripdes' work: 'The Trojan Women', based on the suffering of the women of Troy as their city fell, all their men dead, and they awaited their fate. This week, I went to see a startlingly bare production of this, re-enacted by Syrian refugees - their own stories woven with those of Hecuba, Cassandra and Andromache. It's directed by a Syrian and produced by two British - Charlotte and Willie, who originally came up with the concept. As one Syrian cast member explains: 'There is a speech by Hecuba, when she looks on Troy for the last time, that makes me cry. Because when I was crossing the border in Jordan, my husband said, 'Look back at Syria for one last time for you many never see it again.'

I'm sure this http://www.syriatrojanwomen.org will gather momentum. It's too important not to. Both for outsiders' understanding of the blistering dimensions of this conflict; and also for the therapy of self expression, (I'm sure in most cases for the first time on stage), it must give to the women who perform it.

Grayson Perry also reflects the crucial importance of this in his recent Reith Lectures, which I've finally listened to this weekend as the dwarves and I are alone for a few days. After an afternoon gingerbread bake off (we attempted a house but that required more adults, so opted for 'mans and 'snowmans')…

…I won the iPad battle with the Lozenge and listened to Grayson's last lecture as I carved royal icing off kitchen surfaces with a blunt knife and washed up. Most artists hold some form of sadness, he reckons, but art for him, and for many, has been the very key to finding out who they are and what they're made of. As I listened to him talk so candidly, I thought of those brave young Syrian ladies on stage, heads and bodies masked in black, daring to express themselves in public.  (Can you imagine the two camps meeting?) And I was moved to imagine the results that might come of an initiative like this one, both on an individual and universal level.

I'm often a little overawed by this world of art, and the depths of some of the people within it, particularly as I make this documentary on the gallery and its influence both nationally and internationally, which is the reason why I was alone on the Duke's panorama in the dark in the first place. But experiencing all these many and diverse things this week, has only made me more certain that even in the most humble sense, I must k.b.o. because all things almost always start tiny.

Naked aid

For a country made mostly of sand and salt, those in charge of roads in Amman have not covered themselves in glory this week. All roads into Amman have been blocked and the supermarket shelves are looking like they might have in the USSR circa 1985. The Lozenge and I made a trip this week and came back with some UHT milk, a few mouldy onions and a bag of cranberries. The aisles were filled with panic shoppers - trolleys loaded and frowns deeply etched as they shunted other humans of prey out of the way. Let's hope some lorries make it in before J's family arrive for Christmas.

I had a day's work taking photographs for the US fundraising wing of Unicef on Tuesday. Roads were covered in thick ice with waist-high snowdrifts either side. I decided to walk, or rather skate, to our meeting point at the Four Seasons hotel, since no taxis dared venture out, and J had to stay at home with the dwarves until St Grace arrived.  I said goodbye to them decked out in my wellies, thick coat and hat. 'Are you going to see the Thyrianth again? I love you Mummy,' said the Lozenge, with a waft of Frosties breath, kissing me on the cheek.

It took me half an hour to walk under a kilometre. I met the team and we set off. After ten minutes we were watching a car ballet of other 4 x 4 vehicles doing slow 360 degree turns on thick ice down the hill. Trying to avoid a rusty truck piled high with chickens in plastic cages, our driver moved to the snowy side of the road and waited, his hands shaking on the wheel, as we watched the surprised looking chickens be taken for the same balletic spins.

It took us 3 hours to reach Za'atari camp, where fortunately, for the estimated 85,000 residents, it had not snowed at all. But the mud was quite bad in some places.

It was the first time I'd visited the camp in winter conditions, and although high temperatures can be just as uncomfortable, people in this region are more accustomed to heat than cold. Most children I saw had some form of footwear - but very few had socks, and most were in plastic sandals. But the children were not standing around complaining about the cold like the adults - they carried on regardless, running about, throwing stones, playing with friends and siblings and any toys they had.

One of our destinations was a child friendly space, managed by a fabulous Australian woman from the child protection unit. The caravan was decked with decorations which created a busy clash with the patterned carpet on which little groups of children were huddled - drawing and chatting. The atmosphere was calm, happy and very warm. The children looked well looked-after and attentive. It can take the extremes in politics and outside conditions to make you wonder at the little areas of safety and harmony which exist within it all.

It reminded me I hadn't been to see the family near our house who I made one of the films about, for a while. So the following day, I popped around with some photographs of them I'd printed. Hamouda and her family have nothing in their little room in the disused apart hotel, apart from some pieces of clothing and matresses on which they sleep. But they have never once asked me for anything, apart from copies of the photographs I took of them over the summer. Hamouda's breath iced as she spoke, in the cold room and the five children she's now responsible for piled in and kissed me at least 7 times each on the cheeks. I noticed Hamouda's hands were red raw and offered my cashmere gloves. She hesitated, then looked me in the eye and said: 'Anjad?' (Really?) and relucantly took them. Their lime green colour matched some of the stitching on her thin shirt. I stayed for an hour or so, managing the Arabic a little better than 4 months ago, then went home to try and find some more warm clothes we could hand over. In some respects those refugees living in the urban spaces around this country, outside of the camps, are more exposed. At least within a camp there is generally a heated health centre, play area or caravan - with gas provided by the Jordanian government.

The Lozenge has been off school this week, and with most roads too treacherous even for Reem with the wheels, the boys and their little sidekick, Lulu have been running wild in our flat which for the first time feels a little small…After a few bits of testing pre-Christmas behaviour from the Lozenge - mostly revolving around presents, J and I took him aside on separate occasions and tried to explain to him, in 4 year old terms, quite how much he had compared to other children nearby. I'm never sure at what moment it's sensible to bring up frank truths - but this seemed an opportune one.

During breakfast this week, the Lozenge disappeared and came back, stark naked but for a wooly hat on his head, backpack on, and a couple of bags in each hand filled with cans of tonic water, some dates, a smattering of plastic fruit from the toy box, and an umbrella. 'I'm off to see the Thyrian peopleth and I'll be back later,' he explained.  

Jerusalem cloaked in white

Dancing through snowdrifts

St Grace and the dwarves had had a 2 night long pyjama party and 2 days worth of bounding in Jordanian snowdrifts, while we were in Jerusalem.

The country had all but ground to a halt by the time J and I drew up into a drift outside our apartment. At this point, I was not missing our vermillion Chevy which would have been buried by now.

We pranced about with the dwarves all afternoon and then ventured out to 'danser la fin de l'annee' with a fabulous French couple who have five children. They are teenagers now, but at one point the couple had five children under six years old. No words can explain our respect for them. And they are still beautiful and laid back.

The dress code was The Artist, from the film. So J and I ventured out in the driving snow, J in a velvet jacket with stick on moustache, me in velvet jumpsuit and wellies. Every five metres there was a deserted car with a pile of snow on the roof, and most moving cars were driving the wrong way up the street with hazard lights on. We crept on, knowing it would be worth reaching our destination. We were the only non-French people at the party, and we danced until 2am until I noticed that J, at least 5 whiskies and a few shots of something unidentifiable down, was conversing in either Arabic or Farsi with most people, and I suggested that I drove home.

We made it, despite having to weave between fallen trees, and at one point having to unhook ourselves from a dangling telegraph cable which had wrapped itself around our wing mirrors.

Not much movement from J the following morning. By 4pm he'd recovered and after intermittent power cuts all day, we spent a happy half hour jumping in snow drifts with the dwarves until the wailing about the cold feet got too much and we retreated inside to watch the scene from a relatively warm apartment.

I'm not crazy, I'm just not you.

'When you come to Jerusalem, you'll find you hate Israelis for the first year, you'll hate Palestinians for the second, and in the third, well, you'll probably just hate everybody,' an expatriate explained to me in a bar in East Jerusalem last week. 'Make sure you get out often. This place will drive you crazy after a while.'

Right oh.

In the book 'How to live' by Sarah Bakewell, based on the writings and philosphy of Montaigne, she explains how one of his life lessons was to question everything. And another, to guard your humanity. This is a well timed moment to heed his advice.

'I need a map,' I thought, 'and not just a physical one,' as J and I sat in a cafe sheltering from the torrential rain outside, squinting at a menu in Hebrew only half a mile from where we'll be living, where everything is in Arabic. I scrunched icy toes inside my wet socks, inside wet boots, and we watched Haredi men tentatively shuffling along the snowy pavement, with plastic bags fastened tightly over their black hats.

Here in Jordan, plastic bags are the ubiquitous ground covering wherever there's no real estate. But in West Jerusalem, they're put to good use it seems. Though East Jerusalem is still pitifully full of them. Sad versions of randomly coloured Arab flags.

Out of habit, I said: 'Shukran' (thank you in Arabic) to the waiter. I received a blank look, and no answer. We said good bye in English and left.

We visited two schools. Each was impressive in its own right, but with plenty of staff who had evidently moved here for a reason - the light of God shining brightly from their eyes. My mind harked back to a paragraph from Montaigne, and I summoned its powers.

'Among the small but endlessly abundant and therefore very effective things that science ought to heed more than the great, rare things, is goodwill. I mean those expressions of a friendly disposition in interacitons, that smile of the eye, those handclasps, the ease which usually envelops nearly all human actions…It is the continual manifestation of our humanity, its rays of light so to speak, in which everything grows….Good nature, friendliness, and courtesy of heart…have made much greater contributions to culture than those much more famous expressions of this drive, called pity, charity and self-sacrifice.'

I wondered about the difference between the divine rays I'd seen, and Mongaigne's rays of humanity.

J had a meeting  and I waited for him in a small reading room. I finished an old copy of Haaretz newspaper which was full of news of more settlements mushrooming, and illegal demolition of houses in East Jerusalem. My eyes scanned the books on the shelf. 'Perfect phrases for dealing with difficult people'; 'I'm not crazy, I'm just not you.' 'Modern weapons and warfare.' 'Casting with a fragile thread.'

We went back to what will soon be our house, and lay on the bed made of 2 singles tacked together, and we gazed upside down at the snow falling on the garden outside and listened to the muezzin calling people to Thursday afternoon prayer.

In the house, there must be at least 40 pieces of solid, brown furniture, not one piece of which fits in the place it should. J and I spent much of the time, when not wading through snowdrifts, dusting off and wrenching the wardrobes, tables, chests of drawers and bed frames to other positions around the house.

We drove back to Jordan after a couple of days. We handed our papers at the first booth in the complicated border process, to an 18 year old Israeli soldier, with an M16 and acne. He stroked the window lovingly and asked me in french: 'C'est anti-balles, le vitre? Oooooh, qu'est ce que c'est beau!' As we drove off, he stood with another soldier (pre-pubescent?), whose gun was noticeably longer than his arm, complaining about the cold.

Joseph and his wives

I sat with the Lozenge and looked at our small, tin nativity scene I bought in Mexico, and introduced some of the characters in it. 'There's the baby Jesus. These are the kings and the shepherds. This is his father, Joseph…'

'…and those are Jotheph's wiveth,' said the Lozenge, pointing to Mary and the angels.

Although Jordan has a significant Christian population, and our supermarket is stacked with piles of Panetone and chocolate Santa Clauses, it takes a little more than this to conjure up a Christmas spirit.

Although we have the said navity scene out, a tree, and an abundance of paper chains and tinsel thanks to the Lozenge who wanted to decorate every room including the bathroom, we are having to work harder at a festive atmosphere than we would do at home.

I listened to some carols from Kings College in the kitchen while cooking one evening, wincing a little over the mingling of the angelic trebles with the muezzin's vocals from the neighbouring mosque.

And St Grace has come into her own. Since she's Christian herself, she is very au fait with the traditions we are used to, and put her own touch to it with great excitement from the dwarves, using whatever she could find in the fridge and cupboard.

Wash ground

'Wash gwound,' mused Rashimi as he gazed at the raindrops splodging onto the street below. How few of them he has seen in his short life to date. Winter has arrived. It is quite cold and there is so much rainwater on the hard earth now, that the roads have turned to rivers, and Jordanian drivers either stay at home or find themselves in even more calamitous situations than usual. Which is very calamitous indeed.

The day upon day of rain coincided with a visit from beloved auntie Rosie, with her baby-to-be, who arrived for a week's holiday. But nothing could have marred the moments we spent together and the dwarves were ecstatic to have her with us. My daily struggle was stopping Rashimi from breaking into her room and waking her up each morning at 7am. 'Wake up auntie Woseeeee!'

J and I had our first parent teacher meeting at the Lozenge's school. We sat on tiny childrens' chairs chatting to the generously proportioned teacher in the colourful classroom with snowmen dangling by our faces. The Lozenge is happy there and has made lots of friends. I am inevitably sad about uprooting him to start all over again up the road in Jerusalem.

St Grace's new sidekick 'Weem' (with the wheels) has become a valued member of the team, and is now looking after a 3 and half year old American girl, Luciana, who comes to hang out with the dwarves in the afternoons. She has wavy dark hair down to her diminutive bottom, and takes no prisoners. The boys love her and there is much talk of 'Loothiannaaaaa!' and what they've all been up to.

We escaped with auntie Rosie to the Dead Sea for a few more degrees of warmth in the belly of the earth, and a gloopy salted mud session…

As I watched her elegant backview disappearing from view at the airport departures I was relieved the Lozenge was with me to stop the lump in my throat turning into tears. Next time I see her she will be a mother and the following chapter of her life will come to be written. 

St Grace's natural ataraxia

The weather is becoming cooler and the Lozenge and I try to grab a few minutes to run about and do stretches in the little garden below our flat before he boards the school bus at 7.40am. The Lozenge is often at his most philosophical at this hour, sitting on the step, sniffing a jasmine flower with a faint remnant of a milk moustache. These are precious minutes which I have learned to treasure before the day begins in earnest.

Rashimi, less philosophical, has started to express his annoyance at me having a job besides motherhood. 'Naughty Mummy work,' he said to me last week. He must have noticed that my working life is becoming a pressure cooker as the end of January approaches, when we will pack up our things almost a year on from arriving here, and move up the road to Jerusalem. I have to finish the documentary about the gallery by then. And I also want to have gathered as much material for the series on Palestinians of 1948 before we leave, so I will be able to edit  these while I look for work the other side of the border. We have plenty of Jordanian Christmas festivities planned in this time too, with lots of visitors. And Rashimi must have noticed a certain determination in my stride.

The Glammy whisked the dwarves off to her flat for one last frolic before she set sail for her new job in Bahrain. Rashimi's favourite song is 'Call me, maybe' (Callleee maybeeeee) and now I can't listen to it as it makes me cry with memories of the Glammy's remarkable presence in our lives. I was worried about her for the last week as she explained she couldn't move from her bed or stop sleeping, and I wondered if she was depressed. But yesterday we had our final goodbye with a lunch at her house - and we met Ahmad, her new husband, who has the kindest, twinkliest eyes and a gentle demeanour. 'It's taken me nearly 3 years to get to her,' he said. And J and I could both see that he is the very best outcome of an extraordinary situation. This is all that matters.

Meanwhile, we joked, that St Grace was going home to lie with cucumber slices on her eyes all weekend, after her second week with us. I noticed she looked a bit pale. And I know how she feels after dwarf wrangling for five days on the trot. However, she has the most unflustered countenance, and J and I agreed, almost a spiritual peace about her.

In the book about Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell, there's an explanation of the little tricks he used for the art of living. I doubt Grace is aware of it, but I'm sure she's near this way of being in the most natural way.

The author explains that Montaigne strived to: 'achieve a way of living known in the original Greek as eudaimonia, which can be translated as 'happiness', 'joy', or 'human flourishing'. This meant living well in every sense: thriving, relisihng life, being a good person. The best path to eudaimonia was ataraxia, which might be rendered as 'imperturbability' or 'freedom from anxiety'. Ataraxia means equilibrium: the art of maintaining an even keel, so that you neither exult when things go well nor plunge into despair when they go awry. To attain it is to have control over your emotions, so that you are not battered and dragged about by them like a bone fought over by a pack of dogs.'

I hope she passes on her natural ataraxia to our dwarves (though I do love their exultations). And I'm hoping through human osmosis, a little ataraxia might rub off on me along the way. 

Demolition day

Can ugly truths be beautiful? I wondered this as I watched a bulky Palestinian from Jenin, dressed in a white vest, combat pants and sandals, smack a small scale model building with a mallet all day long, until all that was left was a pile of grey rubble.

Three of us: the muscles from Jenin, a friend and I, spent the whole day in the studio room, working together to help create the piece which will one day be a work of art. The job I had in the process involved repetitive actions with a camera, and although I had to concentrate on technical accuracies, there were many seconds within half minute intervals where my mind could wander free. Perhaps the nearest thing to working on a production line in life experience to date.

I'm always surprised at the beauty to be found in the ugliness surrounding us. The beautiful faces of the gypsy girls I photographed, as they pitched their tent on a rubbish dump outside Amman, their colourful clothing matching other fragments in the trash. The soft contrast of a line of washing wafting against a background of mud buildings or white tents in a refugee camp. The washing line a small symbol of human survival and perseverance. The ugly skeleton of an unfinished office block reaching into the sky and framing the cityscape behind.

The day in the studio was no different. We were shut inside a dusty studio for most of the day watching an act of physical destruction take place. A model of a building decintegrated before our eyes, storey by storey. Even our conversations reflected the inescapable anguish in this patch of contested history and land. The muscles from Jenin had lost two of his brothers in the first Palestinian intifada, and 18 of his first cousins later on. One of the cousins was arrested and had all his fingernails pulled out in an Israeli prison, before he took his own life in a suicide strike. As I filmed him slowly destroy the building - I wondered what was running through his mind, and also the mind of the artist - his family also trapped within one of the world's most brutal conflicts.

But what surprised me most was the beauty in the day spent in this way. And the strange beauty to be found in the process of the frame by frame demolition of a grey-hued building against a white backdrop, and the even more surprising appeal of the pile of rubble at the end of it all.

I am yet to listen to Grayson Perry's Reith Lectures about what makes art good, but in a snippet of his I read in the FT, he says: Our idea of beauty is constructed, by family, friends, education, nationality, race, religion, politics, all these things.' It's not something that can ever be scientifically proven. Beauty is subjective.

But I wondered in that dusty studio, if beauty isn't almost always found in a place where someone is being completely honest and true to themselves - particularly when combined with skill and thought and a careful process behind it.

Certain truths ring truer to us as individuals at different stages of life, making our tastes and interpretations of beauty, change as we grow. It helps if you believe in it, of course.

And for me, this dusty day of demolition was another little glimpse of beauty in a surprising place. 

Mudarraj Romani

A trip with Abu Lucy to Amman's Roman theatre

Reem - the newest recruit to our rink

We got so used to the incongruity of little pieces of Grandpop and Grandma's lives about the place - their book or notebook perched on the arm of a chair; a pair of specs on a table - and we miss them now they've gone. Almost simultaneously, went Sayyad, for a well deserved 2 month trip to see his family in Egypt and I realised as he handed me the key to the little garden at the bottom of our house, smooth as a shell from its constant use in his calloused hands, that the garden is definitely not the garden without him. I explained my thoughts and he looked pleased. The Lozenge chirruped that he'd like to go with Sayyad to 'Eejit' and if not there then with Grandma and Grandpop to Scotland in their suitcase.

The week we had with Umm and Abu Lucy raced by too fast, but we packed in many an activity including a trip to Um Ar Rasas, south of Amman, where lies a complete mosaic floor of a church built in the 8th century. The dwarves love it, as it's in 'the desert' and there was so much excitement about going back to see the 'moseggs' that the Lozenge woke up at 5am and was to be found, with J, painting the sunrise and making sandwiches for our picnic by 6.30am.

As Umm and Abu Lucy departed, so did the power, and we spent most of the evening in darkness with two very excitable dwarves running about with wind-up torches. Rashimi saw the arrival of my Arabic teacher, and yelled: 'No class! No class!' as he knows it means I'll be occupied for 2 hours. His wish was granted as Arabic is hard enough in daylight, and Mohammad and I agreed we wouldn't continue with the lesson in the darkness. So instead, we lit candles, and lolled about the four of us, the boys watching various iparaphernalia in lieu of television, and J and I reminiscing about the week. It's the second time Umm and Abou Lucy have been to stay, and as with their first visit, I feel the benefit of an outsider's view on our lives. If we are the shell around the egg of our dwarves, then Umm and Abu Lucy are the secondary shell which surrounds us.

St Grace is also relieved to have found some 'surrounding protection' as she put it in the form of Reem, or 'Weem' as the dwarves call her, who happens to be the only Sri Lankan woman in the whole of Jordan, with a driving license. And she is now the personal chauffeur for Grace and the boys in the afternoons. We waved them off on Sunday, and I noticed Rashimi looking rather suspicious at the downgrade from the Glammy's golden Mercedes to Reem's navy blue Kia with complimentary dents. There was much laughter and chatting in Sinhalese from the front as the female Sri Lankan duo - one Christian, one Buddhist, rattled off with them to find some suitable fun.  The boys peeped out the back looking a little bovine and wondering what the fuss was about.

As they rounded the corner I thought to myself that the Lozenge and Rashimi are reminiscent of a pair of curling stones, their fledgling paths being swept and polished to olympian standards by many precious people, who seem happy to slide around on our rink with us, helping them to find their way smoothly forwards. 

Umm and Abu Lucy's second visit

The Glammy wrote little cards to the boys before she left, saying how much she loved them and how she would never forget their time together. It was a tearful day with an attempt at some cheer with a goodbye tea party with her favourite: banana cake.

But there was a brightly coloured band aid in the form of the arrival of Umm and Abu Lucy the following day, and their ability to adjust to most situations…

..and St Grace has stepped into the fray with the poise and calm she is named for. She is Grace personified. The only issue for her, and us, is she doesn't drive, and this week she had a bad experience with a taxi driver who was very rude, charged her too much and refused to come and collect her and the dwarves at the playground. We agreed we should perhaps find an alternative to the stereotypical money-grabbing male, and in her resourceful way, St Grace has found a Sri Lankan lady driver who will hopefully be their escort on wheels for their afternoon outings.

We have been galavanting with the Grandparents most of the week now, to places such as the stunning Roman site of Jerash,

where we had a rendition of Scotland the Brave from a Jordanian piper.

And despite the fact that the Lozenge was a little disappointed that Grandpop hadn't arrived on his red tractor, the week has been a tonic and an impromptu holiday in our own temporary home.

Rainbow

This is the last image the Glammy took before she left us. She showed us so much, including at the 11th hour, a rare Jordanian rainbow.

Caaaaake!

I walked into Rashimi's room yesterday morning and said: 'Happy Birthday.' And he responded: 'Caaaaaaaake!' Pavlovian dogs, I think is the phrase that fits this bill.

We had a riotous day, with a multinational contingent as always. The Lozenge's friend, 'Faisthal' came along with his mother and the Lozenge and he spent the entire party wrestling with each other. They are almost exactly the same size and weight, though Faisal is five, so neither of them got injured, unlike when the Lozenge takes on Rashimi…

Underneath, I was a little tainted with sadness. The Glammy's last day is Monday, and Sayyad the wonderful Egyptian janitor is leaving to see his family in Egypt for a couple of months so we may not see him before we leave here. They have been the loving cement for our first year in the Arab world, and as the Glammy admitted to me this morning, 'I look back on this year and it seems as unreal and wonderful as a film I watched, but one that I was actually playing a part in.'

I've finished my book on Gaza and have moved onto 'A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer,' by Sarah Bakewell. It's a fascinating insight into a life lived and documented in 16th Century France. Montaigne's parents made the extraordinary decision to send him to live in the house of his wet nurse until he was between one and two years old, so he would always be imbued with the sense of how the real people (read: peasants) lived, and would be in touch with this. Then, when he returned to his own family's household, they spoke only Latin to him, learning the language as they went along themselves, to ensure he would also have the highest educational level of speech at the same time as understanding the real world.

Though we cannot claim to have gone to this extreme with our own children, the presence of personalities like Sayyad, Abu Mohammad, the Glammy, and now St Grace, will I'm sure have an impact in a significant way, on how our dwarves see the world. Being here, and absorbing all of this, will stay in a small part of their souls forever - even if they never know it themselves. It's something I'm extremely grateful for, and will never forget.

Some sad realities

J and I often talk about the fact that living here, things are often not as they seem. And though we have known the Glammy for nearly a year, her home life will always be something that comes a surprise, even though when she's with us and the boys, you would never know what lay beneath.

The dwarves, Grace and I, turned up at her flat where she lives with her Mum and sister, for her 'Xotbe' the engagment party, which had been hastily organised after her uncle, the head of the family since her father died, decreed that she would need to marry this week.

We could hear the pumping bass beat from outside on the street as we drew up in the darkness at 6pm. We went in the door and between huge pedestals of flowers, surrounded by rows of chairs occupied by female family members, sat the Glammy, on her own, in a coral pink gown with hair and makeup that must have taken at least 4 hours. The boys didn't recognise her, and wouldn't say hello, making off in the direction of her bedroom and her wide screen TV.

I mingled a bit with the ladies, and tried to talk over the thumping music. The Glammy told me how sad she was, that it had to be like this. She told me how her uncle had made her mother,  her fiancé and herself go around for a meeting, to hear if he'd given his approval for the marriage. 'Get me my gun,' the uncle said to her. And the Glammy brought it for him, wondering in the back of her head if he was going to do something crazy. Instead it seemed, he was just wielding his power. He told them they had to marry this week. So the Glammy had to get dolled up and sign the wedding papers and have an engagement party all on the same day. She said her mother had no say in it, being a woman, and in any case has been wanting the Glammy married off since she was 17 when her father died - despite the fact that the Glammy has supported the family financially for all this time.

My heart was in my red high heeled shoes as I tiptoed around the carpeted apartment, trying to talk to the cousins and aunts and great aunts and sisters. How can the Glammy's power to run her life be taken from her like this, I thought, by some bone headed uncle who has no concern for her welfare?

What was most upsetting was the reaction of the dwarves who obviously smelled an enormous rat - and refused to be involved at all. The atmosphere was not a happy one, and we left after an hour with St Grace, after the boys had been pulling and pulling both my arms to drag me out of the door and go home.

Tears pricked in my eyes as we drove to drop St Grace at her flat. We love the Glammy and we want the best for her. But we, too, are powerless.

The thing that keeps me hopeful is that the fiancé, it seems, is gentle and kind, and despite the family pressure, has promised the Glammy she can decide in her own time what she wants. In her words, 'And if it doesn't turn out right, then I can always run away. No one can catch me.'

A sad reality of so many female lives in this world in the 21st century.

An impromptu 'xotbe'

J arrived back with us on Monday night and is here 'to stay and stay and stay and stay for a day and another day and another day and another and another…', so the Lozenge squealed as he squeezed the breath from J by the door, stark naked, accompanied by Rashimi who hung off J's right leg, in nothing but his slipper socks.

Rashimi is 2 on Saturday and arrangements are afoot. I asked the Lozenge if he wanted to invite any of his friends from school to the party and he said: 'I'd like to have Faisthal. There's 2 Faisthalth, but one  Faisthal is 'absit'. He's twavelling.' So I will ask the Faisal who is not currently absent to come along. They are not in the Lozenge's class, but it seems he's made friends with them on the little orange school bus.

We have only a few more days left of the Glammy's company. She will leave for Bahrain where she has a highly paid job which will enable her to save a bit of money. Recently she's been feeling the pressure, since she supports most of her family financially, and she lamented to St Grace and I the other day: 'I wish I was from Sri Lanka or somewhere I could actually afford to buy or build a house. I don't know how I will survive here in Jordan, either with or without a man.'

She's also feeling the family pressure about getting married, and a man she's known for a while has just asked her mother if he could have the Glammy's hand. Because the Glammy's father died 15 years ago, her uncle is the head of the family and in charge of these decisions. They trooped around to his house to ask him and he said: 'I want 5,000 dinars (about £5,000) in jewellery, and 5,000 dinars worth of furniture, and another 5,000 as a kind of 'deposit' should the Glammy be stranded by this man. Then he announced they needed to be engaged by the end of the week. So they had to rush around doing paper work and having blood tests in the hospital. This is a legal requirement here in Jordan, so that people too closely related will not marry and have children, as it can mean babies are born with deformities. 'consanguinity' it's called, and is a big problem in many parts of the Arab world where it's traditional to marry a close relation.

St Grace, the dwarves and I will attend her 'xotbe' engagement party, tonight. J is not invited as it's just for women. It seems so rushed and sudden, and I can see our wonderful Glammy is having to tow the line just to keep her family quiet. We are all hoping and praying that this man will be good to her, and will understand if she decides at some point during the engagement, that he is not the one for her after all.

So St Grace is gradually stepping further into the melee of our lives, and is a complete wonder, Rashimi and I agreed as we strummed 'Amazing Grace' on the eukelele this morning before she arrived, followed by a warm up Happy Birthday for Saturday at which point Rashimi shouted, 'CAAAAAAKE!' There's a bit of baking to be done before then.

This week I interviewed a fascinating Jordanian architect, Ammar Khammash, who was in charge of the renovations of some of the buildings at the gallery. He's a man of great modesty and enormous talent, and is going against the shiny, new and shocking designs of other Arab architecture, and bringing things back to their roots through his designs.

J and I drove through cool November darkness to a party last night, hardly believing that we have only just over 2 months left here in Jordan. This little bubble of home containing all the people that have shared it with us, will soon be popped and we'll have to start inflating the next one.

They found us

They found us: family 'reunited' after super-typhoon - video
Nothing to do with the Arab world for a change - but the most heart warming tale from Channel 4 about a family found in the Philippines post-Typhoon.

Life on the outside

After a week of filming the artists and other goings on at the gallery I walked back in the door of our flat to squeals of happiness and a tangle of small male limbs gripping to my waist and shoulders. 'Off! Off!' Rashiimi said as he peeled off my cardigan and ripped the sunglasses from my face with a tanned and sticky hand. Just to be sure that I was not going out again. Then the Lozenge dragged me, Rashimi and the Glammy onto the balcony to watch his 'thcooter thuntth' which involved very slow wheeling around the dusty marble floor, and even more careful turns around furniture, in nothing but his turquoise pants from H&M.

It was quite a relief, I thought to myself, as we settled on beanbags that evening, the boys eating pretzels, and me drinking a glass of beer, to be back in the soft and innocent land of dwarfdom, far from the sophisticated thinking behind the art and installations I'd been filming all week. It's hard not to feel a little like an outsider at times when dealing with artists born in Beirut: 1983, Kuwait: 1980, Damascus: 1973, Johannesburg: 1984.

Swindon: 1975 doesn't exactly meld neatly with the rest. And let's just say, I was glad it was me with the camera asking the questions, not the other way around. As I read in a recent review about Malcolm Gladwell's book, ' David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants', there is proof that difficult experiences in life can lead people to be higher achievers with a lot more to say, if the chemistry is right. I am yet to experience true grit and here in the Arab world right now, in certain company, that can set you as the outsider. But to be an outsider is still an important experience in itself for a white, middle class, heterosexual mother of 2. And as a diplomatic 'spouse' as the strapline goes, an experience which you need to get used to since you're either feeling like an outsider in a new place, or like the outsider when you finally get back home.

Had J, the resident shrink, been here, we would have spent the evening talking about it. But instead I consoled myself with the Amstel and dwarves and had a good night's sleep despite dreaming about camera angles and  metal welding. Before I fell asleep I watched an extraordinary film called: 'The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu.' It's a film made by Eric Baudelaire on a Super 8 camera, about the daughter of the founder of the Japanese Red Army (Shigenobu) and the activist film-maker Adachi Masao. May, the daughter spent the first 27 years of her life in hiding in Lebanon, assuming a different identity every couple of months as a young child. It's beautiful, thought provoking, and all based around audio interviews combined with grainy visuals of landscapes around Beirut and Tokyo, which is a technique I'm interested in, albeit not as masterful of the art as Eric Baudelaire. But good to have examples to learn from.

After a weekend with the dwarves, the apartment looks like the aftermath of a typhoon. I noticed all my hairclips are missing as the Lozenge has been fishing with them with his little magnetic rod, and some carrots which he half peeled leaving the peel strewn at intervals over the kitchen floor.  There is a half drunk bottle of 'weewee juice' (kiwi juice in Rashimi language) on my side of my bed and the bedroom floor is littered with pillows, teddies, plastic fruit and vegetables and a frisbee.

I had a quick glance at the news and saw that the Swiss investigation team has decreed it is very possible that Yasser Arafat was indeed poisoned by polonium. Then I received a  message from Detta Reagan, the woman who organised the bike ride from Beirut to Amman that I flimed nearly 10 years ago. She met Arafat a few times, and on one of these occasions he gave her some documents about polonium and Israel's use of it against their enemies, insisting she read about it. She did read about it, but then discarded the documents, which she now deeply regrets.

On Saturday the dwarves and I watched an Arab horse show with Duke Mamdouh, or 'Mamnouh' as Rashimi calls him, which amusingly means, 'forbidden' in Arabic. The boys enjoyed it and the event inspired the Lozenge to create his own jump course with the beige sausage cushions in our sitting room when we got home, and he wouldn't go to bed until he had performed it several times when the Duke came around for dinner last night. As I was cooking dinner, luckily before anyone arrived, I came into our bedroom after hearing squeals of what could have been positive or negative hysteria, and watched the dwarves, with my floury pinny on, yet again merely a bystander, as the Lozenge and Rashimi had a 15 minute naked wrestle on our bed.

I made and had dinner with the Duke and two lovely ladies visiting from UK, and went to bed at 12.30am to be awoken by the Lozenge wanting to continue his pyjama clad show jumping at 5.30am. After the dwarves had inhaled a strawberry yoghurt each for breakfast, spreading most of it on the already fur-lined plastic table cloth, they disappeared to the playroom. I found myself in a room on my own for the first time in about 7 days, listening to someone talking on radio 4 about palaeontology. I felt quite like a close relation to the subjects of the programme.

I have a night filming tonight, then more tomorrow, but J returns on Monday and then Umm and Abou Lucy arrive for a week's holiday next Sunday, when I will be very much the insider and intend to make the absolute most of it.

Anniversaries

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary and the morning started at 6.30am with the Lozenge performing some contemporary dance, stark naked, with his new grade 1 hairdo, to the song about the animal fair. 'We went to the animal fair, the birds and beasts were there. The great baboon by the light of the moon, sat combing his auburn hair...' I joined him, fully clothed, having not had my hair cut since July. And as I watched him prancing about I wondered how we'd got here in only 7 years. I definitely don't feel qualified at times.

I spent the day at the gallery interviewing and filming some inspiring Arab artists in their 30s who are taking part in the residency programme which is part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the gallery this weekend. Each of the artists is educated and passionate about the history and the politics of this region - and having been raised here, they have a deep understanding of the customs, language and subtleties of the here, right now in all its complexity. They have all trained as architects, sculptors, painters or photographers, and are combining their skills to raise important questions about what's going on. And you can imagine, right now in history, how many questions there are to ask.

I filmed one Lebanese artist painting three huge shards of polystyrene with mud from the Dead Sea, representing its division between Jordan, Israel and Palestine in 1947; I filmed a Palestinian raised in Jerusalem weld huge metal frames into the shape of a caravan which he will balance on four oil barrels; and another Palestinian/Jordanian, raised in Kuwait, stencil borders onto a wall, with Arabic and English text raising the question of 'dwelling' and 'stillness' which come from the same root word in Arabic. I am truly grateful for this immersion in the intellectual and creative side of Arab culture right now. But again, I don't feel that qualified to be part of it. But being a bystander with camera and sound equipment is an honour in itself.

The question of living, and loving

There's a special Arabic phrase for when someone's had a new haircut. 'Nai'man' you say. And after a trip to the hairdresser with the Glammy, the Lozenge and Rashimi look like G.I. dwarves. I nearly cried when I came in from a day's filming at the gallery, to see the Lozenge racing up to me in pyjamas with a grade 1. I prefered his former, wooly self. As I had a shower this morning, he gazed into the mirror and said: 'But I want to be LauwiLion again.' I assured him he was still the same man with a crew cut.

J returned late last Thursday and we stayed up until about 1.30am with the help of some Tempranillo from the embassy shop, realising how much of the day to day detail is missed when you spend time apart. We made up for this time, and the dwarves were much calmer while he was around. When he's not there, I manage fine, but I find myself reacting to things in a way I wish I wouldn't, including becoming a playdoh-Nazi, and getting cross when the boys mix up the colours as you can't buy the real stuff here. And getting the Lozenge from bed to bus in the mornings reminds me of trying to pull a reluctant donkey forwards - where the feet stay rooted to the ground and the neck just seems to get longer and longer. Many such mole hills turn into hillocks, to the extent that the Lozenge asks me about 5 times a day: 'Are you 'appy Mummy?' He didn't ask it once in the 3 days J was with us, and thankfully J's Nablus episode will be over on Monday and as the Lozenge shrieked excitedly: 'he's going to stay and stay and stay and stay and stay.'

3 boys hanging out

We were talking to Sayyad, the beloved Egyptian janitor downstairs, and he welcomed J back with a warm hug. J thanked him for looking after me and the boys while he was away, and Sayyad replied: 'Hadihi ukhti: she is my sister.' He and St Grace and the Glammy have become like a replacement family to us over the last 10 months, and I can hardly imagine what life will be like when the Glammy leaves, and Sayyad goes back to Egypt for a much deserved visit after 1.5 years away from his family. These economic decisions which so many people around us make, to enable a decent life in their own country one day, come at such an enormous cost. But Rashimi is as happy in Arabic as English as a result of these people - and we never know which language is going to come from his mouth. I thought he was talking about Santa the other day, and wondered how he knew about him, only to realise he was pointing at a bag, which is 'shanta' in Arabic. He shouts: 'Nafaq!' when we go through a tunnel, and 'Jesr!' when we go over a bridge. If only we could keep this up in the natural way it has begun. Though St Grace, for all her positive attributes, has Sinalese as a first language, and finding good schools in Jerusalem that also provide Arabic tuition from an early age, is apparently a challenge.

We had a taste of Sri Lanka over the weekend, as St Grace invited us all to her house for tea. We all clustered into her and her husband's small apartment near the centre of town, where she had laid out a table full of Sri Lankan food followed by an enormous cheesecake and Rashimi's favourite: 'Kamew' (creme caramel). The room was full of all of us, the Glammy, her sister and her Mum, and all through the afternoon various Sri Lankan friends of Grace came in with doe eyed babies on their hips to join the fun. We had a wonderful afternoon, realising that whatever the boys said or did would be loved and understood, and J and I reflected that water can be nearly as thick as blood when you have no blood near by.

Sri Lankan party time

St Grace has opened up a little since gradually taking over some of the Glammy's work before the Glammy leaves us in 2 weeks time. She told me how when she was 16, she wanted to join the army, and her mother was so worried about her doing this, she sent her to Jordan with her two sisters to get a job. Quite extreme, you might say. St Grace worked for an Arab family here and was treated so badly she lost the skin on her hands from the Clorex. Her employers wouldn't listen when her sister protested, so her sister bought her a ticket back to Sri Lanka again after 6 months. Then she met Suranji, in the church they used to go to. Everyone thought they were lovers but they were just very good friends, she said. Then one day Suranji asked her: 'Can we be lovers?' And so it began. Now they too are separated from their one son, Jonathan, who lives in Sri Lanka with his grandmother. When I see St Grace with our boys, I wonder if there's any part of her that wishes she'd had as much time with her own son. They left for Jordan when he was Rashimi's age and see him once a year at the very most.

The poor Glammy is having a trial by Arab tribe, and being emotionally pushed and pummelled by her mother and other female relations with remarks such as: 'You will never bear children now at your age (she's not yet 30); when are you going to find yourself a husband?; take the job in Bahrain not the US - we don't want you to be far away (she supports her family financially and buys everything for her Mum, including her cigarettes); and so on…Over the time we've known each other, I've always tried to remind her that there should be no pressure, and a marriage won't be a happy one if she feels she's giving up her independence or values just for the sake of having a family. And we have giggled a lot about her family's behaviour towards her. This weekend her Mum took her to see a 'Sheikh' over the weekend, for which she paid about £20 of the Glammy's own money, to try and magic away her faults and negative energy which surely must be standing in the way of her finding a husband. This city can seem to have a developed veneer, particularly as you drive down streets lined with shiny apartment blocks and villas, but zoom through any of the tinted glass windows, and you will find vestiges of family dynamics that are very far from matching the designer bathroom and the Mercedes parked out the front.

We love the Glammy so, and we wish her well, but she's going to need nerves of reinforced iron to sit out this next decade without being pressured into a life for herself that her heart did not choose.

Polio drops

As if Syria needed any more demons in its midst, there has been a recent outbreak of polio, and over 500 children are suspected to be infected with it. Officials at Za'atari are worried the disease will come into the camp via the 300 new arrivals they receive each day from Syria, so UNICEF has just funded and implemented a mass vaccination scheme which they asked me to photograph for the New York office this week.

I left home at 7am. Having gone to bed late as always, I hoped the dwarves might wake a little later than normal but at 5.30am a small creature in blue pyjamas crept into my room whimpering: 'I want to go to Grandma and Gran Gran's houses. I want to go on the sleeper train and make blackcurrant jelly.' I think he'd had a dream about the brace of beloved Grandmothers. I explained there wasn't much I could do about it right now, but did he want to come and sit in my office while I got my camera kit together? His face lit up. My den has a metaphorical no entry sign around 1 metre up the door. The Lozenge sat on my swivel chair drawing with my coloured pens and said: 'Now I can be a weal offith worker.'

Then Rashimi awoke with a high temperature and understandably in a bad mood. I left St Grace with the duo, a thermometer and a large bottle of Calpol, hoping I'd chosen the right lenses. They stood in their usual position on the window ledge and waved me off until I rounded the corner.

We arrived at the camp where the warm wind picked up the dust and whipped it into our faces as we followed the health workers on their caravan to caravan polio vaccination trail.  Every child under 5 needed to have the drops put in their mouths, and as a caravan was vaccinated one of the team, in a dramatic black hijab, pale blue UN vest and bright red nails, set about spray painting 'OPV' in paint to match her nails on the exterior. This meant the tent or caravan had been vaccinated.

I was relieved to be behind a camera and not responsible for even one of the 500 wailing children, who were summoned, purposefully gripped and administered with a few of the drops on the tongue.

We met some lovely families as always, and a cameraman and I hung back and interviewed one family about their lives in the camp for a film he was making. Unfortunately, by hanging back, we were separated from the rest of the group and therefore from the translator, so I found myself in the position of translator which is laughable considering one Jordanian lady recently complimented me on my: 'really sweet broken Arabic'. But since the cameraman had only a few words up his sleeve, and I seemed to have at least one more sleeve-full, the rule of relativity applied. We got by and made some more friends, including a very together seeming family who had planted a vegetable garden in the dust in front of their caravan. The mother of the family was 16, pregnant with her second child, having married at 14.

The camp is so huge now, and the rows of caravans and tents so similar looking I could not have found my way back to see the family I made this film with a couple of weeks ago, but I wished I could have gone to see them as they are so nice and we developed quite a rapport in the time we spent together.  I spoke to the cameraman about the early marriage debate, since it's always the first story journalists from outside want to report. But it's really a non-story, since many girls back in Syria would have been marrying at this age anyway. The fact that girls like Manal (not her real name) in the film below, think that there are opportunities for education in a refugee camp, that they would not have had at home, is an interesting angle - but not one a news agency would want as might look like good news.

https://vimeo.com/77582844

I got back home in the late afternoon to find rather a hot and floppy Rashimi who said: 'Lie. Lap. Peppa.' And we did just that. I was rather relieved to lie down on a beanbag by that stage in the day myself. And although Peppa Pig wouldn't have been my first choice, I saw a muddy puddle for the first time in three months.

The Lozenge had his Arab dressing up day in lieu of Halloween at school, but nothing would have convinced him to put on the red and white headgear. 'I will be a doctor, and only a doctor.' So a doctor he was.

There is still a small lion teddy on the swivel chair in my office. A reminder of our early morning antics which seems like longer than a week ago.

J gets back for the weekend this evening, which cannot come quick enough. It also seems like years that he's been away.

'Ventures and getting away with it in the Chevvy

Rashimi has been expressing his feelings about J's absence in some interesting ways. The latest of which has been wearing J's pants over his head.

Then last week I found Rashimi in the bathroom lathering himself in 'keem' which turned out to be some fake tan from my cupboard. As if his nut brown legs needed any help. He put liberal quantities all over his body, and the floor, then stepped backwards and did a magnificent wipe out on the greasy floor. 'keeem!' he wailed, rubbing his leg and bottom.

The Glammy is doing a bit of a hand over with St Grace, since her departure date is looming closer. She will stay for Rashimi's 2nd birthday in mid-November and will leave after that. I'm still in denial. But Grace is doing some great work so far. After the fake tan incident, she arrived and Rashimi yelled: 'Build house!' (he has no volume control), and within ten minutes he was nestling in a den designed by Grace made from the sofa, some cushions and a rush mat for a roof. Having built her own house in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she's a dab hand and Rashimi was delighted.

I left them to it and went to help a Syrian artist friend, by filming one of his latest projects for him. It was quite an emotional experience, and reiterated yet again, the importance of the role of artists in these troubled times, helping us to look at the events in another way, often simplifying them so we bystanders are able to see through the complexities.

The Lozenge and I had a luxurious escape to the Dead Sea with 2 beloved visitors from the UK, one small one grown up, and the four of us swam and chatted and laughed from dawn til dusk in the warmth - looking over the oily waters towards the lights of Jerusalem on the other shore. It felt bizarre knowing that J was there on the other side. I wished we could have sent up a little smoke signal.

We left Rashimi in Amman, which initially I felt a little guilty about, as we packed a small bag each and he scuttled around saying: 'dedd. seeee. dedd. seeeee. 'Venture! 'Venutre!' But it was not going to be a holiday for anyone with a kamikaze nearly 2 year old, complete with built in loud speaker, and as it turned out, his own adventures were probably more adventurous. A Sri Lankan party with St Grace where he made lots of friends and ate bowlfuls of chilli rice which he loved so much, he now has a personal month's supply in the fridge. Then he exchanged the chilli rice for falafels and hummus (another Rashimi favourite) and the Glammy whisked him off to Arab paradise in her flat with hundreds of female relations and young cousins. He was very pleased to see us when we got back, but I wished he had more vocabulary to tell us his version of his 2 nights with our amazing raven haired ladies who have become as staunch as family over the last 9 months.

I've been stopped twice by the police this week in the red Chevvy. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often considering we're about the only thing on wheels this colour in the whole country. The first time, they'd spotted me with phone to ear. I was chatting to J and managed to explain my devotion for this country in Arabic and that I knew I'd been naughty. The policeman who whose head would have reached only my waist, even in heels (him), gave me a broad grin and waved me off with no fine.

Then the Lozenge and I were hauled off the road after dropping the beloved friends at the airport to return to gale force Britain. The Lozenge was in the front seat, which they told me was 'mamnou': forbidden. They asked me what I was doing here, and didn't appear to speak much English, so I did my best in Arabic, with plenty of extras. Then they tried to move the Lozenge into the back. The Lozenge revealed a bottom lip to rival most, and promptly burst into tears. Whereupon one of the officers opened the back door, took the Lozenge in his arms, gave him an enormous kiss on the cheek, popped him back onto the front seat and fastened his belt. 'You have a beautiful son,' they said. 'Look after him'. And waved us off, again with no fine.

Dr Lozenge

J has gone back to Al Najah University in Nablus on the West Bank, to continue his intense Arabic studies, so the boys and I are on our own once more, feeling the absence of the auntie and uncle somewhat, not to mention J.

Our merry morning routine has begun again, trying to get the dwarves to find a balance between a 5.30 and a 7.30am wake up. Too early and we're all half baked by the time the diminutive school bus arrives, too late and the little orange cube on wheels is beeping impatiently on the road outside, while I try and shoehorn the Lozenge's feet into shoes which he doesn't want to wear after 6 months in Crocs, and manually force reluctant arms and legs into school uniform. Meanwhile Rashimi normally makes an escape and we find him half way down the stairwell in nothing but a nappy, on his way to greet the bus himself. But the weather is cooler now, and disco dressing and all this caper is not so fever inducing as it was in 40 degrees.

I have mountains of work. All  exciting stuff, but the mountains loom higher in the mornings when my mind becomes a flip chart, whisking between pages full of ideas, questions and things I need to just knuckle down to. When auntie R and uncle H were staying we were giggling about my den which is a positive pastiche of motivational slogans on coloured pieces of card. So necessary are they in my lone-woman freelance life, that I often find myself vocally spitting out new ones, which they of course picked up on while we ate a halloumi panini on their last day here. It's all about creating a life in which you can thrive not just survive. I'll never live that one down.

But the difference between thriving and surviving is never more apparent when talking to young girls in Za'atari camp as I've been doing over the last few weeks, and have just finished editing another photo film for UNICEF about a sixteen year old who refused to let her father make her marry, and to allow her to continue her education instead. She won her battle, and with it the same one for her younger sister. When they saw the film, apart from wanting their real names changed to other ones which took me another half a day of editing, they liked it so much, that they said they wanted to show it around the camp and beyond to encourage other families to make the same decision they had - and try to break this cycle of marrying girls off so early. Although when we spoke to the father, the full financial implication of fending for even a small family, makes you understand a little better why these fathers might do it. And in these parts, you receive money for a daughter, and there are marriage brokers a dozen in the camp, wheeling and dealing with young girls' lives for a fee.

But I was relieved they liked the film because it's always the most nerve-inducing part when you have to show the subjects how you've portrayed them.

The Lozenge is busy planning his future also. This morning he turned up at the breakfast table in nothing but a doctor's coat and navy blue face mask. Through the acrylic he said: 'I'm off the Awabic Medicine centre Mummy. Do I look like a nice doctor in my coat?' Over a first slurp of coffee I agreed that if he were a doctor, I'd want to be ill all of the time (sort of).

His school sent a note about Halloween next week. Since we're in an Arab country they explained, they don't want typical Halloween costumes, but: "We would be most obliged if all children could participate and come to school dressed in Arabic costume. All staff and teachers will join in."

Judging by their surprise at the Lozenge's alternating bright pink and red nails he had last week after a solo-session with my varnish collection, perhaps he could go as a belly dancer. But either way, it'll be an easier day to dress him, whether he's the Lozenge of Arabia or Salome's sidekick.

Eid ul Adha and a visitation

The festival of Eid happened with better timing than we could have planned: in conjunction with a visit from auntie Rosie and uncle 'Aweeeeee!' as Rashimi shrieked all week to his new pin up, who for the first time wasn't female.

The first morning of the Lozenge's Eid holiday week off school got off to a tenuous start after not enough sleep. The whining had reached such a level by 8.30am that I threatened to the Lozenge, that if he didn't make a more pleasant noise, I would call the school bus and get it to come round. I agree - it was mean. But I never use empty threats, and boy did this one work. I could see J smirking, if a little shocked, back of set through the doorway.

Luckily the Glammy was working the first day of the week, and whisked the Lozenge off on a date to see: 'Cloudy, with a chance of meatballs' in the cinema while Rashimi slept, and I battled with another deadline before the arrival of the beloved auntie and uncle.

As I waited to collect them, a Jordanian woman in traditional robes ululated (like an Arab yodel really) loudly when her sons appeared in arrivals. It was such a wonderful desert sound, in stark contrast with the sparkling new airport. And I knew that in my stomach, the same sound was lurking somewhere as I waited happily for our family members to arrive. She made the joyful noise for all of us there.

And the week was as full of happiness.

Petra revisited.

Wadi Rum, and the remnants of T.E.Lawrence's presence, visited for the first time in all of our cases.

Some very friendly, and rather thirsty camels who drank mineral water out of our bottles.

And a night spent with a Bedu family, where we ate chicken cooked in the ground, drank velvety red wine (B.Y.O I hasten to add) from tiny glass tea cups under the full moon, and spoke to them about the concept of taking more than one wife. One man said: 'I think I will take a non-Arab wife next. I like the idea of having an apple after a tomato.' And about childhood spent in that awesome expanse of red desert. 'I wouldn't have changed it for the world,' said our host. 'I know every rock and every stone.'

His children are learning about the world the same way. 

Million Dollar Dress

A stylish young girl returning from school in Za'atari camp.

Miss Girl

A young Syrian refugee in Irbid, north of Amman. She followed me around until I took her picture. I can't believe I might not have.