Routes and Routines

routine (n.) 
1670s, from French routine "usual course of action, beaten path" from route "way, path, course" (see route) + subst. suffix -ine. Theatrical sense is from 1926. The adjective is attested from 1817, from the noun.

In the orginial sense, and the theatrical one, we're finding it. Although I hate to admit I rely on a usual course of action, let alone a beaten path, it helps. And it goes a bit like this. 6.30 Wake up one by one - no one knows who first - it changes every day; 7am breakfast and throwing/dodging/wiping up various different varieties of cereal and other carbohydrates laced with jam around the kitchen; 7.45 Lozenge and J leave for nursery/language classes - Rashimi and I hang about dividing an hour and fifteen minutes into 10 minute chunks of what I'd like to do versus what he'd like to do; 9am Glammy arrives and whisks Rashimi off for adventures; 9am catch breath, do a few 360 degree turns while I work out what to do first… and so on until 7.30pm when J and I find ourselves alone again, sometimes, with a glass of Tio Pepe, other times, not, and always with a muezzin-ipod megamix. And so far, everything that happens in between, has been generally different every day.

This week I've been researching a feature for a Jordanian magazine about traveller communities in Amman. They make the travellers in the UK look sophisticated, clean and articulate. No one can quite work out who they are, and where they've come from, and as far as I can see they are Amman's untouchables. I realised listening to them speak, that the language sounded exactly the same as the Turkmen communities I filmed in Afghanistan. Although there's not so much opium being consumed here - as I guess we're further from the source. It's a brave call for a magazine that normally has double spreads of handbags and Amman elite. So I need to get it right.

I found a translator with J's help, and knowing that I was probably heading towards a rough-edged kind of scene, I initially worried she would turn up in heels with aforementioned handbag. But I was in luck. Along the road towards me she sloped, in jeans and a baggy sweater, no make up and highly articulate, intelligent, interested, funny…Another gold good'n from whoever knows where, or however I deserve it. We got Abu Mohammed to take us to the camp, having been told they were Bedouin. When I told him who I was looking for he said in Arabic via the gilded translator, "Umm Laurence, these people are not Bedouin, they're the lowest of the low, the scum of the city. I really don't want to take you there…Umm Laurence, please (his head in his hands)." After some persuasion, we drew up at an incongruously placed, steaming rubbish dump, nestled between a huge glossy Mercedes garage and an IT service centre. The cluster of tents houses about 30 families who are permanently on the move, from nowhere to nowhere it seems. The children are wild, feral, mostly barefoot and don't go to school. It's hard to tell which came first, the dump or the people. I think my emotions must have temporarily switched off as we tried to find a story that will be compelling enough to the readership, who probably, in fact definitely, do not want to know about these people. I kept looking searchingly at the translator thinking she was about to freak out and leave, but she dealt with climbing over piles of human **** with forbearance and grace.  Inevitably we were mobbed by the braying children who posed for photos and clawed us for money and attention. The 1,554,321 photographs I took were on the whole rubbish because of the mayhem, the tripping and slipping and jostling and shouting; and the interviews were stilted because their first language is Turkik, so the women who are less educated had to use their husbands to translate from Arabic for us. The women never tell the whole story in this instance, as understandably they need to protect what remains of their husband's honour by not beseeching us to get them out of this place, preferably with their children.

We left after a couple of hours, calling Abu Mohammed to come and fetch us again. He offered us the hand sanitiser as we stepped in, and revved off seconds after we'd stepped in the back, suggesting we use the whole bottle. The upshot is we're going to have to find more people to talk to us, which will involve more forays into Abu Mohammed's worst parts of town. But the translator is still on board for more dump jaunts, and one of the best I've ever worked with.

I spent the rest of the week getting to know the city, alone, in the red Chevy. There's something about being alone in a car, unrushed, music blaring that will always feel teenage and free. And I thought to get to know the city well, I just have to drive toward somewhere I need to go, and let myself get lost if necessary, without getting cross or in a panic. There are very few maps, road names are so new that Sat Nav often leads you to the same old dump rather than the mall, so there's no other option. And to throw myself, without a brace of bellowing boys, into the Amman traffic mayhem with Mercedes models that would fit an early Woody Allen film, and driving that makes the latinos look sedate, has been quite fun. A car can sometimes quite simply be, a room of one's own.

We've found strong bread flour in one supermarket here and have been putting the bread maker through its paces. Although I miss the kneading and slamming of dough on a marble surface, I figured life involves enough kneading in other ways right now, and there's a certain magic to setting the timer for a loaf to be warm and crusty by 6.45am, ready to be poked and stroked by little fingers and chewed slowly by tiny milk teeth.

The boys and I make regular trips to the local fruit and veg stall where the patient stall keeper, Yaser, explains the names in Arabic of each and every one, with their dual and plural form. A pomegranate is a 'roman' and fennel is a 'shoman'. But unfortunately, that's where the rhyme ends. He is very kind to the Lozenge and Rashimi who normally come away with a complimentary banana or apple clutched in a grubby paw. He took a photo with his phone of Rashimi and I the other week, and we have now become his screen saver. Perhaps everything here becomes more acceptable when you have children, as my new name, Umm Laurence, might suggest.

1 month on Allal al Fasi Street

As we stood around the graveside, I felt like our family was metaphorically speaking, leaning in, supporting each other like sticks on a tee pee, and all I could think was we could have been anywhere doing this. Every culture on earth has this kind of a ritual for someone who has died, and you wonder how we can find so much to disagree about, when fundamentally, we all have such similar needs. Everywhere I looked, there were little green shoots peeking through the frosty earth. This is what it's all about, I thought. Shoots, and roots. And on Granny's coffin, the roundest, proudest numbers glistened. 88. My favourite number in the bingo, and two infinite wheels sitting alongside each other.

But tearing myself away from family and home again after only 3 weeks in Jordan was a wrench, even with the thought of the Lozenge's expression on unzipping the suitcase loaded with sausages, bacon and hot cross buns. After being around so many people I know so well, all united by the legacy Granny left behind, each of us, cog-like, independently turning yet linked, similar to the ones on Connect 4, to be returning to a place where I know no-one well, seemed perverse. Looking down on the midnight lights of Amman on Wednesday, as though some huge hand had thrown a handful of yellow fairy lights onto black velvet, I looked down and thought of my three boys sleeping down below. I was coming home to a place which isn't yet home. And in some ways I think I feel it more strongly than any of them.

I'm reading a book called 8 months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel at the moment (thank you, Malika!). It's one of those novels that sucks you in so much, that you live it in your head even when your nose is out of it. It's set in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, and is so sinister about the regime there, that it makes living in Jordan seems like Islam lite. Yet the two countries were all the same land before the Arab Revolt and World War 1, after which time the Middle East was carved up, and the Al Saud tribe took charge of Saudi and the Hashemite tribe took Jordan. As well as a chilling account of what can happen to humans if they have their freedom taken away, it gives a horrible impression of expats in this situation too. In some ways I think you can probably only be truly honest as a writer of fiction. The main protagonist says: "Travel ends and routine begins and old habits which you thought you had left behind in one country catch up with you in the next, and old problems resurface, but if you are lucky you carry as part of your baggage the means of solving those problems and accommodating those habits, and you take with you an open mind, and discretion, and common sense; if you have those with you, you can manage anywhere."  I bit my lip as I read it, hoping I was one of those. I will be judging my actions from now.

I woke up on Thursday after sleeping for about 2 hours to a tangle of boy flesh, bees nest hair and squeaking as the cubs came scampering in. Rashimi smelled like the John Lewis perfume department, presumably after four days of being in the bosom of the Glammy and her cousins and friends. The Lozenge less perfumed, but more verbose.

Rashimi and I went to collect the Lozenge from nursery from the first time on our own, as to solve the car issue, we've hired the cheapest one we could find for a month. It's a vermillion Chevrolet automatic, which hiccuped and wheezed its way along the familiar roads we'd got to know with Abu Mohammad, pumping Lebanese pop from the radio, which I couldn't work out how to turn off completely. The first thing L said was: 'I like the car and I like the miuthic Mummy!' Then he told me I was very naughty for putting Great Granny in the earth. 'It'th not nithe,' he reiterated.

We ditched the car at home and went on foot to the bird park which was crammed with women and children and the occasional man. I looked around and realised I was almost the only one without a headscarf, and definitely the only Westerner. Hilary Mantel is not helping with her interpretation, albeit in novel form, of certain interpretations of Islam, and I couldn't help feeling a bit cross I had to think before I dressed in the mornings, and cross that these ladies may or may not have had the choice to do the same. I tried a bit of idle Arabic chit chat with a few, but it never seems to get anywhere. L said he wanted to go to Regents Park in London, and then got some huge black ants in his pants after raking a nest with his new purple plastic rake which he'd spent the last hour wrenching off a few other boys who liked the look of it. Probably due to the 2 hours sleep the night before, and after the whistle-stop trip home, my soul was filled with the most intense feeling of loneliness. We hobbled back to our flat, L picking ants out of his pants, Rashimi kicking his legs idly in the pushchair, and I asked myself the same question that pops into my head most days. Why did we decide to do it this way? It was such a stupid idea.

J, being my only real friend in this city so far, was understanding and practical when he got back to find his wife had become a jelly. We agreed it wasn't a bad start to have each other in this new city, and perhaps we were even being a bit more productive with our time than normal. 

Granny

After 'This is not Love, perhaps' by Andrew Tessimond

For Granny

This is not success, perhaps
Success that wears shoulderpads in the boardroom,
That comes from a hunger to prove oneself right against men,
from degrees and doctorates or ambition.
But something gentler from nature's source,
Washed through with a softer hue, something,
more innocent, perhaps more true.

How many days spent folded double with hands in the soil,
Within nature's delicate balance to toil
undistracted and intent in creativity, unaffected by the mood swings of modernity
or aspriation in itself, over loved ones and community.

Beekeeper, painter, a gifted soul, selfless to the end;
A private moral obligation and spirituality a powerful and unique blend;
And when physical strength inevitably waned;
this was the bedrock that remained.

Weathering life's hard times, recognised but unspoken,
Contentment in simplicity and faith in good, never broken;
Blue eyes ever bright, and mind as keen,
as a teenage bride they would have been;
It is a woman like she; that I could only dream to be.

Disentanglement

The little wet towel they gave us in the aeroplane (Royal Jordanian this time) had written on it: 'Have a refreshing flight' which struck me as a bit of a stupid strapline, until I realised I was having exactly that. I managed to read half a book, and start a new one, learn a few Arabic words, and have a very stilted conversation with my Jordanian neighbour who spoke no English. I had to help fill out his UK immigration card, so I discovered he was 19, and going to the UK on business. But by the look of his hands, Rami was not someone who sat at a desk. They were thick and calloused and etched with black grease. It turned out his family deal in used car parts, and he was off to Bolton to see his sister, also part of the family business. He gave me his peanuts, and covered me with his blanket when I fell asleep, in a brotherly kind of way. He's one of 9 children, and his mother still managed to bring him up this well. Let's hope the Lozenge and Rashimi turn out that nice.

The flight was a welcome, stopped moment in time, where I could look both back and ahead in relative peace with no interruptions. It's important to have some distance from people you're entwined with occasionally. You can see what you've got from a bit further away. Once, on the bus in Camden before we left London, with an even younger Lozenge and Rashimi dangling from me, mewling and puking as Shakespeare once said it, an old lady said sagely to me: 'Make the most of these days, dear. You'll look back and you'll miss them.' But often we can't see this when it's happening, and because we're so far from family and friends in Amman, I see the Lozenge and Rashimi at point blank range all the time. There's little time to observe and be thankful as you swing, monkey-like, from branch to branch answering their immediate needs. So to be able to disentangle oneself from the ivy grip of offspring every so often and concentrate on your own roots, is a blessing.  I will not be a good tree if I don't tend my own roots, and flying back to my homeland, albeit alone, to give thanks for my Granny's full and integral life, feels like the right thing to be doing. Though it does hurt a bit, and makes you fret no differently from a little bird, about the chicks left behind, although in extremely capable hands.

I watched a lovely film the other day which is part of the Why Poverty series. It's about an organisation called Solar Mamas, which is based in India and teaches women from the most remote areas of the world to create and maintain solar power in their villages, including how to make a business from it. The film I saw focuses on a Bedu woman from Jordan who leaves her family for a total of 6 months and travels to India, to do it. After a few weeks she cracks, because her husband can't deal with it, and having never left home before, she misses her children and one of them is ill while she's away. She cries onto the shoulder of a Kenyan lady and says: 'I can't do this anymore. I want to smell my children'.  I really understood what she meant. The physical distance is so strange. The film will take an hour of your time, but it's wonderful, and the bravery and eventual conviction of this woman is humbling. People like this woman change their own realities,  surroundings, and communities, but at a great cost to themselves.

http://www.whypoverty.net/en/video/37/

I looked at the electronic map as the little image of the aeroplane edged closer to our tiny island, dissecting the great, arid belt of land with all those names we are so currently familiar with: Bamako, Tunis, Benghazi, Cairo, Aleppo. Each of those places have made news headlines in the Western press this month. They've become places in their own right, as trouble spots - more bad news from dusty places in that arid belt - the Arab Spring strapline uniting them all, in an ever-looser way. But maybe we should look at 'spring' in another way. We didn't read much about these places in the press until the information started flowing into our consciousness more regularly. And that, surely can never be a bad thing, even if the news is frightening. The lid is now off and there's a lot at stake, and a lot to fight for.

Nesting, nesting...

I'm sitting at a coffee shop at Amman airport almost exactly three weeks after we arrived here, on my way home for Granny's funeral and thanksgiving service. Travelling alone for the first time since Rashimi was born, I have a strange combination of feelings - one of lightness and energy, yet also a feeling that I've forgotten something very important. Abu Mohammad drove me to the airport reassuring me not to worry. 'We will all look after your boys and Abu Laurence (as J is known here). They are our family now,' he said. We still don't have a car so we have developed a strong bond with Abu Mo who has taken us about in his yellow taxi everywhere. He is the kindest man with a great twinkle in his eye. This week J was explaining to him in Arabic that we were waiting for our residency papers to come through before we could get our car. But J mistakenly used the Arabic word, 'qeiama' rather than 'iqama'  so instead he said to Abu Mo, that he was waiting for the day of judgement - the biggest day of a Muslim's life - when their life is weighed in merits and sins. Abu Mo almost drove into the ditch he was laughing so much. This language is a test to the sanity.

I've been continuing Arabic classes myself which only helps a marginal amount with the going about and getting things done in Amman. It's a painstaking process and the only words I can remember easily are the ones which sound like something I already recognise. So the word for rain: 'Shittah' is an easy one, and it's rained a lot since we've been here. And to make matters better, or worse, the verb to be's conjugations sound like versions of one of the rudest words in the English language. So although I remember it, no problem, it's hard not to giggle if there's an English speaker in the vicinity. For example, I was in the bathroom: 'Koont fi hammam,' or you (feminine) were in the house: 'Koonti fi'l beit'. If only all words stuck in the head this easily.  And then there's this word 'yani' which is like saying, 'I mean' or 'it means' and Arabic speakers here use it all the time whenever they speak English or Arabic. And in fact, Arabic is so hard, even for native Arabic speakers, that many Amman dwellers speak a hybrid called, 'Arabeasy' where they say 'yani' the whole time, and when I first arrived I asked J, who is this 'Yani' that everyone keeps talking about? Now even I'm talking about him.

This week, J and I discovered a bar equivalent of Jamal's coffee shop in the dead centre of downtown, which is just as smokey and serves beer, inky Jordanian wine at 15% vol, and a fine line in nargileh, or hubbly bubbly pipes, so we now have a place to go and eavesdrop on the thick Amman slang, and be anonymous.

A windy picnic on the balcony

Having decided not to insure a single item of our stuff in the huge container we shipped from the UK, I surprised myself with the excitement I felt when the same brown boxes I'd packed with the Pickfords team in mid-December arrived at the door of our second floor flat. We'd said goodbye to the lot and reckoned there were worse things that could happen than lose all our things - such as, to spend £3K insuring it all when the only value it really holds is sentimental. But the team arrived, and unwrapped every tiny Suffolk stone, random chunk of lapis rock from Afghanistan, candle holder, photo frame, toy, coffee cup…and not even a chip in anything. Miraculous.

Abu Mo has a mean technique with the drill, so he's been helping us hang pictures as we build our nest. As much as I'd love to say that our possessions have no impact on my feeling of being at home, I have to admit they are the proverbial twigs in our nest, and as I help the 'waladain' (Arabic dual for boy) make their rooms comfy and colourful, I get a sense of peace and tranquility that unknowingly I must have been without until this moment. I can only imagine what this must feel like multiplied by a hundred thousand, for refugees who have no home to go back to, no possessions and no sense of permanence in the place they have landed. The waladain have been literally in the wooden toy box since it arrived, and have been a lot happier to entertain themselves now they have been reunited with their plastic paraphernalia.

Since we've arrived I've been trying to lay down some foundations for a working life here myself, and it looks like there's going to be lots of interesting things to do. There are plenty of ideas in the pipeline, but the problem with being freelance and a mother, is it's hard to say no to anyone but your children. So before you know it, what started as an innocent search for some brain food, becomes an 80 hour working week, and your kiddiwink capers are annexed. And what I've learned here, being so far from family and friends, is me and Abu Laurence are their home - even without the toy box. So I'm going to have to strike a balance somehow, in the stereotypical search, of a girl born in the 70's, for a life as near as possible, to having it all.

But sitting here in the aiport with a simple cup of coffee, no money spent on lollies or juice, no frantic sprints to the cashier for extra napkins…today it feels like I'm pretty close to that life.

The closest we've been to Iran

As crowds on the streets of Tehran shouted 'Death to America and Death to Israel' yesterday to celebrate the 34th anniversary of the Iranian revolution and the end of their last monarchy, J and I were invited to a rather more sedate affair at the Iranian embassy here in Amman, albeit under the eagle eyes of Khomeini and Khamenei who peered down at the gathering from their 4 x human sized posters.

We joked, as we wove our way there in yet another yellow taxi, that it was the closest to Iran either of us had ever been, since J had his visa to Iran refused so many times that he was forced to study Farsi in London and Ottawa, and only got as close as Afghanistan, Turkey or Dubai to meet Iranians and practise the language. We were invited along by one of J's teachers here who is Jordanian/Iranian, and although we were under no illusions it was to be a wild bacchanal, it still deserves a mention. And when newly arrived, you have to say yes to everything, or you don't start piecing together a full jigsaw.

The embassy itself looks more like a swimming pool, with its angular construction and blue tiling on the outside. The fountains weren't functioning that evening, though I wondered if they might crank up half way through the evening with an effegy of an inflatable Ayatollah perched on top. Not much else was flowing either - not conversation nor liquids, other than some multicoloured cordials which were offered around on trays next to canapes which looked like they'd been ironed - flat white sliced bread with an Unidentifiable Ironed Morsel on top. Multitudes of men in black and grey suits, as many comb-overs and some exceptional 1970s dark framed spectacles, nodded to each other and talked sotto vocce. I had my arms clamped to my side all evening - not one handshake and the only eye contact from women who were in a 1:8 minority, and most also in black. We got by with Arabic-Persian pidgin talk, though J's Arabic is much better, and I know so little Arabic my Farsi is still better than it. But a few people spoke English.

It was hard to know what to say. Having just watched Ben Affleck's new film, Argo about the American Embassy siege in Tehran (which is brilliant by the way) the atmosphere could have been very un-nerving if you applied even the tiniest garnish of imagination to your UIM. I found myself wandering around the marbled room studying surreal gold framed fantasy images of landmarks in Iran, and then at the unreadable faces in the room, and wondering what everyone in there really thought. Were they truly buying in to all this? Or has it just been so long that they could think for themselves, that they forgot how? The atmosphere was Orwellian, and either way, it was interesting to hear how most Arabs would have rather been in that embassy than in the Israeli one, so perhaps mutual hate is stronger than free thought. Although I did hear one guy admit that there were quite a lot of disappointed Arabs in the room after such a poor spread of food, which was the reason he reckoned most had come. Belt tightening measures after all the sanctions perhaps.

Two hours felt like more than enough, so we nipped back home to have a look in the fridge. One day we hope to see Iran itself. I've never met a real Iranian who thinks their state has a sensible approach, so we live in hope. There just weren't many visible that evening. And other than one Bulgarian man, it seemed we were the only two from the West. Clocked, too, I'd imagine.

The Lozenge and Rashimi had warmer welcomes this week, with Rashimi making friends with so many business men in the park with the Glammy, that the men stayed on and played in the sandpit with him rather than going back to the office. And the Lozenge received a hand made Valentine's card from his new friend 'Nabiw' (Nabil) at nursery, who put a sticker of Mickey Mouse and 'I love you Lauren' on it.

The language of hate and colonial culture

A wild wind blew on Friday, the first day of the weekend here, but the sky was clear with horse tail clouds whisking across it, so J, the boys and I headed to the King Hussein park for a scamper. J and I agreed the wind was making us feel a bit mad as we rolled around the back of a yellow cab with the boys shrieking and clambering at the open windows.

The park sits below the vast King Hossein mosque where the muezzin was singing his heart out, calling the people of this city to Friday prayers. The mosque is pale brown with darker brown minarets and exquisitely, and simply beautiful. It was built in honour of Hossein the current King's father, after he became king at a young age when his Grandfather, King Abdullah was shot beside him as they stood in the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

As the Lozenge kicked a ball around with some older Jordanian boys I allowed myself some mental escape as I listened to the call. There are about 5 per cent Christians in this country, and the rest Muslim. There is a mixture of covered female heads to uncovered and in West Amman, where we live, you can more or less wear what you like within reason. It's extraordinary that in this country, sandwiched between so many trouble spots, life seems to carry on relatively peacefully. At the beginning of the Arab Spring Jordanian police were handing out Diet Cokes and oranges at demonstrations whilst in other countries young people on the streets were on the receiving end of tear gas and brazen batons.  Since then, the government in Jordan has changed almost every six months to keep the electorate quiet. The call to prayer is meditative when sung well, so I was lost for a good few minutes until we were interrupted by a Jordanian boy of about 10, in a yellow tracksuit top with train tracks on his teeth.

'Are you Christian?,' he asked. Although my feelings for organised religion these days vacillate, it would be the nearest guess, and stauncher Muslims don't really understand if you say you have no religion, so we said: 'Yes, we're Christian (Masihi).'
'That's okay,' he replied. 'Not Jew then?' The tone was menacing, but we assured him we weren't Jewish. 'The dirtiest country on earth,' he said, skating off on his board.

You can't spend time in this country without feeling the deep resentment and sadness of the Palestinian people, who for over a century have been pushed and squeezed and crowbar-ed out of their own towns and villages by Israeli Government policy and settlements. The majority of Jordan's population is Palestinian, but although it's a peaceful place where they can live freely and trade, nothing takes away from the fact they've had their homeland stolen. And the 10 year olds know this well, too. They're imbued with the cause, just like the teenage 'killing machine' teenagers who are currently being trained by the Syrian opposition forces to fight the Government and vice versa. Young people, particularly poorer ones, in this region do well if they escape the language of hate.

I'm reading a book called, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a vanishing landscape, by Raja Shehadeh at the moment. He clarifies in thoughtful and beautiful prose, some of the mess that's been made of his country as he walks the central highland hills of Palestine. It's heartbreaking to read, yet you don't feel pity as much as incredulity that it's been allowed to happen. And because he's a lawyer and writer he manages to lay everything out clearly enough for newcomers to the region such as myself to understand.

Before we left the UK, I bought a film poster for the boys' room. It's purple and orange with 'Arabian Adventure' scrawled across it. It's from a fantasy adventure film made at Pinewood in 1979 starring Christopher Lee. I haven't seen it, but it looks like Aladdin meets Star Wars with an evil Caliph and all the rest. I was giggling with a Jordanian girl who works in the film industry here, about quite how recently we were buying into this stereotypical Arab misrepresentation. She told me she went to a British girls' boarding school and apparently when she arrived one girl asked her if she lived in a tent.

The Lozenge has been getting really into J's old Tin Tin books recently, and one of the two editions we have here is The Land of Black Gold, the 1930's version of which is set in the British Mandate to Palestine and focuses on the fighting between the British, Jews and Arabs. With word play including a town called: 'Bir Kegg' and someone called 'Hasch-a-Baibibi' I'm relieved we're actually reading about it in this part of the world so we can show the Lozenge and Rashimi the reality behind the myth, despite the same rancours living on in our time. He took it to his nursery school in the monkey back pack the other day. I wonder what his teachers thought.

Rites of passage

Lerwick - north veering north-east - snow showers - good - occasionally poor. The shipping forecast was the soundtrack at breakfast with Rashimi. I gazed out of the window as he tried to pick up jewels of pomegranate from the table with pincer fingers. Granny has died, leaving her legacy of a quiet matriarchy and an empty house. And my first nephew, Fergus has arrived. Thanks to Granny, I have an excuse to go home and meet him soon. And news of the wild weather whirling around our extraordinary island helped me feel closer to the fold at that moment.

This week J and I had our first tasting of Jordanian wine at an evening arranged by Omar, a wine maker here. Sat around a long table loaded with glasses, elegantly labelled bottles and huge plates of ham and cheese, we were guided through the specific growing conditions here and the results from the vines. Some grapes we'd never heard of, like Tokai for example - described as 'young and happy', but others were familiar, although with a huge difference in temperature between night and day, some of the samples had almost as much alcohol as a whisky shot, so we slightly fell upon the plates of ham and bread to keep our heads. Only just…I'm not very good at pouring the wine back into the little bucket as it seems such a waste.

Thanks to Grace, we had a second night out this week with the most wonderful, creative and intelligent Jordanian jewellery designer, who it turns out, is a cousin of our landlords'. (We're discovering slowly that Amman is still a village). She's the best company and we ate some of the most delicious Lebanese food we've ever tasted.  We hope to see more of her and people like her, here. It was the kind of evening where you skip home late knowing the hours spent were more energy-giving than sleep could be.

Rashimi and I were alone this morning as the Lozenge had day three at nursery. We went to the Bird Garden and he had his photo taken about 5 times, then someone asked if he was 'that one off the Tellytubbies'. I cannot wait to remind him of that when he's 18. When we got home, we filled up the turtle's huge tank on the balcony with a hose and then Rashimi started whining so we went off to make some lunch. Ten minutes later, I went back to the balcony to find my phone and saw…a…flood. I'd totally forgotten about the running hose and the whole balcony was awash. This is when you need friends. Envisaging water pouring through the ceiling and down the chandeliers of the tenants below, I dialled and called 'Sayyad!!!' down the crackling phone line. And said about the only three words I know in Arabic. 'Bigproblemwater!' while I flumoxed about the flat grabbing every towel I could find. Sayyad came rustling up the stairs in his purple shell suit and when he saw the water lapping at the sliding doors to the sitting room,  bent over double with laughter and then grabbed Rashimi's tummy and said something to the tune of: 'What's your Mumma gone and done?' in Egyptian slang. He carried on laughing for another minute or so, then sloped over to and opened a hidden drain, grabbed a big squeezy mob, and within 5 minutes the floor was dry-ish and the balcony floor a lot cleaner.

The turtles were oblivious but their water level is now acceptable. And Rashimi, luckily, is still too young to tell tales.

Green

As a ping pong ball suspended by a draft of air in one of those physics experiments, we are dependent on the  energies that surround us in a new place. When we come across good people, they are that current of air, upholding us until we work out how to stay up there alone.

It seems we're gathering a clutch of these, and I can't work out how we deserve it. From the Glammy, Sayyad and our Palestinian landlords, to Abou Mohammed who's been driving us about while we wait for our own wheels, we felt we were already doing well. Then in walked Grace. Anyone called Grace in my experience, is already a friend. And she fits that rule completely. From Sri Lanka, and warmer than a freshly baked flat bread she's up for popping in to clean and babysit when J and I finally make it out the door dwarf-free.

Sheikh Rashimi has been competing with the dawn call to prayer of late which means the positive draft of air has been even more necessary to compensate for sleep deprivation. And today both the Lozenge and I had our first days at school.

The Lozenge showed his excitement a little differently from me, prancing about our flat naked at 6.30 this morning singing, 'I'm going to nurthery today! On my own without Rashimi!' The lunchbox was packed until its zip strained, and off we all went: J, Rashimi, Abou Mohammed and myself, to drop the larger trainee Sheikh at his Montessori school where he is the only non-Jordanian pupil. It was me who cried as I shut the door of the classroom leaving L clinging onto the monkey backpack and the lunchbox under each arm. But he shed not a tear, just concentrating on what was going on around him and staring in a faintly bovine fashion at all the new faces.

It's a lovely place, nothing flash about it, well-loved toys, and cosy looking Jordanian ladies. Let's hope he'll be happy there, as it's his first experience of an institution.

J and I then went with Abou Mohammed to the University where I had 2 hours with Khalid, the head of the language school. I had a few Arabic classes in London and I'm used to the fuzzy strained-brain you get after the linguistic yoga. Trying to find muscles you think might be there, but have never met. In some senses, Arabic classes are like meditation. You can't keep any other part of your brain going at the same time, and you have to focus completely to get to the end of the first word in a sentence. It sometimes feels like I'm lying on my back looking at an eternal geometric pattern of beautiful script, knowing that all of it is linked together in some way, yet aware I'm only working on the tiniest fraction at that instant. It's humbling and makes me feel insignificant and in awe, particularly of the people who created it, and designed it to make sure they could spread their religion as far as it could possibly go. And here we are still trying to figure it out.

When I went to collect L, he had learned the word for green in Arabic, a fitting word for that day. And on the way back in Abou Mohammed's car, I asked him if he wanted to go home. 'No, I want to go back to nurthery,' he said. Allham d'u l'illah.

Finding feet

I think I've found a couple of toes on one of my feet after these last two days, which is mostly due to having met some lovely can-do and happy ladies who've lived here for a few years, are entrenched in the local culture, and are looking well on it. They both have interesting jobs, and children, so I'm hopeful this could also be me in a few months.

The other thing is, that after a week of partially intentional and partially situation-enforced drying out, J and I tripped over a 'liquor store' round the corner from our house. This means we have within walking distance, a corner shop, a cake/ice cream parlour, a bottle shop, the Bird Garden and a paediatrician. Which means that while we're here, we'll be fat, happy and healthy. There's a lot to be thankful for. And why was I thinking you could get to know all this in the first hour? I'm unrealistic at times.

The dwarves earn their keep

The wind and rain began in the middle of the night and continued well into today, which is Thursday, which also means we've been here for a week and it's my day on my own with the boys. We're in a bit of limbo as none of our stuff has arrived, we can't use our car which is at the Embassy until all the paperwork and ID has been cleared, internet will be another couple of weeks, so…what to do in an empty house with two boys of 1 and 3 and J at Arabic classes most of the day.

We started by making a den with one of the fitted sheets we were loaned from the embassy and attaching it to the sofa. This was fun for about an hour as it could be a boat, a car or a bath. We thought we'd found a cleaner, but she came once and we haven't seen her since, so I thought I'd rope the dwarves into a bit of bathroom cleaning and floor mopping. We had fun at first, with L mopping, and Rashimi playing in the bidet and dangling his fingers into the loo bowl, but then they both started wiping out on the wet floor, Rashimi like a dog on ice, and the howling began. Everywhere I went, Rashimi screamed. And if he went near L, he got pushed away backwards - head smacking onto marble floor.

Sayyad came by to collect the rubbish and I could hear him outside our door calling: 'Umm Laurence!' which means 'Laurence's mother'. Here you are called Father or Mother of...and the name of your oldest child. So J is known as, Abou Laurence about the block. Sayyad came in and grabbed Rashimi's cheeks asking why he'd been awake so early and threw L in the air. His twinkly eyes and broad smile made us all feel better and miraculously after a bit of car racing in the empty sitting room it was lunchtime and the moment to get the olives out.

As we picked the stones out of the olives with greasy fingers, I asked myself, what are these Syrian ladies doing with their children in the refugee camps on the Jordanian border, with a lot more to worry about than no toys and no car? It's frustrating not to be able to go there and talk about where they've come from and how they manage. We have the easy ride as ever. Perhaps at some stage we'll get to go and maybe even be able to do something useful.

Beginnings

Often, Mothers get it exactly right. Even when they're far away. And this piece of prose popped into my inbox from Mum which I thought I'd share, since I hope I'm not the only one who finds beginnings a little un-nerving.

When we arrive into the world, we enter into an ancient sequence.
All our beginnings happen within this continuity.
Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown.
Yet, in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated.
We seem to think that beginning is a setting out from a lonely point along some line of direction into the unknown. This is not the case.
Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced.
Goethe says that once the commitment is made, destiny conspires with us to support and realise it.
We are never as alone in our beginnings as might seem at the time.
A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open towards the gifts and growth that are stored up for us.
To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.

by John O’Donohue

And with that, a Juicy Lucy calendar she gave me at Christmas, which luckily made it into the bags that did arrive with us. In January the message is: 'A new year brings new adventures! Skip forth and be bold. Anything is possible.'

Just what I needed. Thank you, Mum.

Rubber jungles and real beans

It's hard not to notice a certain Dubai-ification in the Middle East these days, and the shopping malls and other mirrored and shiny developments are a sign of progress for people here. And in this respect they shouldn't be belittled. But it can grate when you're looking for the local heart of a city that never used to be a city anyway. Since Trans Jordan was only created in the 1920's, Amman the capital where we are, was a tiny village back then, and has grown to become a sprawling metropolis built on 7 hills.  The hills are covered from bottom to top with pale grey box-shaped houses. Limestone Lego, as someone once described them to me.  I find the city scape appealing on the whole and it reminds me a little of how Kabul was built, which I also came to love as a city. The minarets and the occasional church spire are the only things which punctuate the cubic carpet, and then on the outskirts, the shiny Malls sit smugly with Starbucks and fast food joints tacked on the bottom. I wonder if Starbucks have to pay corporation tax here?

One of the main results of globalisation is you recognise every chain store everywhere in the world now. When I first went to Spain in 1992, Zara was really exotic and all the clothes you saw there were different from the ones you could buy in the UK. But now I'm sounding like a Granny, and I'm sure I'll be grateful for the H&M at some point in our time here. Huge congested roads slice up the city into sections and the main road running through West Amman has about 8 roundabouts known as circles which most people use as their bearings as the streets were only named and labelled 3 years ago, and no one uses maps.

The boys and I were whisked off in the Glammy's Merc this week to one such mall - a place where I could feel my heart and soul buzz under the strip lights and die like a fly on a blue kitchen fly-zapper. There was a light drizzle and fog outside which is the equivalent here to a foot of snow. People go very carefully indeed and we were in search of an indoor kids play area in the mall. It was closed, so we ended up in another place called the Jungle Bungle, essentially a huge netted climbing frame indoors with rubber mats - the kind you get all around the world.

All was well for about five minutes, until both L and R, neither of whom had slept well, started to wail and shriek if I moved an inch away from either of them, clinging to my legs like two oversized mussels on a rock. So there I was, in a right tangle wangle in the Jungle Bungle, up at the top of the climbing frame in the netting area, which was so low it was like being on the 9-and-a-half-th floor in Being John Malkovitch, only lower, with one leg twisted round a piece of rubber liana and the other being gnawed by a wailing Rashimi, and listening to a screeching Lozenge 30 feet down below…'I waaaaant my Mummmmmmmeeeeey!!!' 'Soooooo doooo I! I thought.' No one knew what to do, not even the expert (which isn't me). This, I thought again, is really not what I've come to Jordan for. But the same hobbled camel hobbles on…and the perceptive Glammy decided it would be best if I disappeared in the afternoon and left L and R in her capable hands so she could get to know them a bit better.

As luck would have it, J walked through the door at about 1pm so we left a happier looking L and R with their digits in the hummus, and disappeared together in search of….anything, just anything, that wasn't plastic or loud.

This was when we came across Jamal, from Palestine, who runs the elegantly 1970s Coffee House El Farouki, on a road not far from our flat, opposite the Jordan Kuwait bank where we've just opened accounts. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and through it you could just make out walls lined with jars and jars of coffee beans, and men in leather jackets sipping on cardamom laced Bedouin coffee. Bunn means coffee beans in Arabic, and it being only one syllable and using two of the first letters you learn in Arabic (b and n), it figures in the first chapter of the text book I used in London. So I could even say something to Jamal, other than hello, which was very exciting. 'Bunn' I said enthusiastically. And then he replied in Icelandic. This is always the risk of saying you were brought up in Scotland. People often get it confused with Sweden, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and anywhere else that's relatively small and northern, such as Iceland. But he was charming, had actually visited Glasgow in 1976, and we drank lots of coffee, and returned to our pet Lilliputians stinking of cigarette smoke which is probably a bit more of a novel smell for them than booze these days.

We'll definitely be going back to see Jamal, particularly when the container arrives with the coffee bean grinder in it.