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.