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.