Spring capers

Ahmar wa ahmar: red and red

Spring is here, the trees are sprouting pale pink papery blossom and the factor 30 suncream is already a pre-requisite for outings between 10am and 5pm.

The magazine said they liked my piece and photos about the gypsies and it's going to be out next month, so I allowed myself an afternoon of wandering downtown with a new friend. Although Amman has grown to about 50 times the size since the 1920s when it first became the capital, when you're downtown you can still feel it's the beating heart, and can find almost anything you'd need from brooms and plates to fruit, fabric and falafels. The winding, filthy roads are a refreshing contrast from the areas such as Abdoun, where many embassies are, with larger villas, wealthy Jordanians, and lots of expats. Downtown, there's not a chain you recognise in sight, no donuts, no ice creams, and the fruit juice coming from the ancient iron juicers - pomegranate, orange, mostly wielded by Palestinians, is nectar to a dry, dusty mouth. When you look from a balcony above as we did in a shisha cafe, it still looks like a village and is relatively quiet for the centre of a capital city.

Is there a jewel more beautiful?

We found ourselves in the fruit and vegetable market for most of the outing, since it's spring and there are all sorts of unidentifiable morsels jostling for space with the cauliflowers and shining claret coloured aubergines. We were lectured to by an elderly Palestinian man beside the cabbages, who said: "So you're British! Did you know it was your Government that was responsible for us losing our country to the Israelis? Have you heard of the Balfour Declaration?" He still had a cheeky glint in his eye when he spoke so it wasn't too uncomfortable. And you would be missing a huge part of crucial history if you didn't know about the Balfour Declaration in these parts. It is the name for a letter, (dated 2 November 1917) from the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. And it said: 'His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.'

We are still seeing the repercussions now, particularly since the second part of the declaration was not adhered to - if anything, the opposite was achieved. And although on the streets of British cities you may not find many who are familiar with the declaration. Round here, it's like saying 'Magna Carta'…and brings the rancour brimming to the surface like sea scum.

Finally, the man stopped his history lesson, shook our hands, said: 'God bless you,' and strolled off. If only we were capable of re-writing history.

A Palestinian quince seller telling us he has 3 wives

We carried on wandering about, squeezing furry green almonds which you eat with the skin on, dipped in salt and lemon; desert truffles; black carrots which are called: 'red carrots'; gnarly quinces; leathery pomegranates peeled at the top to reveal the jewels which Rahimi likes to bite one by one with his incisors giving him a pert little pout; and mounds and mounds of spices. And all so cheap…to us.

Furry almonds

Desert truffles

We had another few people round for dinner and made lamb tagine and Tunisian orange cake which had a story to tell by the time it made it to the table. I managed to use a leaking cake tin and set off the smoke alarm at 10pm as the cake mix leaked into the gas flame; then, after 15 minutes of cooking, I realised I'd forgotten to put in the oil, so I had to whip it out and stir the oil into the part-cooked cake, and because I'd ground the almonds myself it had a bit of a nutty consistency. One of the ladies who came was Jordanian and she described how difficult life has become for the poorer Jordanians. Food prices, petrol prices, thousands of refugees coming in and competing for work in an already over saturated jobs market. She said in her workshop, some of her female Jordanian employees had been complaining that Syrian fathers were coming to the mosques and negotiating competitive rates to marry off their daughters, leaving young Jordanian girls with fewer men to marry. She explained the Syrian ladies cook better, and don't demand posh cars and jewelery as the Jordanian girls are apparently known to do.

The un-nerving thing about being in these places as a diplomatic family, is that you could easily be here for years, and never get under the surface, unless you get out your mental pick axe on a regular basis to see what lies beneath. You could live in an expat children's club and never really venture out, meet Jordanians, learn Arabic or nibble on a local radish. We are lucky to be living in a fairly central part of town and to have a good handful of locals already, from the Glammy to the odd new friend, who are able to open these doors for us. The claustrophobia of the other way occasionally haunts me - that we might mistakenly trip and fall into it and not make the most of all these opportunities on our doorstep. It would be easy to do, as the pick axe sometimes feels quite heavy and the conveyor belt of comfort can beckon to you on tired moments.

We have a new Afghan friend who also came for dinner. She left Afghanistan with her family in the 90s during the civil war, and has been floating about the world ever since. It was interesting to hear her version of an itinerant childhood, and how she now realises the difficulties her parents must have had, yet what fun it was for her and her sisters and brothers.

One day we'll get her to talk to the Lozenge and Rashimi about it. The Lozenge has been creeping out of bed in the early hours and climbing onto a tall stool to reach the Smarties in the kitchen cupboard. So by 7am he's had a chocolate high, then a low, and is not interested in breakfast or nursery. But as if to compensate, he picked me some flowers in the park and put them all in my shoes like some sort of Malaysian honeymoon hotel.

His teacher at school said he's settling in okay, although one day he'd asked her not to speak to him in Arabic 'never, or ever. Never and not at all.' She giggled saying she thought she might have caught him in a bit of a bad mood. I think life is a little easier for Rashimi at this point in time - galavanting with the Glammy and being cuddled and kissed by every passing female.