Finding Nebo

The boys, Abu and Umm Lucy and I went on a day trip to Mount Nebo. It's the mountain from where Moses first saw the promised land, and aged 120, his mission in life fulfilled, finally died, never reaching the promised land himself. But beginning the story of a promised land for a people, which we are still uncomfortably living out today.

The Lozenge's first question on the way there was, 'Will there be bumper carth?' followed by another: 'Is it the thame as Finding Nebo?' Sadly for all of us, Moses hadn't thought of bumper cars, and there were no little orange fish to be seen. And after gangs of teenage girls had squeaked and giggled and pinched and stroked the Lozenge's cheeks and hair in amazement at his white skin and blue eyes, he had had enough, and zoomed off on his scooter in a rage and wanted to go home. Rashimi is more tolerant with the general pummeling from over-loving Jordanian girls...

 but for the Lozenge, it's purgatory.

We'd also chosen one of the haziest days of the year to go there, so the promised land was shrouded in a dusty fug and the church covered in scaffolding. Fortunately Umm and Abou Lucy are easy going tourists, so after eating a cheese sandwich on an old wall, surrounded by the same girls' school groups staring at us, we headed back to Amman.

The following day, J and I went to speak to the Lozenge's teachers about how he's getting on at school. It must be hard being the odd one out, but they said he was getting braver about making friends with people in his class, that having resisted learning Arabic initially, he was coping better and they hadn't noticed any adverse behaviour at all. At least this means he must be saving it all up for us. And I also caught him counting easily to ten in Arabic as we climbed the stairs the other day, so some of it must be sinking in despite his resistance.  I hope he'll forgive us for all of this one day.

Abu Lucy was invited for a drink with our Palestinian landlord who lives downstairs, and is a true gent. They got on well. He was down there for hours as they talked about Jordan, power (both political and electric) and he came back up saying how much he'd learned about the Zionist lobby in the US, their origins in the UK, and the reason for the fact there are 80% Palestinian people in this country.

We nipped to the bird park to discover that the Jordanian man in the Mickey Mouse outfit who sells balloons to children, and often welcomes us with the odd free one, had had his outfit stolen. He was furious. 'If I find him, I'll kill him with my bare hands,' he said.

Even Mickey has his moments, I guess.