Ramadan exodus

Ramadan begins tomorrow and the atmosphere in town is tense - similar to the one before a marathon begins as people prepare for the challenge ahead and to purify soul and body.

Amman is heating up and today the Lozenge disappeared out of our door. We found him two floors down, standing in his pants near the road. 'I wanted to get thome cool air in my tummy,' he said.

His wish is our command. It's time to go home for a month. And although we've had lots of it this year...we're still hoping for some sun.

Siham and Falak

https://vimeo.com/69951813

My second photo film about Siham and Falak - two Syrian refugees in Amman, for UNICEF.

A 2 day dream

There are moments in life when the complexities surrounding you only serve to accentuate your feeling of undeserved good fortune. To presume that we might get a chance to live on the ground floor of a dreamy, old house on a slice of this precious, viciously contested land, would seem greedy. So we made the most of the experience for 2 days and if that's all we ever get - it will still have been lovely.

The dwarves ran in the door of this charming and slightly scruffy British mandate era (1920-1947) building, with high ceilings and a dusty, unkempt garden, and promptly evaporated. Such is the effect of inside and outside space and a sandpit.

We spent a happy couple of days thinking about what life might be like if we do get to live here, and then came back to Amman. Despite the oasis of the house in Jerusalem, it was lovely to return to the 5 month old familiarity of Jordan, and see the twinkling gold-toothed smile of a Jordanian border policeman welcoming us back - 'Ahlan!' No matter the corruption and the chaos within the ranks on this side of the border, at least you get a smile and a welcome.

Then back to our current home, where we were greeted by Sayyad and the Glammy, and it was like coming home to our family. 'Enta catcoot!' said Sayyad to Rashimi. (You're a little chick...) And amidst hugs and laughter and exchange of news, we reaffirmed in ourselves that, whatever the houses are like, this itinerant life is only survivable through the people who travel with you for segments of it. 

Al Quds

Last Thursday, the Lozenge and I started on his favourite activity: making sandwiches for an adventure. We were preparing to go on a little trip to 'Jewoothalem,' which looks as though it will be our next home for three years, from January 2014. For once, the Arabic word for Jerusalem, 'Al Quds' literally: 'The Holy,' is easier for the Lozenge to handle.

We set off, with a promise that we would find a log somewhere on which to eat our sandwiches. In the end we had to eat them in the car, during the complicated and bureaucratic process that is crossing the border into Israel. We were greeted (if you can call it that) by a blond man with a hissing walkie talkie, sporting a large Star of David tattoo on each elbow. 'You go to Isghael? This line.' Rashimi responded with his new word from the back seat: 'Booooorda! Booooorda!' But no smiles from Mr Blue Stars.

We joined the line, and then another line, and wheeled our trolley back and forth as we collected all the necessary paperwork - with the Lozenge and Rashimi running riot, clambering over alarmed barriers and clutching well-sucked lollies. Queues of Jordanians and Palestinians waited sombre faced but uncomplaining in the longest queues.  Had it not been for the Lozenge and Rashimi starting their own little dwarf intifada, which brought out some charm from under the uniforms, I'm not sure we would have glimpsed the sign of a human heart in those highly trained ranks.

Most officials looked around 18 years old - all in the process of completing their military service for the Israeli Defence Force (which J explained is on the receiving end of around $1 billion per year from the US Government). Military service is compulsory for all Israeli men (3 years) and women (18 months). Most girls were made up as if for a disco, with high ponytailed black tresses and ray bans. But each teeny bopper in uniform is trained to use an M16 and drive a tank. I had a sudden flashback to my travels in South America where we used to meet hordes of Israelis shaking off the shackles of their military service on beaches and in nightclubs. A Hebrew word I learned then came back to me: 'Sababa,' which means 'take it easy'. Rashimi copied it: sabbabba sabbabba sabbabba and continued to build much needed bridges between us.

Through at last, with an empty lunchbox, and we wound our way up towards Jerusalem. The first thing you see up on the left hand side, is a stack of Benidorm-esque buildings with red roofs. These are the Israeli settlements - dotted all over the West Bank and Jerusalem and Gaza. J explained the strategy. They build in calculated patterns to enable them to slowly cut off existing bits of Palestinian land from other parts, making it increasingly difficult to govern. It's like a dot to dot picture, where you can see the lines slowly form. And they are ever on the increase thanks to the bums-on-seats-style recruitment of Netanyahu's government. Anyone from anywhere in the world will do - as long as they'll come and stake a claim somewhere - even if it's with just a mobile home.

Think towel on sun lounger, and you'll get the picture.

But over the crest of the hill, looking left from the road, you catch the first glimpse of the gold Dome of the Rock, nestled in between a maze of streets and protrusions of surrounding buildings.

We thought of how many have crossed this crest of hill to see what they consider to be their holy place. As the Duke put it the other day: 'This never ending love story.' We had to pinch ourselves to believe that we may be in with a chance to understand this place a little better, and peel off some of the layers as you would an onion. 

A hijab and the Pink Panther

I spent another day with the Syrian women and children who live in the disused apart-hotel near our house.

As ever the welcome was the warmest. Now I have the greeting down to a fine art. If you're greeting a woman, you take each other's hand and kiss on the right cheek, then the left. Then you give at least three kisses on the right cheek again. But the three kisses can morph into ten or fifteen sometimes, so it's best just to keep kissing until they stop. Then you start the verbal greetings.

I was in one of their bare little rooms, with mattresses on the floor, and a tiny kitchenette, with Siham, the lady who is looking after her 5 orphaned nieces and nephews. I chatted with the family with a lovely female translator, and took photographs, for about two hours. Then the translator had to go, but Siham had started cooking, so there was no chance I could leave too. No one in the house speaks even a word of English, but we muddled through. There were tears as a woman came in and showed me a video of her dead husband's mutilated body. It lasted for about 2 minutes. She'd been sent it by a friend in Syria. I couldn't understand everything she said, but who needed words. Then a much older woman came in and told me how her 11 children had been killed in a Syrian Government air strike on their building in Dera'a. Her only remaining son has been imprisoned by Al Asad's forces and she asked me if I had any 'wasta' (connections) to help get him out.

What do you say? Even if I had more Arabic there would be no words.

I was grateful for my Polaroid camera which I have everywhere with me these days, so at least I have something to contribute, something to leave behind in their empty rooms full of grief and desperation.

And where there are children, there is always laughter. So after we'd had some delicious Syrian food, they decided they'd record my terrible Arabic on a mobile phone and play it back to me. And then they dressed me up in a hijab. This is me and Siham. She saw the photo and said: 'I'm so small compared to you. I look like your handbag.' Our day loaded with sadness has surprisingly happy memories. And I marvel at every woman I meet, and their resilience to build new homes despite their grief, wherever they happen to end up.

Then I screeched home to meet the boys. After a chaotic tea and the Lozenge's favourite: 'miuthical thtatueth' - they were both running about naked with various kitchen implements. Rashimi had snatched a photo of the Dalai Lama that I have pinned to the cupboard and was charging about shouting 'Daddeeee! Dadddeeeee!' I ran after him trying to get the photo back saying: 'No that's not Daddy, that's the Dalai Lama,' while the Lozenge shrieked: 'Whooth the Dalai Lama?' Whereupon the door buzzer rang and it was the Duke who'd come to proof read our latest bit of co-writing. I was in a tacky t-shirt from H&M with the Pink Panther padding across it and a pair of my most indecent shorts, with the boys both wired, with their willies out. Lasagne covered most surfaces in the kitchen. And no sign of J. Oh no.

Within 5 minutes, I'd managed to get the Lozenge into a pair of pants, and lobbed Rashimi into bed 20 mintues early. I didn't have time to tackle the lasange or my own clothes, but figured he'd seen worse. And at least he's Christian.

He proof read the piece over a cup of tea and approved it. Then J appeared. Then the whisky came out. And at 10pm I realised I had indigestion and hadn't thought about what there might be for dinner. (If only I was Syrian, I'd have had it taped). He stayed until nearly midnight and  had us hooked on his stories of Jordan as he once knew it, his schooldays in Egypt, and regular visits to the UK in the 60's and 70's when he was making the most of bachelor days and making friends with every name you could find in the Who's Who.

An extraordinary man. And he didn't appear to mind about the Pink Panther.

Sheikh Lozenge

A big fat Palestinian wedding

Last week was all about Palestine - as weeks can invariably be in these parts. J and I went to the only art house cinema in Amman, the Rainbow Theatre, where they were showing a film called 'Lamma shuftek' (When I saw you), made by a Palestinian director, Anne Marie Jacir. It was a beautiful and simple story about a spirited, autistic ten-year-old and his mother. The film was funded by the Shoman Foundation, which was set up by Khalid Shoman and his wife, Suha. They used to own Arab Bank, and since Khalid's death in 2001, Suha has been the patronne extraordinaire of the arts in Jordan. She is also the passion and energy behind one of our favourite places in Jordan - the Darat al Funun gallery, built around a Byzantine church which she restored, which provides cultural santuary for anyone who crosses its threshold. The reason I was with the Duke last week, was to help him write a piece for the book about the gallery to be published this year - its 25th anniversary. And he has been a disciple since its conception.

One of J's Palestinian friends invited us to his niece's wedding at the Hyatt Hotel in Amman. It was a lavish affair - with film cameras on cranes panning around the crowds of guests; bubbles and fireworks spouting from behind the bride decked out in a twinkling dress; and table after table loaded with silver tureens of food. Women were dressed in everything from neck to toe sequined dresses and traditional Palestinian costumes to miniskirts with plunging necklines.

J and I were on a table with a beautiful Palestinian lady of about 60 something, who had lived most of her life in Boston since her family were pushed out of Jerusalem in the 50's. She explained the complexities of being an Arab American these days, in her Boston drawl, through plumes of Marlboro smoke and so much expression flashing from her heavily khol-ed, almond shaped eyes.

At Arab weddings, dancing normally comes first, and the welcome was effusive. J and I were encouraged onto the dancefloor where we stayed for the best part of an hour as the music got louder and louder. We learned the Palestinian line dance called, al dabke, which seems like a mixture of the conga and a Mid-West US line dance. Men hopped and whirled in suits with ties flapping, and the sequinned women shimmied. It was stunning. Then the music morphed to techno and the environment got more and more excited (this is on no alcohol, just pure human energy) until it was time for dinner.

Then everyone cruised around the buffet and ate two huge courses, topped off by knaffeh, the cooked cheese with honey and pistacchio topping, and at about midnight, almost as soon as people had put down their forks, a bit of an exodus began.  There are no problems with scraping comatosed and vomiting teenagers off the dance floor at 4am in this culture.

And talking of culture...it's when you're allowed to see into the heart of one at a rite of passage, that you feel its strength, and you can believe that against all odds, it's a long way from petering out.