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.
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