Birthdays large and small

I can probably say that going to a 2-year-old's birthday party on the site of a Byzantine church in the Arab world was a one-off experience. Although the dwarves were happy enough with the helium balloons and enormous cake made up of sponge-and-icing footballs, not to notice the extraordinary setting. Unfortunately the helium balloons made a break for the stars at the end of the party, and the Lozenge was intent on reminding me about replacing them until his exhausted and sweaty little head hit the pillow at 8pm.

The next thing I knew, after another rather a late night fuelled with 15% vol Jordanian wine, was a loud stage whisper in my ear at about 5.45am. 'MUMMY. CAN YOU BLOW UP THITH BALLOON?' It was in fact the morning of my 38th birthday, but the Lozenge was unaware of this and keener on inflating a meagre replacement for the helium losses the day before. I summoned up a teeny bit of breath, handed him a small excuse for a balloon, and the day limped into action.

We had the usual timetable of Cheerio fest followed by disco dressing followed by kicking a football around with Sayyad downstairs before the the school bus appeared. Then Rashimi and I had a game of hide and seek for an hour before the Glammy arrived. By 9am I felt like I'd done 24 hours manual labour. But the Glammy whipped out of her bag, the most beautiful necklace she'd had made for me, with my name carved out in gold Arabic letters, stuck onto a pearly white shell. Then St Grace arrived with a bunch of flowers and another beautiful necklace made of a shell. I looked at their bright, shining faces and thought how fitting it was that these two women, who are my earth forces in this foreign land, would have independently chosen something as wholesome as a sea shell to give me.

The Lozenge returned after his first session of pre-tennis with 'Coach Mohammad' and they disappeared off to the Glammy's house for the afternoon. By tea time my energy had made a miraculous reappearance. The Glammy took us all in her golden Jeep to Pizza Hut for tea. We occupied one of those curved booths which after half an hour was thickly coated in bits of cheese, slices of pepperoni and slurps of Pepsi. We drove back through the dusky city with the stars just beginning to prick in the sky, the sticky dwarves and St Grace in the back, listening to Michael Bubble's cover of 'It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life….And I'm feeling good.'

I listened to the words and looked across at the Glammy who confessed this was her song of the month. She's about to make a big step, but I know it's the right one for her. Not least because it's up to trail blazers like her, to help pave the way for other Arab women towards more liberated lives where they can be the mistresses of their own destiny.

I thought were heading home, but the Glammy admitted they had been whipping up a chocolate cake at her flat all afternoon. We went up to her apartment and as we entered, all the lights went on to reveal a room full of Arab ladies and children, including her Mum, her sister, her aunties, her cousins and some friends, all singing happy birthday and throwing balloons about. 'This is the only aunty I like,' said the Glammy. 'And this is my cousin and I'm always telling you about…and this….' and so on. There were huge cakes which disappeared in a few seconds after Rashimi had plunged his digits into the top of the chocolate one as we blew out the candles. Then we danced to really loud Arab pop music, had a tour of her flat, including the Lozenge's favourite place, which is the Glammy's bedroom with the biggest wide screen TV you've ever seen at the end of the bed, complete with a diamante skull telephone on a bedside table. We talked and laughed and danced and the Glammy also showed us her father's incredible collection of Nabatean, Roman and early Islamic era coins, pottery and other things which he'd collected in his lifetime, and left to the Glammy before he died.

We gave St Grace a lift home and the dwarves hit the pillow at 9.30pm. As the Lozenge's eyelids quivered to a close he said, 'Happy Birthday Mummy. Your birthday hath been my motht favourite one, ever ever never. Night night and can we have more birthday tomorrow?'

Noise pollution and some political education

Because we live in a marble coated apartment, the noise levels can get to a painful extreme. I think Rashimi has what you might call 'high rise terminals' where the word or sentence gets higher at the end. And the combination of his semi-permanent crow-like shriek of: 'MumeeeeeeEEEE! MumeeeeeEEE!' even when I'm standing near him; with the accompaniment of bellyaching from the Lozenge; against a timpani of Duplo boxes crashing to the floor, and slamming lids and doors is enough to make me want to put two ear plugs in each ear, and hide my head under a large cushion.

I think I could survive many physical tortures to spare myself the agony of permanent noise and constant, determined vocal demands from our resident shamozzle of Shuyukh (the Arabic plural of Sheikh).

It's sometimes a challenge to save some spirit for work, but over the last few weeks since J's been away, I've found it to be the room of my own, the delicious retreat from every domestic demon and demanding dwarf.

With our move to Jerusalem approaching, I've set myself a few targets to finish before we leave. I'm becoming increasingly aware that the scene there will be a lot more complicated and I want to make the most of the relative ease of living and interesting contacts in this city before we go.

I was recently introduced to a fascinating Palestinian woman, Ghada, in her 70's who divides her time between London and Amman and is staunch and courageous about her views on the Israel Palestine situation and will hopefully be one of my interviewees for my Nakba project. Although the experience for her, at the age of 8, was so traumatic, that she thinks she has obliterated any memories of it, which will be an interesting counter-angle. I've heard a bit about the high concentration of crazies and fundamentalists now living in Jerusalem. At a party J and I were at recently, a wiry American man drew close and warned us, sotto vocce, about 'Jerusalem syndrome' where people who end up living there too long go crazy like the rest of them. I asked Ghada if there were any liberals left in the town, and she assured me there were, and would introduce me to lots of them, a couple of whom work for Ha'aretz newspaper.

One writer Daivd Shulman, goes so far as to call it a sickness of the soul in a piece in the New York Review of Books which I read a while back.

"There is a studied blindness to the cumulative trauma that we Israelis have inflicted upton the Palestinians in the course of realising our own national goals…This is no ordinary blindness; it is a sickness of the soul that takes many forms, from the silence and passivity of ordinary decent people to the malignant forms of racism and proto-fascist nationalism that are becoming more and more eivdent and powerful in today's Israel, including segments of the present government."

It will be good to be in touch with people with a balanced attitude, and I want to start knocking on doors soon. I've noticed through working here in Jordan, that with an itinerant lifestyle like ours, if you don't get weaving the minute you arrive in a place, even better a little before, the tapestry you're planning may never quite happen.

This same lady is mentioned in the book I'm (still) reading about Gaza by Dervla Murphy, as being one of the spokespeople for a 'binational' movement, or a one-person-one-vote system with a constitution like South Africa's, rather than a 'two state' solution which is still supported by many international governments, including ours. It was interesting to hear her views - and I have a lot to learn. As ever the line of international governments in a place, is often not the one that's championed by local thinkers and intellectuals.

I went to dinner this week with a wonderful Palestinian jewelery designer who had invited such a line up of fasctinating people that I didn't get back home until well after 1am. I heard about their friends living and working in Jerusalem's old city, including a hummus seller who has queues of everyone from Mossad officers, Christian Orthodox priests and everyday Palestinians…the one thing they all agree upon being the extraordinary quality of this particular chick pea paste; and they told me about the original founder of the Zalatimo Sweets company, also here in Jordan, who is still cooking up honey and pistachio morsels within the old city walls, well into his 80s. Also there was a lovely theologian in his 70's who had lived in Lebanon most of his life. He was feeling weary about warfare, and told me about a man in a refugee camp he saw once who was wearing a t-shirt which said: 'Fighting for peace is like having intercourse to preserve virginity.'

It's encounters like these that make me feel more excited about our next step, and that give me the energy and inspiration required to care for our dwarves to the best of my abilities. It's almost like I need to understand more about our reality here, to help them appreciate it on their own nearly-2 and nearly-4 year old terms.

Icons and a Byzantine restoration

J arrived back from Nablus to find the boys cavorting around our flat, naked as usual. Rashimi ran up to him, looked him straight in the eye and shrieked 'bounce! bounce!' which was the last thing they had done together on the trampoline in Jerusalem. So Rashimi clasped J's hands with sticky digits and dragged him off to bounce on the spare bed, while the Lozenge started making 'soup' with a jar full of almonds and one of J's books about Hamas, tucked under his arm, which he explained was his 'thoup rethipe book'. And the weekend began. What a joy it was to be all together again.

J has been staying with a family in Nablus, which is a large Palestinian town on the West Bank, about 50km north of Jerusalem. The family has 8 children between 24 and 8 years old and J stayed in a small apartment above their house. When learning a language, there's nothing like living with a family and hearing it all day and all night. In some ways I could quite do with an experience like that myself, but the great thing about being married is that certain experiences, you can live vicariously. He brought me a beautiful icon hand painted in gold leaf by a Greek Orthodox priest there and it now sits above the mirror in our bedroom casting an air of serenity. When you look at the brush strokes it's as though they were done by a brush no thicker than one hair - a bit like the Pakistani miniature paintings. I've always loved the aura of an icon, and it seems an auspicious time to have one in my life.

The main population in Nablus is Muslim, but there's a Christian community there, and also a small Samaritan one. Nablus is well known for its Samaritan community as there are only about 750 people who still belong to this ancient Abrahamic religion, related closely to Judaism. The family J stayed with was Christian, which made it a bit easier to have contact with the ladies in the house. His first families didn't work out as for a lone man, finding a place to stay in more conservative Muslim communities, can be a challenge. Ironically, he would have had an easier time finding somewhere to stay, had the dwarves and I been in tow. But that's about where 'easy time' would have ended...

He will be spending another six weeks there between now and Christmas so I am looking forward to meeting the family and having some local people who we can visit and get to know in the West Bank when we're living in Jerusalem.

In the meantime, I've found a great line up of 3 or 4 Palestinian men and women in Jordan who have agreed to talk about their lives to me for my series on the Nakba. They are all in their 80s, and they include: a farmer in the Jordan valley, an embroideress, a painter who has spent his life documenting the crucial role of the Palestinian woman, and a writer/journalist/historian.

On Saturday I spent the morning filming an interview with an archaeologist who was responsible for excavating and restoring a site in one of my most favourite places in Amman. It is built on the ruins of a Byzantine church, which is presumed to be built on top of what remains of a Roman temple dedicated to Hercules. One of the most special things about the place, beyond its vital role in the Arab art scene of today, is the similar thread that all cultures who've built on the site, have used. The temple was dedicated to Hercules, renowned for his strength, the Byzantine church, constructed in the 6th Century, is thought to have been a memorial to St George, also famed for the strength that enabled him to slay the dragon. And following this, the early Islamic communities used the site to remember Al Khadr - a Muslim hero and strong man. The continuity of cult is a reminder, in our time, of how similar the roots of our belief systems really are. And, as the archaeologist pointed out, the fight of good against evil. The whole area is now part of the Darat al Funun gallery which is the subject of the documentary I'm making in slow time between now and next year.

I woke early in the morning to get to the site and set up - with grey rain clouds looming. It was the first time in four months I'd seen any, and they chose that day of all days, to appear. The rain held off until the evening, when it tumbled down for 10 minutes releasing the most wonderful damp smell from the dusty ground. The Lozenge and I watched from his window at the beauty of the rain drops through the dusk which we haven't seen since our fortnight in Scotland. But instead, the interview was interrupted by all the Saturday sounds of central Amman, including the van belonging to the man who collects and sells scrap who circled the site where I was interviewing, announcing his trade in decibels, through a loud speaker. We had to keep stopping and starting as a result, and also because of the hum of planes over head, and many other things besides. The archaeologist had to return to the US the following day so there was an increasing time pressure, and I had to grab as much as I could in a very short space of time. I am nervous about how much I'll find when I get to the editing stage - but that is always the feeling I have until I'm in it, piecing it together like one of the dusty Byzantine mosaics that still remain on the floor of the site.

J left us again on Sunday morning for a further week, and my priority now is to find someone who might help us with the dwarves when the Glammy goes to find her fortune in the US. When she told St Grace, our cleaner she was leaving in November, Grace told her she was going straight to the church after work to pray for the Glammy not to leave. But we've all had a chat, and it might be the St Grace herself might be up for a trip to the Holy Land with us in January, and next week the Glammy is going to see if she considers her skills with children as adequate enough for the dwarves, for whom she says feels quite a deep sense of responsibility, having shared their first stint in the Arab world these last 8 months. 

A cookie weekend

A cool breeze has graced us this morning and sitting on the step outside waiting for the Lozenge's school bus with the boys was a welcome respite from the furnace that this city has been for the past week. Together with the news that a strike on Syria is unlikely, the atmosphere in every sense is cooling off a little. Everyone we know here is very relieved.

It's been a strange week or so, since I know the Glammy will be leaving us, and I haven't had the inclination or spirit to do much work. But I've been trying to use the time to break into this Arabic language instead. The good thing about languages is you have to switch off your head and concentrate, so the effect can be a strenuous form of meditation. Since J is away, I've been having to do all the Arabic phone calls that he would normally do. On the whole people have been receptive and encouraging. I also gave myself some time to make the most of this city, and went to a photography exhibition called: 'Children of Gaza'. There were some beautiful and poignant images, but I felt they could have made more of it, and the stories of the children didn't seem to come through as strongly as they could have. I took Rashimi on a lunch date to the centre of town on Thursday.We ate falafels, bread and hummus with our fingers, and got talking to lots of local families. It's much easier going around with a child as no one hassles you in the wrong kind of way, and most people want to chat. Although we had a very rude taxi driver who tried to charge me double, drove very fast, and told me he couldn't understand my accent when I spoke Arabic. I told him I thought he must have a problem with his ears. I knew he was doing it to be insulting and I was unimpressed. One day Rashimi will help as his Arabic words apparently sound like a local child talking. He's so lucky to have had this head start.

The Duke invited me to one of his big dinners and we had drinks on his roof overlooking the Citadel followed by dinner on his terrace.  There was roast wild boar on the menu, which is generally shot on his farm by his staff, but they won't handle it or cook it, so he has to go and fetch it himself. It was delicious and it seemed most of the party was Christian or agnostic, so no one refused it. He'd invited an amazing array of people as always: artists, lantern makers, journalists, publishers and Lebanese building contractors.

Every night, the Lozenge chimes: 'Will you be having dinner here?' But this week he's also been asking: 'But who will be with you, Mummy? I don't want you to be alone.' He's been happily going to nursery and racing back on the little bus to sneak an hour with the iPad while Rashimi sleeps. He came running through one day and said to the Glammy: 'It'th very annoying becauthe when I preth thith button, Curiouth George starts thpeaking Polish. Can you fix it for me?' The frustrations of You Tube at nearly 4 years old.

The boys and I are missing J so much. He's been in Nablus for 10 days now and Rashimi has been hugging piles of his clean t-shirts calling 'Dadddeeeee' and wanting to put them on. I put one over his head and he toddled around looking like a navy blue ghost. The heat has been so intense the boys stopped sleeping so we all decamped into our room which is the only one with air conditioning. The Lozenge on J's side of the bed, and Rashimi in his cot at the foot of it.

The bed is full of sand, there's a scooter parked by the side of it. The floor is a sea of strewn teddies and children's books. On Friday morning we woke up early to Rashimi yelling: 'BaaaaaaaAAAAAAG!!' to take his sleep bag off, and read the Little Red Hen in bed together. By 8am the boys had unpacked the contents of most kitchen cupboards onto the floor and the Lozenge suggested making chocolate chip cookies. Nothing like baking in 40 degrees. But we set to it on the condition they would clear up the carnage in order to make the cookies. The parable of the Little Red Hen came in handy at this point as I reminded them how the lazy pig and cat and rat got none of the hen's freshly baked bread as they'd refused to help her sow her corn. It worked and we left a parcel of cookies for Sayyad downstairs on his way down. Friday is his only day off, and he spends it in the mosque and resting in his tiny shack at the bottom of the house. I always feel it must be the day when he misses his wife and children in Egypt the most.

Then we ventured in the red hot Chevy with dusty hairdryer air blowing in our faces, to the YMCA swimming pool on the airport road, with another family who were fortunately as sleep deprived and understood our predicament. I hadn't remembered that it stands for Young Mens' Christian Club. But as a result there were bronzing bodies in bikinis and trunks and beer on sale in the cafe. It was local, faded and cheap and just what we needed on a weekend without J.

The following day we went on a day trip to the Jerash with Honor the glamorous 19 year old. On the hottest day of the year yet, she made it all the way around the site, though the boys and I didn't get much further than the ice cream shop, where a digger had been handily parked nearby, framed by one of the Roman arches. 'But where are the Romanth?' the Lozenge kept enquiring. With ice cream, a digger, and stones to count out in Arabic, the boys were happy, and one day I will venture further than the hippodrome and learn a bit more about one of the biggest Roman sites outside of Italy other than the prices of strawberry mivvies in the shop there.

Now another week has begun and my work life is getting moving again. Last night the Lozenge and I reflected on our days together. He said: 'I do love my big bad mummy time, and hathn't it been a weeeeally cookie weekend.'

How can we learn to hang loose like lemurs?

In Jerusalem, Friday is a Muslim holiday, Saturday the Jewish Sabbath and Sunday a Christian one, so you have to be deft about the kind of shopping or activity you need to do on any given day at a weekend.

Back at the house on the Friday afternoon after our visit to Al Aqsa mosque I heard some loud explosions nearby and thought to myself that it was a bit early for fireworks. On flicking through the local papers on Saturday, we realised that there had been some quite heated demonstrations around the mosque, almost immediately after our departure (nothing to do with the dwarves this time), which had resulted in tear gas and rubber bullets being liberally distributed amongst the crowds of Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli soldiers.

On Saturday afternoon, far from the heated muddle of human resentments, we ventured to Jerusalem zoo which was as distant from it as you could imagine. Sculpted beautifully and greenly in the far west of the city, it offers a haven of tranquility pierced with monkey cackles; and encyclopaedias worth of information and tit bits on animals you may never otherwise get to see in a lifetime. We wandered happily around, hardly able to believe that the black and white furry pile up of lemurs on a branch was present in the same city as the daily tumult and agony. Perhaps a clever person is experimenting by injecting a lot of wild creatures into the place, to try and make the humans less so.

Need we have ventured to the zoo to see monkeys?

The peace process has begun again after a kick re-starter by John Kerry and there has been a tit for tat process of release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel and a promise from the Palestinians that they'll refrain from upgrading their membership of UN agencies - although I'm not sure what that really means. As ever the real disagreement is over something much more physical - in this case, the continued Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 'unilateral Israeli actions in Jerusalem that create a negative environment' both of which we saw with our own eyes over the short weekend there. According to the BBC website, there are now over half a million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is considered illegal under international law. But Israel disputes this. 

On Sunday we awoke to the nearby chime of a solitary church bell; and the dwarves, the Glammy and I packed our bags for the trip back to Amman, leaving J alone to do 2 weeks Arabic language immersion in Nablus, north of Jerusalem on the West Bank. We had an interesting ride with Rami, our Palestinian driver who explained the problems in Al Aqsa mosque over the weekend - saying that he fears another uprising as happened in the year 2000 after Ariel Sharon visited the mosque. It is thought he may have sparked the 2nd Intifada by his visit. Since he's now lying in a coma somewhere, it won't be Sharon himself that sparks the next one, although the ghosts of leaders past seem to live on in this region. And Rami has lost many friends and relatives in fighting over the years to testify.

Our journey back was a little easier than the way there, though the rudeness makes you feel like spitting. But we saved our spit for singing in the car as we wended our way back up to our little temporary home with Abu Mohammed at the wheel, who was there to meet us at the other side of the Allenby Bridge. We were pleased to see him. And as we approached the Glammy's home town of Amman, she exclaimed how much she had to be thankful for, living in a country like Jordan. 

Courtesy of my mother in law (thank you, Mads), I have a seemingly ongoing subscription to Prospect magazine which I fell upon on our return, mostly because it's a lot lighter than holding up my hard back book in bed after a curious weekend. What I love about Prospect is that each month I open it, there are at least 2 articles that correspond exactly to my life; and 2 that open my eyes to something I have never heard about or considered before. In this issue, Simon Shama in his 'If I ruled the world' column, writes that the 'poetry of history' is that it's about people who in many ways are just like us, but also couldn't be more different. But I think that living right here in this region, right now, has the same poetry. Every way you look in Jerusalem and beyond, there is someone who couldn't seem more different, and yet must be just like us, at least somewhere inside. 

Then my eyes fell upon an article by the philosopher AC Grayling, sub-headed: When does a country's right to claim territory expire?' In his argument he writes that if the Jewish peoples have a 2,000 year old title to Jerusalem, then Calais is definitely English. And he admits that getting over history and accepting present realities is the obvious necessity for a peaceful two-state solution. He reckons that if there were to emerge, 'a Mandela-like figure on each side of the divide, each big enough of heart and mind to envisage a good future instead of being enslaved to a bad past, things might change.' 

He writes: 'If there were just one place where a solution would help the world as a whole, it is in that vexed fragment of unpropitious earth between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.'

It is no wonder, that sadly, the Glammy does not want to come and live with us there, and will head to the bright lights of Amreeeeekaaaaa to find her fortunes. We cannot blame her for it, since the freedom she needs as an Arab 30 year old, will probably not be found in these parts for the moment, and the adventure would only be ours. And as she rightly said: 'I couldn't cope seeing what's happening daily to my people. I just don't think I could live in that place.'

So this evening, I am rather melancholically reliving the happy times we've had with her here in Amman, and mentally preparing myself for a future without a loyal and trusted fellow-lover of our children in a region that is just so full of hatred, and yet so jam-packed full of love as well. 

Exploring the Old City

The dwarves were up by 6am, and by the time the Lozenge had poured half a bottle of apple juice onto our bedroom carpet, and used all the nuts, most of the cereal and some poisonous looking berries from the garden to make a milky mixture he called a 'Manuato'; and Rashimi had smashed a couple of mugs, by 8am my grimace from the night before had become grimacier. The Lozenge asked: 'Are you 'appy, Mummy?' (Well...funny you should ask...).

But we had not come all the way to Jerusalem to sit around in a non-home not feeling 'appy, and the ancient walled city: a millefeuille of layers of pilgrimages and sieges, of miracles and murders, is within 10 minutes walk from our front door, even with 2 pairs of shorter legs in tow.

The Glammy was up for an adventure, even after her experiences the day before, and since our house is in East Jerusalem, which is still predominantly Arab, she was very well received. She divulged her tribe's name to anyone who asked (the hummus seller, the baker and the man on the pomegranate stall), and was welcomed into the fold ever more warmly. It was great to have her with us as an Arabic speaking cultural bridge, and as a friend who was up for fun.

We wound our way through tatty streets past hotels such as: 'Holy Land Hostel' that looked as holy as a highway motel, and entered the Old City through Herod's gate. The streets there are narrow and littered with broken glass and other trash - with graffiti in Arabic professing the greatness of God or calling for an end to the occupation. But there is a particular feeling, each corner you turn, which Rashimi must also have felt from his viewpoint of the back pack, as he exclaimed: 'Waaaaoooow! Waaaaaaaoooow!' in my ear, at regular intervals. We wandered past tiny flat bread stalls, hardware stalls, barber shops and stationers; and between the commercial sites, a wafting washing line slung between narrow walls, a tiny staircase, or balcony denoted a home. There are still people eeking out a life within these walls, but it must be a complicated and claustrophobic process - particularly with a large family with no overspill area, and no right to build on.

Then, as the boys scurried down the smoothly hewn stone steps and ramps, the Glammy and I caught sight of the Al Aqsa mosque, part of the Haram al-Qudsi al Sharif or 'noble sanctuary' for Muslims, and known as Temple Mount for Jews, since it's believed to be where the Holy Temple once stood. One version was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the next by the Romans. Only the outer walls still stand.

To go in, the Glammy and I needed to cover up, so we retraced our steps back to a friendly owner of a clothing stall and asked if we could borrow the necessary fabric. He sold us some instead, and we returned to the entrance. The Lozenge looked at me decked out in white robes and screeched: 'I want you to be Mummy again. I don't want you to be a witch.' We arrived back at the entrance next to the Israeli guards with hissing and pipping walkie talkies, only to discover, that even in my crisp white robes, I wasn't allowed in as a non-Muslim adult on a Friday. So instead I had the luxury of being a bystander in my own life, and watched the Glammy and the dwarves' retreating back views as they ventured into one of the holiest sites of the Muslim world outside of Mecca.

And even with the guards telling me sotto-vocce in Arabic: 'You're nice. You're tall.' And, 'This is Dome of the Rock. This not from Palestine, this from Isghael,' I was moved to watch our boys' first pilgrimage from a distance. A pilgrimage entirely of their own.

They re-emerged after about half an hour, the Lozenge full of tales about ladies with 'bagth of thweetth' and how they had to 'take off the crocth to go into the golden mothque.' He was very relieved when I took off my robes. 'It meanth you're a real Mummy again.'

The Glammy kept hers on til we got back home, as she didn't want to offend by stripping in the street. Here she is with Rashimi - and the Arabic on the wall says: 'Akbar' the end bit of 'Allahu Akbar'. God is Great.

That afternoon, J got back from the office and we ventured west to see the other side of the city. The Jewish communities were getting ready for the Sabbath so there were no cars on the road at all apart from our own - since in certain communities you are not even meant to switch on a light, let alone drive on the Sabbath. It was a bit like being on a set for a film in a different era - with most men, women and children dressed in black and white, and most with curled ringlets or wigs, and hats like hairy drums. The Glammy was delighted to have a tinted window in the back of our jeep, so she could stare as much as she liked. But she admitted to being fairly terrified by what she saw. I learned a lot by seeing the city through her eyes over the weekend. But I tried hard to keep my own eyes on, all the same.

Border line

As we approached the lunar landscape of the Israeli border for the second time in three months, the Lozenge piped up from the back seat over the iPad: 'We're not going to live on the border, are we Mummy?' And at many points during the journey, there were certainly questions in my mind about how long we would have to stay there. Although J, me and the dwarves now have diplomatic passports, the Glammy doesn't and since she's Arab, albeit with a US passport as well as her Jordanian one, she received a lengthy grilling at many different points during the opaque and confusing process that is entering Israel.

I could see how uncomfortable she felt, and I made a point of standing beside her if I could, whenever she was questioned. These are some of the questions she was asked:

Why are you coming Israel?
Do you have a weapon?
Where were you born?
Are you married?
Why not?
Do you want to get married?
Do you have Palestinian family members?
Do you have friends who are Palestinian?
Are you sure?
Surely you must have some Palestinian friends?
Are they here in Palestine?
Has this family you're with asked you to carry anything through for them?
Where were your parents born?
Are you sure?
Are you really sure?
How can you be sure and can you prove it?

By this stage it was 5.30pm, and having left Amman 4 hours previously, the dwarves were doing steep turns around the strip lights in the empty terminal. Together they uprooted about 5 plastic looking pot plants and flung handfuls of red gravel from the pots all around the marble floors. Then they ran in and out of disused plastic kiosks playing catch and knocking over furniture. Rashimi bulldozed over a chair on wheels and knocked a big box of nuts, bolts and screws onto the floor which rolled in all directions. They shrieked and laughed and squealed and spilt juice and threw biscuits around.

I sat outside the security office with the Glammy and did nothing to stop them. An official came out shouting and telling someone to clear up the mess, glaring at us as we sat there not moving. And I simply willed on the dwarf bombardment from my seated position.

We broke through in the end, perhaps with the help of the Lozenge and Rashimi's antics, and arrived at our house in the dark to find no bedding and a thick coat of dust on all surfaces. We tried to light the cooker but couldn't manage, and eventually found some help from a lovely Palestinian who works for the Consulate.

The Glammy and the dwarves went to bed and J and I sat up chatting. I'd packed ingredients to make mushroom risotto but at the last minute had flung rather too much salt into the previously tasteless mix. So we sat eating what tasted like the Dead Sea with mushrooms floating in it, under another strip light in what will one day be our kitchen. Even the bottle of white wine didn't help much to wash it all unhappily down. Having built a life - even if only a temporary one - here in Jordan, I don't feel quite ready to uproot yet. And the border process towards our next destination does nothing for its public image.

I'm not sure I was the most delightful dinner companion for J that night. But he was still there in the morning, on the other side of the diminutive double.

A golden final stanza

The Lozenge's little orange school bus makes a tinny whirring sound which is how we know when it has drawn up outside the house at around 1pm, and I often find myself sprinting downstairs to go and meet him. The first week at school seems to have gone really well, and he confided the other day: 'I had weeeeal fun at my nurthery today.' But I still had to bribe him out of bed a couple of mornings with a 'croithant' - the Lozenge's favourite morsel, as a 7.30am departure still feels quite early.

Now Rashimi has the Glammy to himself in the mornings, and I made the use of her Arabic skills to go and visit the Syrian women and children I made the films about for UNICEF. They were pleased to see us as I don't think anyone drops in to see them, and life in the echoey apart-hotel with filthy stairwells and a broken lift, must be very bleak at times. Although the Syrians are only from the next door country - this will never feel like home for the older ones. Rashimi seemed fairly happy to be with them, and probably understood more of the Arabic than I did. Some good news is that there was also an orange bus parked out the front of their building and many of the children have started to attend school this September. The Jordanian government and UNICEF have been working hard to instigate this, so I felt happy to see it in practise.

The boys have been very excited to have two beautiful and glamourous 19 year olds to stay as they embark on travels around Jordan. Rashimi wailed as they left for Aqaba this morning - stretching a chubby brown arm towards the retreating blonde back views. He is not called niswanji (womaniser) for nothing. He does just love girls. And blonde ones are a particular highlight in these parts.

We're preparing to go on a weekend to Jerusalem, and this time we're taking the Glammy, in the hope she will like it, and will want to come and live there with us for at least a few months from next January. To have her with us when we move would make for some precious continuity. But whatever she decides, we'll understand. And if only everyone from here would come with us. It feels like we have a tiny community forming, and it's sad that it's temporary.

Sayyad and the dwarves

I was moved to hear that Seamus Heaney died this week, and to hear the text message he sent to his wife, in the last few minutes of his life. Nolle timere: Don't be afraid. I've always considered that fear is at the bottom of the most negative of human emotions and behaviour, and I don't feel there could be a more fitting last stanza for a poet to publish in these times.

Al Wadi and other weekend capers

While Cameron's leadership took a beating in the UK, and Obama decided to look to Congress for approval for a strike on Syria, things in our household were a little more carefree this weekend.

Temperatures can be startlingly high in our second floor apartment these days - particularly in the kitchen where there is no air conditioning and the added bonus of a large heated towel rail which has to stay on all the time for there to be hot water. So it's often the room where tempers can fray - particularly mine. Which is more of a worry considering it's also the room where the knives are kept.

So on Friday we escaped to Al Wadi, a water park complex overlooking the Dead Sea which is like a relic from the 1980's complete with slides, flumes, wave machines, and luminous coloured slush puppy on sale in the cafe. In 45 degrees, they were even offering a Jacuzzi which I thought might have just tipped us over the edge so we avoided that and stuck to zooming down slides, thef four of us, on an inflatable 'family boat', with J and I clutching Rashimi so he didn't fly out half way down. The 'Elf and Safety are nowhere to be seen in these parts which is refreshing and un-nerving in one terrified intake of breath.

The morning was fairly calm, but the place got fuller as the day went on, with Jordanians in everything from top to toe burkinis to San Tropez chic, and the music ratcheted up and up and up until by about 1.30pm it was so loud that we could barely even hear Rashimi shriek or the Lozenge wail. The music pumped from speakers embedded in walls everywhere, including the bathrooms, and the wave machine churned the crowds of writhing bodies, all punching the air in a drugs and alcohol free version of Ibiza or Magalluf. And all this nestled in the armpit of the Holy Land. After inhaling a flaccid family pizza we decided to leave the inferno and enter the next one: The vermillion Chevy. Which had been steadily heating up as we frolicked in the chlorinated surf so we could barely breathe inside. With all fans whirring and churning out dust, we cruised out of the car park and headed back to Amman. The car started bunny hopping at regular intervals when J put his foot on the accelerator, and an alarming, unrecocniseable light was flashing intermittently. After three un-enlightening visits to teenager-manned garages, we decdied to brave it and keep going. I couldn't help but giggle at the ludicrous situation, but J kept begging me not to laugh until we'd made it home. Which we eventually did having lost our body weights of water. The bonus being that the flat felt relatively cool on our return from the belly of below sea level. Everything is relative after all.

On Saturday 'Dook' as Rashimi now calls him, invited us to watch an Arab horse show and visit his farm, just out of Amman. Rashimi said 'orsee! 'orsee!' about once every 2 minutes for the whole day, and was fortunately enthralled by the sleek creatures hopping elegantly over jumps. (Though less inclined to go that near, or touch one). The riders all looked like they'd stepped off the pages of an Arab version of Jilly Cooper's Riders - in immaculate white jodphurs and designer details. After the show the Duke took us to his family farm house, which I got the feeling he feels sad about. The patch has been divided between family members with different priorities, shall we say. And a three lane motor way now cuts his farmhouse off from the farm land where he grows all his fruit and vegetables. His small corner of the house, complete with its own chapel and a stained glass window he and his wife were given on their wedding day, is a small, dusty gem of heritage integral to this country and how it once was. But we felt sad and weary for him as we left, seeing how much upkeep is required, and all within a society with increasing numbers of people who would rather build a new place with angular lines, electric gates and tinted windows.

J and I also had time to watch an extroardinary couple of films, including Gatekeepers, which has just been released, which is based around interviews with ex-members of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service. It reveals a lot about the relationship between politicians and their agencies, and an awful lot about humans and how we reflect on our actions after the events. We also watched one part of the four part, Shoah, an extraordinary filmic journey by Claude Lanzmann. It's packed with brutally revealing interviews of Polish people who were aware of the goings on during the Holocaust - and it makes you realise how anything that happens on earth cannot be bi-polarised. There are always a multitude of facets to any given horror show when you start asking the right questions. Like the two compound eyes of a fly - each side is divided into thousands of tiny and different ways of seeing things. They were both important films to see at this point in our lives - where these realities continue to be played out around us in thinly veiled guises.

The Lozenge has had his first day at school and the highlight of yesterday was 'making thnaketh'. The snakes never made it home, but he did, with an empty lunch box, and a big smile on his face. This morning the diminutive orange school bus rolled up outside our door smartly at 8am, and the Lozenge gave J, I and Rashimi (still in his pyjamas chewing on a toothbrush) a quick kiss, hopped in the bus, and waved happily as the bus cruised steadily off towards his school. A rite of passage if ever there was one. And I could see that Rashimi seemed fairly impressed at the adventure of it all.

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