A new camera assistant and a farmer in the Jordan valley

On Saturday J and I went on a working outing to interview and film Abu Ahmad, a farmer in the Jordan valley, now in his 80's, who was evicted from Bersheeba in southern Palestine during the Nakba of 1948.  We went with the wonderful professor from Jordan University, also Palestinian, who was our introduction. Although my work and J's work overlaps at times, we've never actually worked together before, and it was fun to be in the back of Mohammad's antique Mercedes with all my camera kit piled around us, winding our way down towards the Dead Sea, the temperature creeping steadily higher as we descended. And I was aware of the luxury of having a trusted person with me to help me put up my tripod, translate things into real Arabic for Abu Ahmad, ask the odd question during the interview and give me a different take on things.

We had a fascinating time talking to Abu Ahmad about his memories of Palestine in the 1930s, of his days as a young boy, working with camels and other livestock, before their eviction in 1948 and their arrival in Jordan on the back of a truck. It was here in the Jordan valley where they began life again. He's been farming ever since, in a very different way, since he has no livestock here. He was a natural raconteur and unfazed by the camera - his gaze direct and unflinching, and enormous hands and feet from a lifetime of manual labour. He cried when he told us of his longing to return home. 70 years after he left, the memories still as clear as they were when he was a young boy. 'I have visions of my home sometimes when I pray,' he said. And almost on cue, the muezzin started calling and Abu Ahmad departed to the mosque for an hour.

Mohammad had brought us all a picnic lunch of 2 roast chickens and tomatoes, basil and grapes from his garden, and after a couple more hours of taking photographs and asking questions, we returned to Amman. On our way into town I managed to convince J to jump out and do some of the Lozenge's party shopping for his 4th birthday the following day - and after 2 hours in various shops we were standing in the street with 2 backpacks of camera kit, a tripod, 4 large bags of party shopping and 12 helium balloons. It may have been at this point that my camera assistant doubted his decision to accompany me on a work trip. But we managed to coerce a taxi into taking us home and only one of the balloons popped en route. 

The dwarves went into a frenzy over Mohammad's grapes which were all dusty colours, shapes and sizes, and tasted like nectar. Rashimi now calls: 'gaaaaaaaAAAAAPEEEE!' whenever he wanders by the fridge. Mohammad also gave us an armful of branches of basil which smell like nothing you could find on a shelf in a shop anywhere in the world. A fragrant memory of a special day with two 80-something-year-old men with tales to tell.