J arrived back with us on Monday night and is here 'to stay and stay and stay and stay for a day and another day and another day and another and another…', so the Lozenge squealed as he squeezed the breath from J by the door, stark naked, accompanied by Rashimi who hung off J's right leg, in nothing but his slipper socks.
Rashimi is 2 on Saturday and arrangements are afoot. I asked the Lozenge if he wanted to invite any of his friends from school to the party and he said: 'I'd like to have Faisthal. There's 2 Faisthalth, but one Faisthal is 'absit'. He's twavelling.' So I will ask the Faisal who is not currently absent to come along. They are not in the Lozenge's class, but it seems he's made friends with them on the little orange school bus.
We have only a few more days left of the Glammy's company. She will leave for Bahrain where she has a highly paid job which will enable her to save a bit of money. Recently she's been feeling the pressure, since she supports most of her family financially, and she lamented to St Grace and I the other day: 'I wish I was from Sri Lanka or somewhere I could actually afford to buy or build a house. I don't know how I will survive here in Jordan, either with or without a man.'
She's also feeling the family pressure about getting married, and a man she's known for a while has just asked her mother if he could have the Glammy's hand. Because the Glammy's father died 15 years ago, her uncle is the head of the family and in charge of these decisions. They trooped around to his house to ask him and he said: 'I want 5,000 dinars (about £5,000) in jewellery, and 5,000 dinars worth of furniture, and another 5,000 as a kind of 'deposit' should the Glammy be stranded by this man. Then he announced they needed to be engaged by the end of the week. So they had to rush around doing paper work and having blood tests in the hospital. This is a legal requirement here in Jordan, so that people too closely related will not marry and have children, as it can mean babies are born with deformities. 'consanguinity' it's called, and is a big problem in many parts of the Arab world where it's traditional to marry a close relation.
St Grace, the dwarves and I will attend her 'xotbe' engagement party, tonight. J is not invited as it's just for women. It seems so rushed and sudden, and I can see our wonderful Glammy is having to tow the line just to keep her family quiet. We are all hoping and praying that this man will be good to her, and will understand if she decides at some point during the engagement, that he is not the one for her after all.
So St Grace is gradually stepping further into the melee of our lives, and is a complete wonder, Rashimi and I agreed as we strummed 'Amazing Grace' on the eukelele this morning before she arrived, followed by a warm up Happy Birthday for Saturday at which point Rashimi shouted, 'CAAAAAAKE!' There's a bit of baking to be done before then.
This week I interviewed a fascinating Jordanian architect, Ammar Khammash, who was in charge of the renovations of some of the buildings at the gallery. He's a man of great modesty and enormous talent, and is going against the shiny, new and shocking designs of other Arab architecture, and bringing things back to their roots through his designs.
J and I drove through cool November darkness to a party last night, hardly believing that we have only just over 2 months left here in Jordan. This little bubble of home containing all the people that have shared it with us, will soon be popped and we'll have to start inflating the next one.
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