After a week of filming the artists and other goings on at the gallery I walked back in the door of our flat to squeals of happiness and a tangle of small male limbs gripping to my waist and shoulders. 'Off! Off!' Rashiimi said as he peeled off my cardigan and ripped the sunglasses from my face with a tanned and sticky hand. Just to be sure that I was not going out again. Then the Lozenge dragged me, Rashimi and the Glammy onto the balcony to watch his 'thcooter thuntth' which involved very slow wheeling around the dusty marble floor, and even more careful turns around furniture, in nothing but his turquoise pants from H&M.
It was quite a relief, I thought to myself, as we settled on beanbags that evening, the boys eating pretzels, and me drinking a glass of beer, to be back in the soft and innocent land of dwarfdom, far from the sophisticated thinking behind the art and installations I'd been filming all week. It's hard not to feel a little like an outsider at times when dealing with artists born in Beirut: 1983, Kuwait: 1980, Damascus: 1973, Johannesburg: 1984.
Swindon: 1975 doesn't exactly meld neatly with the rest. And let's just say, I was glad it was me with the camera asking the questions, not the other way around. As I read in a recent review about Malcolm Gladwell's book, ' David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants', there is proof that difficult experiences in life can lead people to be higher achievers with a lot more to say, if the chemistry is right. I am yet to experience true grit and here in the Arab world right now, in certain company, that can set you as the outsider. But to be an outsider is still an important experience in itself for a white, middle class, heterosexual mother of 2. And as a diplomatic 'spouse' as the strapline goes, an experience which you need to get used to since you're either feeling like an outsider in a new place, or like the outsider when you finally get back home.
Had J, the resident shrink, been here, we would have spent the evening talking about it. But instead I consoled myself with the Amstel and dwarves and had a good night's sleep despite dreaming about camera angles and metal welding. Before I fell asleep I watched an extraordinary film called: 'The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu.' It's a film made by Eric Baudelaire on a Super 8 camera, about the daughter of the founder of the Japanese Red Army (Shigenobu) and the activist film-maker Adachi Masao. May, the daughter spent the first 27 years of her life in hiding in Lebanon, assuming a different identity every couple of months as a young child. It's beautiful, thought provoking, and all based around audio interviews combined with grainy visuals of landscapes around Beirut and Tokyo, which is a technique I'm interested in, albeit not as masterful of the art as Eric Baudelaire. But good to have examples to learn from.
After a weekend with the dwarves, the apartment looks like the aftermath of a typhoon. I noticed all my hairclips are missing as the Lozenge has been fishing with them with his little magnetic rod, and some carrots which he half peeled leaving the peel strewn at intervals over the kitchen floor. There is a half drunk bottle of 'weewee juice' (kiwi juice in Rashimi language) on my side of my bed and the bedroom floor is littered with pillows, teddies, plastic fruit and vegetables and a frisbee.
I had a quick glance at the news and saw that the Swiss investigation team has decreed it is very possible that Yasser Arafat was indeed poisoned by polonium. Then I received a message from Detta Reagan, the woman who organised the bike ride from Beirut to Amman that I flimed nearly 10 years ago. She met Arafat a few times, and on one of these occasions he gave her some documents about polonium and Israel's use of it against their enemies, insisting she read about it. She did read about it, but then discarded the documents, which she now deeply regrets.
On Saturday the dwarves and I watched an Arab horse show with Duke Mamdouh, or 'Mamnouh' as Rashimi calls him, which amusingly means, 'forbidden' in Arabic. The boys enjoyed it and the event inspired the Lozenge to create his own jump course with the beige sausage cushions in our sitting room when we got home, and he wouldn't go to bed until he had performed it several times when the Duke came around for dinner last night. As I was cooking dinner, luckily before anyone arrived, I came into our bedroom after hearing squeals of what could have been positive or negative hysteria, and watched the dwarves, with my floury pinny on, yet again merely a bystander, as the Lozenge and Rashimi had a 15 minute naked wrestle on our bed.
I made and had dinner with the Duke and two lovely ladies visiting from UK, and went to bed at 12.30am to be awoken by the Lozenge wanting to continue his pyjama clad show jumping at 5.30am. After the dwarves had inhaled a strawberry yoghurt each for breakfast, spreading most of it on the already fur-lined plastic table cloth, they disappeared to the playroom. I found myself in a room on my own for the first time in about 7 days, listening to someone talking on radio 4 about palaeontology. I felt quite like a close relation to the subjects of the programme.
I have a night filming tonight, then more tomorrow, but J returns on Monday and then Umm and Abou Lucy arrive for a week's holiday next Sunday, when I will be very much the insider and intend to make the absolute most of it.
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