Nuha

A quick turnaround after the wedding weekend, and I found myself driving back to the Jordanian border once more - this time to plan a workshop for Syrian and Jordanian teenage girls we're doing next week, and to do some more interviews with Syrians girls in a town called Ramtha on the Jordanian border with Syria.

The landscape has turned to desert after a quick burst of springtime. At 7.30am, the dry hills that roll down towards the Dead Sea could have been in Arizona. It was just an overnight trip so I had no dwarves in the back - which meant no drinks, no snacks, no iPad and no noise, meaning I could actually listen the lyrics of the music, and get to choose the music myself. I flipped between the Barber of Seville and Neil Young - just because I could. 'Driving down a desert highway....she rides a Harley Davidson' well, not quite, but the feeling was similarly free-ing.

The Jordanian border officials asked: 'Wain al awlaad?' Where are the boys? 'We're coming back on Sunday,' I replied, and wound my way up the familiar road to Amman from the town of Shuna, on a level with the Dead Sea. Initially the road is full of potholes, the roads lined with orange, red and purple bougainvillea, acacia and pepper trees. Men with coal black moustaches and red and white keffiyeh head gear wandered slowly to the little 'food and beverage supermarket,' and the heat had started to wave above the banana plants and palms. Unmistakably Jordan.

We had probably put too much into the 2 days, but we did our best. The second day we spent talking to Syrian girls about marriage. The growing economic pressure means that fathers of daughters are marrying them off even earlier than normal. We interviewed 3 girls of 15, 16 and 17 years old. And as often happens when you start asking people about their lives - the story becomes something you hadn't foreseen.

The third of the three girls lives in a house with her husband who is 20, and many of his sisters. Unlike many of the makeshift accommodations we've visited, this house seemed unloved and messy. There was an absence of a mother figure, and a tangible tension between the members of the household. 

We entered the little house with green tinted windows and no furniture but for some floor cushions and six of the sisters stood up to greet us. On the ground sat a frail looking young girl, with beautiful brown eyes and an uncertain smile. Nuha was the one we had come to meet, and she slowly stood up, offering a cool cheek for us to begin the typical Syrian female greeting of one kiss on the right, followed by at least four on the other side.

Nuha is 17 and married her husband 2 years previously. She was living in Dera'a, on the Syria-Jordan border and was 7 months pregnant with her first child. In her village they were bombarded with heavy shelling from the Syrian government. She and her mother were running for cover when the shell hit. And within a matter of minutes, Nuha had lost her mother, her right leg, and her unborn child, from the side of her stomach. She's been in Jordan for a year and a half, walks awkwardly with a basic prosthetic leg. Now her husband is looking for a second wife. 

She sat, with her prosthetic leg, reminiscent of a shop mannequin, sticking straight out in front of her and sang us a song about her mother. She said to us: 'I can't have my mother back. But all I want is to try to have another baby, to live with my husband and for him to be mine only. But there is nothing I can do to control my own destiny.'

I returned to Jerusalem that evening - her face and her story imprinted in my mind.

The art of jumping on the spot

'You have a lot of Jordanian stamps in your passport,' said a diminutive female Israeli security officer, thumbing through my passport at Tel Aviv airport before I checked in for a flight home. 'Why do you go to Jordan?' 'What do you do there?' 'Do you have Jordanian friends?' 'What kind of friends are they? Good friends, or just colleagues?' 'Would they have given you anything to take onto this flight for them?' ' We only ask you these questions for your safety.'

The cross inspection continued for about five minutes, before she went off to whisper to her supervisor, which took another five minutes. Then her supervisor came over and continued in the same vein. Just the thought of any of our lovely Jordanian friends giving us explosives to take on a flight was laughable. But how was this tiny uniformed creature to know, when all she is trained to think of, is the enemy? And presumably, she has never visited a single country in the Arab world, despite their proximity.

We soared out of Tel Aviv, cruising slowly over the beaches and tall, pale buildings lining the coast, towards London, where I was going to meet J for a weekend for a wedding. I sat next to an elderly Israeli couple, a literature professor and her husband, who were travelling to London for a weekend of Baroque music concerts. As the plane swooped down to land, we three, craning our necks towards the tiny window, drank and drank in the green. 'Aaaaah, ' the lady sighed beside me, 'We come for Baroque music, but also for this.'

J and my first stop was my niece Tilly in the hospital with a worrying and continuous temperature which they thought might be meningitis. Fortunately, it wasn't, but she was kept there with Rosie for a couple of days for monitoring. We were impressed as we entered the Chelsea and Westminster hospital - an angular white, light world with shops, cafes and art. As we approached her ward we inspected a wall of plates designed and painted by children: 'Exploring Cultures,' depicting Palestinian cultural scenes with Arabic translations beside them.  Two young, experienced and friendly doctors visited Tilly while she was there. The Baroque music, the green….and also this.

It's through leaving the country and returning every so often that we can realise how much we have, and how much is possible. Admittedly NHS services and other examples of our taxes are a lottery in the UK, but this is a very good example of doing things well.

And then to a glorious weekend of quintessential Englishness - more green, and a church and marquee full of friends including the willowy and beautiful bride, simply bursting with happiness. I was speaking to her father just after the speeches. The bride had made her own speech, and intermittently she jumped elegantly on the spot like a ballerina, (though she's actually a lawyer).  I love seeing people jump on the spot. The Lozenge does it, and Rashimi is learning to do it, though his is normally a kind of hop and a skip accompanied by: 'Weeee're off to the LELLLOOOOW citeeeeeee!' (His own amalgam of the yellow brick road and the emerald city). But you don't often see adults doing it, and I wish they did it more. 'Isn't it wonderful seeing a beautiful grown up girl in a white dress jumping on the spot,' I said to the proud father. 'Isn't it,' he replied. 'And you know, she's always done it.'

In amongst the excitable conversations with old friends, a more sobering one ensued with a lovely Iranian girl, a new friend, who works for the BBC. She and her English husband have just had their first baby and just as her parents were boarding their flight from Tehran, they were stopped, and had their passports taken from them. They are still passport free, and trapped in Iran, unable to visit their first grandchild. The regime is trying to put pressure on our friend to stop her working for the BBC. She won't do it, as this would mean a victory for the regime. So much for a more liberal leader in Iran - it seems he is a different cherry on the same old cake.

As she spoke, I didn't know what to say. To be separated from your own mother after the birth of your first child, in this way, must be agonising. I asked her how she felt about being a mother and having a daughter of her own, and she told me: 'I feel so happy I can give her a life of freedom where she doesn't have to be forced into wearing a headscarf and will be able to choose the course of her own life.' It was a reminder, that sunny weekend on a glad green glade of an English lawn, of how the tentacles of tyranny can reach into our own society if they want to.

J and I meandered about together for a couple of days surrounding the wedding, having picnics and sitting in cafes watching the world go by in the sunshine. It's 10 years this weekend since we met, and it was serendipitous to have a moment's pause in our lives to reflect, and to look forward.

After a couple of weeks apart we returned to Jerusalem together to be reunited with a duo of effervescent dwarves, beautifully cared for by St Grace for the weekend.

We pulled a present from London from our bag - a packet of Percy Pigs. And we watched, kneeling by our luggage by the garden gate as they ripped into the bag shouting: 'Little piggeeeeees! Thank you Mummeeee!' And then they both started jumping up and down on the spot.  

This uncomfortable State

There are many highlights to neither of the dwarves being in an institution just yet. Instead of a frenetic scramble at 7am to pile the Lozenge onto a school bus, we can spend a couple of hours together in the mornings before I begin my working day at 8.30.

This morning the Lozenge crept into J's side of the bed, in his absence, at about 6am.

'Mummy. How many days until Christmas?'

Then some singing: 'Twinkle twi...Twinkle twinkle..tw...twiin...no...

...Umm...Mummy, I've forgotten the tune to twinkle twinkle little star. Will you sing it?'

I've tried in vain to cajole them into daytime activities with various groups around town so the dwarves don't become completely wild and untamed. But my ideas, on the whole, have been a great disaster. The music class run by an alarming Jewish matriarch resulted in the dwarves leaving the room in the middle of 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes', to play on a scooter outside. She didn't exactly help by shrieking at Rashimi: 'What have you done with my plastic frogs???!! I used to have 12 and now there's only 7.' Bang went that plan, quicker than a sweaty paw on one of her bongos.

Then there was the excitement of finding the Arab sports centre a few metres from our gate which boasted Taekwondo and Karate. We went along for a look, and after seeing some very large and rather too capable looking Palestinian boys kick a cushion very hard, very high in the air, over and over again for 20 minutes, the Lozenge wasn't going anywhere near, 'ever, never, again'. Rashimi is still too small for it, but I did notice a certain fixedness in his concentration as we watched. Perhaps he thought it a useful skill as the smaller dwarf.

Instead we've been busy doing other things like making a vending machine (the Lozenge's idea)

 and dressing up, with St Grace a very natural cowgirl.

Yes, it's that donkey again.

If nothing else it means we enjoy our time together and the days are as carefree as they could be in this bizarre city. Today we found a beautiful park below the Cinematheque which cascades down a slope lined with ancient olive trees, rosemary bushes and rocks, sitting snugly below the Old City walls. The dwarves just ran and ran for the whole afternoon, their legs tripping over themselves in their excitement at the wide green space. St Grace and I pilfered a small rosemary plant as we can't find it anywhere in the garden shops.

The best bit about pranking about with the dwarves is there's very little head space left for any form of deep thought about the country we're in - unless one of them is asking a question, which are admittedly becoming a little more searching as their legs grow longer and their heads more inquisitive.

But after dwarf bed time the other day, I was soon nose-to-screen with laptop, reminiscent of the Lozenge's snout squashed against the iPad, watching a documentary called: 'The Do-Gooders' by a British director. It was fascinating, but put another cat among the pigeons in my head, which is already full enough of the flapping wings of confusion.

The director goes to Palestine on a journey in the steps of her Grandparents who were fervent advocates of the cause, and worked with UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) which has provided emergency relief, education, health care and social services to the Palestinian people since 1948 when the State of Israel was created.

She wants to understand what Palestine is now, and who is helping. But she is very disappointed by what she finds - from a group of smug and inexperienced young volunteers in Nablus, to multi billion dollar projects being run by USAID and other agencies, who she sees are supporting the occupation with one hand, whilst feeding the Palestinians with the other.

One of the Palestinians in her film asks her something to the tune of: 'Why don't you guys stay at home and work on your own problems? Why do you have to come here with your white person's camera and your white person's views and tell us how we should be doing things?'

In her view, Palestinians would be much better off with no aid at all. Without it, she claims, Palestinians would sort themselves out. It's hardly a new argument, but somehow because we live here, it made the film all the more disturbing, because I wondered which part I was complicit in simply by living here, and perhaps getting the odd bit of work from the humanitarian agencies here - albeit in a storytelling capacity. But I was always of the impression that to do nothing, is worse. Perhaps not?

Chris, the head man at UNRWA suggests Chloe, the director should try and talk to the Quartet, comprised of the USA, EU, UN, Russia and whose special envoy is Tony Blair. Unlike a braver and more transparent Chris from UNRWA, who seemed decent and put up a good fight (and incidentally just turned me down for my offer of skills for his cause since he's employing as many Palestinians as he can in lieu of internationals, due to the dreadful Gaza blockades and enormous unemployment in the West Bank).

But of course, no one from the Quartet would talk to Chloe,  or even comment, and stayed within the confines of their glitzy offices which we can almost see from our house here in Jerusalem.

I've often wondered at what point USAID's logo of a handshake, with the strap line: 'From the American people' becomes more of a political tool - particularly in the case of Israel/Palestine, when the same United States are supporting the Israeli Defence Forces and the very occupation that's causing the need for aid.

It's a good film - with some important issues gutsily tackled.

But most of the time my mind is in an uncomfortable state, in this uncomfortable State. Probably also because just to walk down the street,  you find yourself battling from the inside out, with your own prejudices and preconceptions, before drawing anywhere near a conclusion that you feel you could repeat to anyone other than your Mum. Which was why it was an even greater blessing she's just been staying.

There's a passage in the book I'm reading which struck a chord, this week in particular, as we're slowly invited as new comers to this country, to peep between the cracks and witness the shades of grey that are hidden between the polarised nature of the politics here.

The book, 'The Lemon Tree', by Sandy Tolan is a wonderfully researched account of two families - one Muslim Arab and one Bulgarian Jewish, who are intrinsically linked by a house, from which the Arab family was forced out, and into which the Bulgarians were invited to move, as the Israeli state was built.

The tale is non-fiction though reads like a novel, and in one passage, two of the protagonists - Dalia, daughter of the Bulgarian immigrants and Bashir, son of the Arab family - meet each other and begin an unlikely friendship.

Dalia has an internal monologue during one of their awkward conversations about ownership and the right to live in this land: 'Each had chosen to reside within the contradiction. They were enemies, and they were friends. Therefore, Dalia believed, they had reason to keep talking. The conversation itself was worth protecting.'

Also this week, I was given the opportunity by a friend to go and meet a bit of potentially, and much longed-for, normality in the form of a Jewish lady living in Katamon (a Jerusalem district that was first developed by wealthy Arabs at the beginning of the 20th Century), who was born a decade or so before 1948, and invited me to her house. Interestingly, Katamon was also the district where Suha, the founder of the Darat gallery I just made the film about, was raised.  Suha is the daughter of an Arab family, forced to leave that very same district in 1948.

The district itself is leafy and calm, with the ubiquitous blue and white Israeli flag fluttering from many car windows and balconies. I didn't know what to expect, and I wondered to myself what I would do if faced with a hardliner, over morning tea and cake. How brave was I? Would I set down the tea cup and leave? What did people do in these situations during apartheid or the American civil rights movement? Should you sip the PG Tips belonging a racist?

Two hours later I emerged from her welcoming flat, after animated conversation, and lots of tea and incredibly delicious cinnamon and raisin cake, which I didn't have to refuse, feeling that a ray of light had been shed on another way of being in this country. Her parents came here as part of the socialist movement, and whilst she is evidently fond of her homeland having moved back here recently after over 40 years in the UK, in her own words: 'This country and this city has changed beyond all belief: the right wingers, the ever increasing number of ultra orthodox Jewish populations and those terrible, terrible settlements. And the worst bit is that many of my friends, who are also liberal, are dying on me, as we're getting to that age.'

I hope to have made another septuagenarian friend, (true to form after our extra-septuagenarian Jordanian experience). And I can't wait for us to have more conversations with our husbands in tow.

Now I see that Akko has the same issues - of course it would...

http://electronicintifada.net/content/resisting-cannibalization-palestines-heritage/13254

Characterful faces and fun times in Akko

Travels with Grandma and other animals

The Lozenge and I sat in a cafe at Ben Gurion airport waiting for Mum to arrive. I stood up to buy a cup of tea, and noticed that L was in conversation with an old man at our table. The first thing I noticed were his teeth, which were a dazzling shade of blue-hued white, the kind you see in much dentistry from the US. He chatted to the Lozenge in a drawl laced with French and American, and as I approached the table with an excruciatingly expensive cup of tea, he asked L how old he was.

'Umm. Four.'

'Well, when I was four, I had a whole different set of circumstances,' the man replied.

Sotto vocce, to me, he explained: 'At your boy's age I was en route to the barbecue express from Paris. Though somehow, as my Mum was an important member of the resistance, we were saved, and I was raised in the USA instead.'

This country is built, block upon block, of stories such as these. From any which way you see it.

He has come to Israel to visit his Jewish family every year, and is looking to settle in California. He admitted: 'I could never live here. I am allergic to anyone who has a curl of hair around here.' Whirling his finger around one side of his face where a Haredim side lock would fall.

A happy week with Grandma followed - allowing me to both work and play in equally intense proportions, and giving me someone to chat with into the night over the odd bottle of wine, while J is in the UK. Though we have just realised our opposite neighbours are very good news, there isn't  exactly a burgeoning weekday social life in this city, it seems, with Tel Aviv being more of the party town. Perhaps the overtly religious nature of the city subliminally affects us all.

The four of us, me, dwarves and Grandma, quickly became a good team - with St Grace being graceful in the background. And Grandma a Caucasian dervish of energy - arriving with a bag full of polystyrene aeroplanes, parachutists and games. One afternoon, in an attempt to keep up my fitness routine, the Lozenge found me in my bedroom doing a work-out dvd - holding onto a chair for balance as the instructor advised. 'That is weally silly, Mummy. You should sit on a chair.'

At the end of the week, we embarked on another adventure, driving north up along the shore of the Sea of Galilee where we had a picnic surrounded by locals playing music and lighting barbecues,

and after the very unappealing town of Tiberias, driving to the West until we reached Akko or Acre, a beautiful UNESCO heritage town, which is both well maintained and allowed to be a bit crumbly, in exactly the right proportions. We wandered about from our tiny hotel built into one part of the ancient city walls, finding some fishing nets for the dwarves and eating ice creams - wondering about the societal make up of the place which is 25 per cent Arab and most of the rest Jewish, though has a relaxed air, and feels far from the friction and austere dress codes of Jerusalem.

But evidently from the sign above our heads in this photo - the same issues are there. It's just you don't feel them as much and you wouldn't necessarily know one passer-by's religion from another in the street.

The dwarves were given two beds on a mezzanine floor above my bed at the hotel. An innocent game of play houses soon turned into a raucous affair which most of the hotel must have heard. Having fortunately managed to convince the Lozenge that he didn't need to bring 'Donkey' for the first minute in at least 3 weeks...(I tell you, the creature is virtually life-sized and has accompanied us on most of our missions out of Jerusalem so far)

....we dragged the sweaty and tousled dwarves down the tiny staircase and out into the street, and went in the direction of a fish restaurant that came highly recommended. At 9pm, over porcini mushroom gnocchi, some extremely tender calamare rings and a glass of coke, the Lozenge found a fourth wind. 'There was a little bit of loudness in the bedroom, wasn't there, Grandma. But me and Washimi are good again now, aren't we?'

Rashimi and I ended up sharing a bed, and albeit for his diminutive form, I was still barely able to cling to one edge of the mattress as he did a kind of revolving starfish all night.

After not many hours of sleep we trundled back down a different route home, via Ben Gurion aiport where we had to say goodbye to Grandma.

The week is now a happily faded memory in our minds. The final little stanza being an image of the dwarves hugging her goodbye clutching iridescent yellow ice lollies. 'Thank you for your presence,' I said. 'And thank you for your presents,' the Lozenge said. 'We will miss you and we love you.'

We went our separate ways.

On the way to the car the Lozenge continued talking, his hand still clasping the lolly, meaning I had to hold his sticky wrist instead as we crossed the road:

'We are sad she has gone. But now we can call her, and also we can think about her....

Umm, Mummy, do you think there was a little tear in her eye?'

Little green men

Beautiful rain,

and good night teddies.

Sebastia

When you're living away from home, it's easy to become rather joined at the hip to the husband. It's 10 years since we met and I felt sad seeing J wander down the path towards the gate on his way to the UK for 2 weeks. But rather than mope around missing him, I decided to plan a dwarf friendly adventure for the Lozenge, Rashimi and I - a trip to the West Bank to stay the night in a little town called Sebastia, near Nablus, about 1.5 hours drive to the north of Jerusalem.

It's never that simple leaving the relatively ordered confines of Israel and heading into Palestinian territory when you don't know exactly where you're going. Road signs and street names are few and far between, GPS can blank out with no warning and printed road maps can be inaccurate. The weather is getting hotter by the hour, so I packed plenty of water and a picnic and with the dwarves glued to the ipad in the back seat, we cruised off.

Leaving Jerusalem we drove alongside the wall, also known as the 'security fence', 'separation barrier', 'apartheid wall', and by some Palestinians as the 'jidar al-fasl al-unsurl' the 'racial segration wall'.
It's still in construction, and it will run for an estimated 700 km when finished. Israel argues that the barrier is to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism, including the suicide bombing attacks that increased significantly during the Second Intifada. They say there has been a significant drop in attacks since the presence of the wall.

Certainly, we live here without fear.

But it also certainly severely restricts Palestinians who live near it, particularly when it comes to their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and access to work within Israel - where so many work opportunities are.

Its Orwellian presence cast a grey and sinister shadow on the road as we drove. The Lozenge echoed my thoughts: 'I have never seen a wall like that ever ever. That is so ugly.' We weaved alongside it and out through an unmanned checkpoint the other side. As expected there were no roadsigns except a burned out sign to Jerusalem, but I still had a little flicking blue dot on the Google maps so we continued.

The dwarves began and finished the picnic within half an hour, and we drove through undulating green and rock strewn scenery - the main punctuation being row upon row of olive groves. The roads were quiet and the route turned out to be much simpler than I'd thought. Within a couple of hours we were drawing into the village and driving past a tiny square with men sitting around playing chess. We spotted at least 6 Ford and Massey Ferguson tractors from the 1960s and little boys bobbing along on top of donkeys.

We stayed in a little guesthouse, which is a major achievement for a small Palestinian village, run by locals who received some European funding. It's composed of a cluster of small houses over the now reconstructed ruin of a Crusader chapel, is run with care and is evidently much loved. We climbed up a series of metal staircases to our room which looked over rooves and towards the hills. Rashimi darted into the bathroom, grabbed the water spray near the loo and holding it like a semi automatic, ran into the bedroom shrieking with laughter and sprayed the Lozenge, me and the bed until we were all soaking wet. I grabbed the hose from his chubby grasp, and we set out to explore the archaeological site.

It was quite a walk for little legs up an albeit gentle hill, and before the entrance of the site I decided a can of coke might tone down the whining, and pep up the dwarves who were a bright shade of pink with sweaty necks.

The first settlements here date back to early bronze age, but most visible remains are Roman. Herod owned the city for a time, and John the Baptist is supposedly buried here. The Lozenge however, had come here to collect 'fothilth' and was unamused not to be able to start picking them up the minute we started walking. He collected up small stones instead and put them in his little plastic bucket until the handle was straining and his face even pinker. But he was not going to let them go.

As we sat resting under an olive tree, me - massaging my arms after carrying Rashimi most of the way, and the dwarves muttering about going back to the 'hotaiw' - out of the bushes sprang two little Palestinian boys, Mohammad and Razaq, wiry like mountain goats and a few years older than the dwarves. They spoke no English, but soon we were climbing and chatting in broken Arabic, up another slope until we reached a wonderful view over hills and fields and met their father who owns one of the restaurants at the site, and a few more of the siblings, of which there are 9 in total. Mohammad and Razaq taught the Lozenge and Rashimi to throw stones (what better place than here?) and they scurried off down the dusty slope and climbed around the remaining columns of a little church where John the Baptist was supposedly beheaded. There were a few tears from our two boys as they struggled to keep up with the Palestinian children who have been raised on these hills. When you see them running there, it's almost like watching little grilse in a stream - they are so deft and light footed, the poor Lozenge and Rashimi looked like junior cart horses in comparison.

A welcome break for a 'mango jooth', and some sisters appeared. Their eyes lit up when they saw the Lozenge's bucket and spade, and took the dwarves by the hand to do some digging. We found bucket loads of 'treasure', from broken pottery and a sheep's jaw with a few teeth left on it, to some metal tongs, a tiny plastic digger and a clay amulet. The dwarves were delighted. The Palestinian children looked most bemused when Rashimi let out a harmonic yelp and leapt into my arms after unearthing a red spider and an ants nest during the dig.

We strolled back down the hill towards the guesthouse in the twilight, admiring more tractors and chatting to the friendliest of villagers - each one greeting us with a smile and an 'Ahlan Wasahlan' and asking us where we were from. But the dwarves were a bit shy to go into the small flat where the Mohammad, Razaq and their 7 siblings lived, so we bid them good night, ordering some kebabs from their father's restaurant.

The kebabs were not a success with the dwarves but they ate the chips, dipping them in hummous and we began rather a noisy and sleepless night in our little room with mosquito and his wife; noises from the mosques, barking dogs, crowing cockerels and braying donkeys. For me, it was a wonder not to hear a single car, but Rashimi chirped up at 2 am from his sweaty little travel cot at the foot of the double bed where the Lozenge and I were, saying: 'It'th scaaaawy Mummmeeeee!' And there were 3 in the bed.

Exhausted but well adventured we headed back to the car after a breakfast of more hummus, labaneh, bread and some of the best za'atar I've tried in a while. As we paid the charming owner and took our leave he had a little look in the Lozenge's plastic bucket full of treasures from the day before. 'Alhamdallilah Laurie walad!' he exclaimed, explaining to us that some of the broken bits of pottery were probably at least 1000 years old but we could take them with us as they were not a rare sight in this place, built on ancient remains and broken bits of pottery. It took me a little while to read his face before I finally believed him.

'Fothilth' they may not be, but the Lozenge certainly got at least 1 millennium nearer to one than many dwarves of his age. We got back to Jerusalem and collapsed in a heap, arranging the little pieces of pottery on the window sill as a reminder of our first excursion to the West Bank.

The first of many, we hope.

Glammy-fix

No sooner had we arrived in Jerusalem, than the dwarves and I did a quick about turn, and found ourselves back in Jordan sitting on the Glammy's balcony crowded with geraniums and spiky plants, all of us piled onto the swing seat looking out onto the beige street scene, already faded in the May sunshine.

The boys were so happy to be back with her - they went scurrying into her brown carpeted apartment like it was their own. We were visiting for a few days for the screening of the documentary I made about the Darat al Funun gallery in Amman. The week felt almost like a reward for all the countless journeys back and forth over the border we'd made - so many that we now have a positive welcome posse at customs on the Jordan side. The week was happy and care free, in some ways.

The only thing marring it was sad news from the Glammy about her 'husband' to whom she has only been married for 5 months, has not yet lived with, and has turned out to be not the man he purported to be. He has been insulting her for a while now, and when she protests, he accuses her of being fat and strong headed. They both want a divorce. Even sadder, to me, is the advice she's been getting from her female relations, who tell her that being insulted and being unhappy is just part of married life - you lump it or leave it at risk of your family's honour. We both sat, as she explained her situation, weeping at her kitchen table over the remains of the dwarves' bowls of Cocopops. She knows it doesn't have to be like this, and she knows that there are happier ways to live. And she has such a wonderful way with children.

The screening of the documentary took place in the Byzantine area at the gallery in the darkness, between the two evening calls to prayer. It was a full house and perfect weather.

When I arrived back at the Glammy's apartment, she, her sister and her Mum (complete with hair in rollers and cigarette dangling from bottom lip) were all still awake waiting to hear how it had gone.

The following day, the dwarves spent an hour after breakfast dancing with the Glammy and her sister in her room to: 'Call me Maybe' before we drove back over the border again, and back to our wonderful house here in Jerusalem, which becomes more and more like an oasis of our own. Even though it's evidently not. But that doesn't matter. At least for the mean time.

Re-tuning and re-routining

'Are we goin back to Jooslem, Mummmeeee? For more 'ventureth?' squawked Rashimi as we sat waiting for our flight to Tel Aviv to board. The tanoi piped, rather ironically, 'Losing my religion' by R.E.M. and I wondered about the term priority boarding, when the flight was 70 percent full of families with at least 3 children. Many of these were orthodox Haredim, and the Lozenge pointed a digit at two men dressed identically in black hats and coats with side-locks: 'Look Mummy, those men are twins.'

For me, holidays are often about new beginnings, as far from our lives, I plan how I could be doing things better when I return. Never too late to exercise more, come up with new ideas, change my working techniques, and so on. It's the positive side to leaving the people we love and the places that really are home to J and I. One of the worst bits about being away is that all the other expat mothers seem to communicate by Facebook, even though they're in the same city, to the extent that many have not even managed to meet - yet spend all day messaging each other and still call each other friends. As J succinctly put it: 'Life was already much too short before Facebook.'  How I will manage to actually meet these women, who sound interesting and nice, without having to have a hundred conversations on Facebook first? It's a problem.

For the dwarves, things are perhaps simpler. And so they should be. While I looked around our house and the layers of dust which had accumulated over the 2 weeks we'd been away, and the sad, dead plants, the dwarves ripped into the toy box and we ended up having a happy first day re-tuning and re-routining, tidying, resuscitating the plants, swatting flies and throwing rotten calamantina oranges at the feral cats that creep around our garden. The Lozenge had begun the day in usual style by padding into the kitchen to do some cooking, and created a giant Scooby snack sandwich of about 20 layers of frozen bread containing morsels of dried fruit, and a courgette kebab, which he laid carefully in the centre of the table. I put on my gym kit in tune to one of my holiday resolutions and Rashimi looked me up and down. 'Whassaaaat Mummy?' A true sign it's time...

We had a couple of little boys around to play, and the Lozenge laid up the table for a party complete with Dora the Explorer napkins and straws. Perhaps this is a sign we should socialise more often - but how to do this without 80 Facebook conversations first?

On the way back from the supermarket we drove past a little demonstration which is often there at the corner of our neighbourhood on a Friday consisting of a small group of people holding Palestinian flags and signs saying things like: 'Stop the Occupation' and 'Stop the Ethnic Cleansing.' The Lozenge is getting into his flags, particularly after a visit to the UK where UKIP and SNP are ensuring we have to sign up to being blue or red and we are seemingly no longer allowed to be complex and interesting human beings of technicolour and multi shade.

The Lozenge also knows the blue and white one in these parts is the Israeli flag - as you can't really miss it, particularly just after Pesach.  This time he asked, 'What are those people doing and what is that flag as it's not the Israeli one?' Here we go, I thought - feeling relieved we had only 2 minutes left in the car. I explained the signs and the flag. 'What is occupation?' I told him there were Palestinian people who lived here who have been pushed out and that this is still happening.

'Will those people come and push us out of our house too?'

Blue skies and happy days

I'm trying to update with some news, but typing on my new 27 inch iMac is like having moved to a Hummer from a Fiat and I'm afraid I might drive into something.

Gone are the days and nights scrunched like Gollum over my little laptop.

Here are some Easter holiday pictures instead. Blue skies and wide open spaces, a new niece, a sister, a lot of chocolate, a lot more wine, even more laughter, and a new computer...