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.