Daily bread

My Grandma used to tell us stories about cycling around London during the Blitz. For those of us who live far from war zones, it's hard to understand that life still goes on.

Yesterday I took a wander with the dwarves around our district. The streets were filled with Muslim ladies doing their Eid shopping. 'Al batikha ow al bayda, Fatima?' (The watermelon or the white one, Fatima?) shrieked a lady to her friend, brandishing two patent handbags - made in China like everything else in these kind of markets around the world.

We visited our friend Johnny in Holy Land Insurance, who cuddled the dwarves warmly and showered them with sweeties from the bowl on his desk, his brown eyes crinkling into laughter as he watched the dwarves' sticky hands dive into the bowl for a fifth time. Although he is Christian, he too is putting any chance of peace into the hands of God: 'He is the only one who can stop this now,' he said.

From Johnny, we meandered slowly down the hot street, my arms stretched as I encouraged the dwarf duo to the shady side. At the bread shop, round the back with all the metal machines from the 1960s, there were four men fashioning pearl coloured dough into twists, and covering them with sesame seeds. These are special ramadan loaves which Muslims eat at Iftar when they break their fast.

'Why are there thethame theedth?' asked Rashimi.

The baker gave the dwarves one warm loaf each in a plastic bag, and didn't charge me for them.

At the pastry shop a couple of doors down, the patissier beckoned us in and handed the dwarves a chocoloate croissant each. 'Mashallah' ('God willed it' - the common greeting that is given in relation to children), he said, and apologised he didn't have any water to offer us as it was ramadan.

We tottered home with our wares. No need for lunch after all that.

At my computer later, I watched a short video from Gaza. The Lozenge was watching over my shoulder as we saw one IDF shell hit the city. 'What is that?' he said. I explained in simple terms.

'It is exthiting, Mummy. Then we can build it all up again.'

I wondered where our Middle East 'Peace Envoy' is amongst all of this. Why isn't he at the centre of things? If not in the thick of it in a flack jacket like all those courageous reporters, at least getting people to sit around a table and talk? But then, waging peace is hardly his forte.

Rashimi went to bed and the Lozenge retreated with the ipad. I boarded the tram to the market. The tram cuts through the centre of Jerusalem, and many Arab friends have told me they are afraid to travel on it at the moment because of the number of attacks on Arabs after the kidnapping of 3 Israeli boys, which was the touch paper to the tragedy we're witnessing now. There were fewer passengers than normal but I sat next to two young Arab girls in skinny jeans and shades, admiring each other's newly varnished nails - extended talons with painted white tips.

The market felt the same as ever, with elderly men and women milling about with shoppers on wheels; shopkeepers announcing their wares and trading a joke; army cadets enjoying a falafel sandwich.

As I walked and took photographs, it certainly didn't feel like a country at war. Though one shopkeeper, encouraging me to try a vine leaf parcel, was in a wheel chair after fighting in a previous IDF mission. He didn't look bitter about it:

Back home, a friend of ours dropped by. His name is Jacob.

'Er....Jesus,' the Lozenge said to him, 'are you staying for lunch?'

'I think you just got a promotion,' I said to Jacob.

Then in the late afternoon, the dwarves and I got ready to go swimming in a nearby pool.

'Are you going to put on your booby suit, Mummy?' asked Rashimi.