Moments

Today the Israeli army shot dead two Palestinian men in Hebron. They were suspects of the kidnap and murder of the 3 Israeli teenagers in June. The firefight ended a 3 month man hunt. My phone pipped with a security message advising people to avoid the area as the funerals of the men are held. Clashes between Palestinians and IDF have become de rigeur according to these text messages which we receive many times a day. One problem is 'solved' but it will only give birth to new ones for as long as the Palestinians are persecuted.

We were in the north of the West Bank this weekend, visiting the family J lived with in Nablus last year, and who's family wedding we attended a couple of weeks ago. The day before, J and I took an afternoon in the Old City to find presents for them all - a family of 2 parents and 8 children, plus auntie Nadia who lives with them. As well as jewellery and Taybeh - Palestine's only beer and mugs, we found a simple David Roberts print of the city of Nablus. The Scottish Victorian painter produced many works of the Arab world, and this tiny lithograph shows the city as it might have looked then - a serene scene with a collection of small stone structures with domed roofs, tucked into a cluster of hills.

You wouldn't recognise it now. We drove in past piles of scrap cars, garages, construction outfitters and furniture shops: 'Al Mustaqbal' (The Future) was the name of one of these. Perched on a hill as you enter the scruffy, dusty city there stands: 'Beit Falasteen' an incongruous and vast pseudo-Palladian structure built by Munib al Masri, also known as the 'Duke of Nablus' or the 'Palestinian Rothschild', one of the wealthiest Palestinians alive.

The family we visited live in Rafidia which used to be a Christian village near the city, but has now been consumed by the urban sprawl and become part of Nablus itself. Their house is typically Arab in style, with a flat roof, lovely tiled floor, and a small yard with olive trees and jasmine. It is flanked by modern apartment blocks and shops. You could be in any Arab city. Though Nablus still feels more of a village than somewhere like Ramallah.

Mona and Suleiman. Parents of the 8, who say that J is their ninth. They are very fond of him and he of them.

After we had eaten an enormous Arab lunch with the family, and the dwarves has ragged for an hour or so with the brothers who are in their 20s and all of them around 6'5",

Lozenge being thrown about by 'Big Bad Bader'

Rashimi, Bader and Bina

we visited their friend, another successful Palestinian, though not quite on the scale of the Duke of Nablus.

He's unmarried with shiny new-blue teeth and a suave demeanour and has spent an enormous amount of money on a mausoleum in honour of his mother, who he said: 'Is the most important woman in the world to me, and I built this in honour of her.'

In an increasingly Muslim orientated environment, tributes such as these to a Christian mother and the Virgin Mary are a rarity.

Both his parents are buried there, and he has created space for himself, which Rashimi enjoyed clambering over, and endless cupboards and other nooks and crannies for extended family.

The shrinking Christian population in Nablus is staking a claim through a construction like this. The dwarves were enthralled, and treated it like a play ground, particularly the astroturf out the front.

No one seemed to mind, and after a huge plate of the Palestinian melted cheese and honey, knaffeh, J's idea of hell on a plate,

we spent the night in a family room in Sebastia. Thanks to the minaret right next door to our window, the dwarves were up bright and early. So the Lozenge and I took the opportunity of the pretty morning light to go for a pre breakfast stroll and photograph the wonderful array of tractors and sniff the jasmine.

Back in Jerusalem after an exhausting but rural and real weekend, J and I went to watch Richard Linklater's latest film: 'Boyhood' at the Cinematheque.

We laughed and we cried and were thankful we had a chance to watch a film like this while our children are still children. When Patricia Arquette's character breaks down in tears near the end of the film as her boy leaves home and sobs 'I just thought there would be more,' it makes you realise that for all the responsibility and routine of bringing up children and trying to keep it together, life is just a collection of tiny moments.

Underestimate these moments, and you miss it all.

Getting to know the neighbours

These days it's really hard to go back in time. The effects of globalisation and mass communications are such that you're never far from recogniseable fashion or a satellite dish.

But the one place you can feel like the clock has been wound back a hundred years or so, is Mea She'arim, the Jewish ultra orthodox neighbourhood, just a stone's throw away from our Arab one. Walking there, you could be in an Eastern European Jewish quarter in 1900. The district, built in 1874 to house people escaping the squalid conditions of the Old City, is now populated mostly by 'Hasidic' families who are characterised by their rejection of modern secular culture, and their antiquated dress codes. No internet is allowed and no contact with outsiders. It's a big thing for someone from these communities to start out alone - sometimes even leading to suicide.

Men, women and children are hatted. Black fedora style, yarmulke or kippa, headscarves, snoods, and wigs. Everyone has their head covered, and if you half close your eyes, the predominant shades are black, white and grey. Side-locks and the white chords, slung around mens' waists (in observance of some of the over 600 Jewish holy laws), dance as they walk. Shoulders are stooped, eye contact is avoided and you see no one touching. At a glance, it can seem like a gloomy place  - buildings are sand coloured and shabby and posters in Yiddish (the ultra orthodox use Yiddish for speaking rather than Hebrew which is reserved for praying and worship) curl and peel off bill boards. You can tell it's a poor area, but there's still a sense of order. Scooters, bikes and other childrens' toys hailing back decades, are stacked at balconies. There are children everywhere. These guys don't hold back in the breeding department.

As we wander through the narrow streets and alleys in the dusk, our guide points out Yiddish posters calling for modest dressing and explains the meaning behind the ram's horns in the windows. These are 'shofar' used at the Rosh Hashanah festival - or Jewish New Year, and hooted to symbolise a wake up call, inviting believers to take stock and become better people.

Our guide is a tall blonde Dutch lady, married to an Israeli. She knows and loves the area well, as she does her adopted counry, and explains first and foremost that this is a population of people mistrusted and misunderstood - part of the reason why she does these tours. 'They look peculiar, so people mistrust them,' she explains, in the same breath distinguishing some of the 30 large Hasidic groups and their 100 odd subsections, noticeable sometimes by the mere angle of a hat, or a different coloured stripe on a gown. 'People think these people are settlers or responsible for violence, but they aren't. In the main they're just waiting for the coming of the Messiah and trying to be good people based on the laws they've been raised to adhere to.'

She tells us that some of the dress codes are there due to instructions in the Torah or Talmud, but others are there simply to avoid assimilation with non-Jews and to keep the race alive. For all the persecution that has happened over the centuries, this strict code is surely something that has saved them. But the tragedy being that this also made them easily distinguishable during times in history such as the holocaust, and therefore their Achilles heel.

She explains that people don't generally catch your eye, smile or stop to chat for the same reasons - to avoid an opening with outsiders and risk the beginning of a mixing process. But one man with a long grey beard did stop and ask us where we were from. 'Oh. Britain! Good.' And he shuffled off.

We stop for a cup of tea and a slice of cheese cake in a little cafe. The elderly woman in a black skirt and hairnet smiles warmly as she serves us. Everything is kosher in this district, and we spot a little falafel sign with side-locks, explaining exactly that. A useful bit of humour when you can't read Yiddish.

It's a fascinating insight into a subsection of a culture that can seem very opaque to an outsider. Indeed, our Arabic teacher who lives nearby has never even heard of this district, which is like not knowing Kentish Town when you live in Camden.

Over our tea we quiz our guide about the politics. Since she's married to an Israeli and has lived here over 20 years, though is non-Jewish, we know she'll have something interesting to say.

'My father in law was one of the founding members of the State of Israel, having left Hungary,' she says: 'He was part of the Zionist Communist movement here when they were building the state. And he admitted to me that they didn't have an eye for the other people here when they were busy re-building their promised land. He told me: 'Though the Jewish people desperately needed somewhere to go after the holocaust, were we, this damaged people badly in need of therapy, really the ones who should have been building a country back then?''

The light fades and we wander home back towards our Eastern quarter with a few more questions answered, and some new ones appearing in their wake, but with a lot less suspicion and little more understanding of our black hatted neighbours in this cultural fireworks display of a city. 

A trip around Mea Sherim

The ultra orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Sherim is very close to our district in Jerusalem, though we live in an Arab area. A big road now divides these two areas - which until 1967 was also the border between Israel and what was then Jordan. Only diplomats could cross over.

Now we are all free to roam - though in Mea Sherim you need to make sure you're appropriately dressed.

Kosher Falafel

Under siege

Another week has gone by and the Lozenge has just emerged from behind the white sliding door of the school bus bringing the Friday feeling with him. As I type, both dwarves are lying on the floor of my den fiddling. L has been unscrewing the second hinge to my desk door, and Rashimi is applying Laura Mercier lipstick to his lips and chin.

There are days when J and I feel crossed eyed with the incessant chatting and driving and cooking and planning and texting and delivering and bringing and dressing and washing and grooming and remembering and forgetting and pacifying and uplifting and sometimes even....thinking. And of course laughing and running and jumping. And doing our own work on the side. We fall into a heap at 7.30pm and wonder if the little island we chose to live on together is under siege. We have a dwarf free jaunt planned at the end of the month where the private island will be free from storms and pirate invasions for a full 3 days.

The Lozenge's out of school task for the week has been to make a family tree. He nipped out to the garden and came back with a branch almost as big as a tree so it only just got through the door. We took some Polaroid pictures of ourselves to hang on the tree.

Then the Lozenge and Rashimi started a third world war, verging on nuclear, with the tree. So now we're back to where we started. Rashimi wants a pirate outfit for his birthday. I'm not sure he needs the costume.

The Lozenge is loving the music classes with the beautiful French Rachel who speaks like Madame Gazelle and wears tiny, short dresses with lots of brown skin on display. But there are two weak links: the fact that our clavinova is electric, and the little brother in the house. Rashimi, almost always naked, likes to sprint into the Lozenge and my little music practise sessions, thump on the keys or switch the demo tune on, and streak off. And when I'm trying to have a little musical moment to myself - both dwarves swoop in cackling, and simply switch me off, or when things get really desperate, unplug me.

On the way back from the music class this week we collected St Grace and Rashimi who had been scurrying in the park. There were crowds of people, police cars and ambulances. My initial thought was there had been an emergency, but on closer inspection, people looked happy enough. Grace and Rashimi waved from one corner and hopped in the car. 'What's going on there Grace?' I asked. 'I don't know really,' she said. 'An Arabic man told me: 'Walad ma'a walad. Bint ma'a bint. Hadol mujennin.' (Boy with boy. Girl with girl. They're all crazy).' Then I saw a rainbow flag. The penny dropped. I think it may have been Rashimi and St Grace's very first gay day parade. They looked like they'd very much enjoyed themselves despite being the odd ones out.

There's an emphasis on Christian teachings at L's school. This week he explained: 'God made the world. First the light, and then the heeeeeooooouuuge sky, and then the world. And there was LOTTH of water. But Mummy, he didn't put much water here. When will there be another puddle?'

I'm reading George Orwell's short stories when I get a demi-hemi second in our room when I'm not already asleep. I can't decide whether it's a brilliant or terrible moment in history to be reading him. With the murder of David Haines by Islamic State; and the referendum fever in Scotland with Alex Salmond trying to sell his perfect looking egg with a beautiful shell, which we all know is rotten inside, or at best, totally empty. There is as much irresponsible politics and totalitarianism in the world as ever, and I wonder if Orwell knew all along he'd be predicting the future by writing about his own present.

Why my Dad rocks

If Yes voters are taking down your signs in the night - put them on wheels.

Go Gordon (Brown)!

Go (Andrew) Gordon!

WE NEED YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!! KEEP STIRRING IT UP!!!!

Prison visitor

Pinned on the wall in the eye hospital where I'm looking for stories, is a quotation from the American financier and philanthropist, J.P. Morgan: 'Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you'll be able to see further.'

But I realise, watching the three dedicated Palestinian ophthalmologists at work in the paediatric clinic, that the message is futile in a country where each time a Palestinian tries to reach this horizon, they're blocked by a separation wall, stopped at a check point, overshadowed by a settlement or trapped by a carefully designed legal loophole.

Rana is a little older than me. She leaves home each morning at 5am with her teenage sons who she drives from Bir Zeit in the West Bank to Jerusalem for school. The journey takes over two hours each way. 'They ask me why they can't go to the school near our house. But I know that school is bad and if they don't spend enough time in Jerusalem they will lose their I.D. for this city - which they get through me. My husband is a West Banker so I live like this, for them. And education is the only way out of here.'

She works a full day, checking other peoples' children with severe eye problems who come trooping in holding bags of sweets and crisps from 8am. Many of the issues are congenital due to the high incidence of consanguinity here. The cases from Gaza are almost always congenital, as in that tiny tranche of land, the families have interwoven themselves so many times, the bloodlines have merged to become indistinguishable.

Rana's loud laugh, her colourful clothes and her lip gloss cannot conceal the anger and sadness in her eyes. 'This is not a life,' she sighs.

We travel up to one of the hospital's West Bank branches in a town called Tulkaram, a big town near Nablus in the north of the West Bank, which was once an important caravan station and trading point for neighbouring villages. The town is now administered by the Palestinian Authority (areas known as 'Zone A'.) Our driver, Akef, is from Jerusalem's Old City but knows the West Bank well. I sit in the front as he points out red roofed settlement after red roofed settlement on the crests of hills flanking the road. 'They start with a few caravans, or a police camp. Then you see the toilets and water systems being installed and in a period of just a few years, the caravans become houses and the houses become a fully fledged settlement.'

The little white and red blocks from a distance look like icing on a cake. Over the years the icing trickles slowly down each slope until the hill is engulfed with (what under international law is illegal) housing. The Middle East Monitor reported recently that there was an acceleration in settlement building in this area over the summer, while attentions were turned to the war in Gaza.

In the valley below one large settlement, an Arab town nestles - a splurge of different coloured buildings with irregular design, in technicolor contrast to the prototype chalets above. A mouth full of squint teeth grimacing next to a perfect white smile. The Arab housing is all bunched together and punctuated by the vertical towers of green minarets and the metal spikes emerging from unfinished projects.

A shiny, black road snakes up towards a crest of hill. 'Every time you see a road, you know in a year or so there will be a settlement there. But we Arabs are not allowed to build, unless it is in zone A,' Akef explains.

He owns his house in Jerusalem's Old City in which he was born, and in which he also raised his own 5 children. He still shares the house with a couple of these children and now some grandchildren. 'It's hard to hang in there,' he explains. 'The Old City is also being taken over because Palestinians are forced to sell up, or don't have the original deeds to the house so they can be evicted, even if the family has lived there for centuries.'

It strikes me that while the Jewish race has been let down time and time again by the world, they have never let themselves down, and the creation of the State of Israel is emblematic of this. They look after each other. Whereas the Palestinian population has been let down not only by others, but also by itself. They have not looked after themselves or each other. And here the two vast societal oceans are crashing at a point here in this state, with the self sufficient sea so much the stronger.

Perhaps it will only be a few more decades before one ocean engulfs the other?

Spending time with these Palestinian women is not always comfortable. I make an effort, I try not to get in the way. I'm interested in them, their lives and their work. They're friendly in return, and they respond to my questions and my presence. But I could very easily understand if they resented my presence. Though they show no signs of this - I'd understand if they did. Here I am living a happy, temporary existence in their country, with interesting work and a good school for my children. A passport which takes me anywhere I want to go. I have a pomegranate tree in my garden and it's bearing fruit. When I'm tired I can rest, and when we finish here I move on. I'm free.

As the women whisper in Arabic to each other in the back seat, I feel like the prison visitor, as J put it the other day. I get the feeling they half want me here because they like the attention and the variety I provide in a routine of drudgery. But how bitter must that reminder be, of my ultimate freedom as I visit them in their cage?

They live in a room which is so terribly dark, that looking at the sunlight is too painful.

'Go as far as you can see. When you get there you will find a wall.'

Harvest festival - we're on our way

This year's vegetable crop. Pencil for scale.

I'm going to hang onto the day job just for the moment.

As the Lozenge philosophically pointed out: 'A bit like the baby in Mummy'th tummy. Some thingth just don't grow.'

Magic with Rachel

Such is the Lozenge's enthusiasm for his new school, he's been waking at 4.30am for the past 5 days; creeping into our room and whispering loudly in my ear: 'Mummmeeeee, ith it time to get up and pleathe can I thtart making my thamwich for my packed lunch.' I let him get on with it, and after a couple of hours of stop-start dozing either J and I make it to the kitchen to see the trailblaze of packed lunch detritus: the butter all chopped and mashed up in the dish and the sandwich with some determined fingerprints on the top.

Although we're encouraging this autonomy and you can't beat the enthusiasm - even at 4.30 in the morning, J and I wonder if we've regressed since the dwarves were babies. We're getting less sleep and the days seem fuller and more challenging somehow - we laughed to ourselves, hunched over cups of extra strong black coffee, J in glasses with a bit of a hairdo and t-shirt with a dinosaur on it saying: 'To the Disco'. How did we end up in the kitchen altogether at 5am? Then there's a discussion about what the Lozenge wants to wear. One morning he wanted to wear the blue shoes, I was hoping he could break in the new brown ones so they didn't sit in a cupboard unused. It was a 20 minute to-and-fro of opinions until he said: 'How about, Mummy, if I could wear one brown and one blue one and then we can both be happy?' Then at 7.15 either J or I do the little run to school, by which stage the sun is up and Jerusalem has spluttered and chimed into life and everything seems very much more alright.

During the day I've been hanging out at the St John's Eye Hospital which serves Palestinian communities with vital opthalmic care, unavailable to them elsewhere.

They've asked me to make a short film which will show off their work and I'm looking for a story of a patient before they undergo treatment so I can follow the process. Yesterday I spent a few hours there sitting in the paediatric clinic and meeting glaucoma doctors. There were three Palestinian nurses working there, all Muslim but dressed in western clothes and heads uncovered. They were talking about the recent cases they've seen from Gaza and one of them recounted the tragic tale of a woman who had lost both her parents, all her brothers and sisters, and four of her children including a new born baby only 40 days old. Her husband and one other child were fighting for their lives. 'But the saddest thing of all,' said one of the nurses, 'is the woman had a blow to her head, and now you know, she can't even remember the faces or names or anything about her family members who died, and she doesn't even recognise her husband. The only thing we have left is our memories - and this lady, she doesn't even have those.' 

The Gazans are struggling with picking up the pieces of their lives while the world media machine has lumbered elsewhere.

 A young girl walked in with her mother while we were chatting.  The mother was tall and dressed in a double hijab - a headscarf with a black face covering on top. Her daughter's eye problem was carefully inspected and on her way out the mother said in Arabic to one of the nurses: 'You will all go to hell because you don't have your heads covered.' Quick as a flash one of the nurses answered: 'Well, you will go to hell. But actually I already have my place in heaven. Thank you and goodbye.' And with that she shut the door and the nurses all roared with laughter.

The Lozenge reappears back home every day just after 3pm, ready for more action, and then it's a case of balancing Tiger Mother with Idle Parent. Do you succumb to the school run chatter and sign up your children to multiple after-school activities on offer: Tae Kwando, Tennis, Yoga...? Or err, as I always find myself lazily erring towards, the mooching about dwarf style and letting them choose what they want to do at home in the first house we've ever had with a garden.

I'm excited to say that the dwarves have started to enjoy dressing up which appeals to the exhibitionist in me.

Hamish the hornet

But J and I decided that an hour of some kind of sport like tennis or football and a little introduction to music would be enough for the Lozenge at this early stage in his life.

So I found Rachel, or she found me. She's a beautiful French secular Jewish painter and musician. The Lozenge was up for meeting her so we drove round to her house - a modern apartment, mostly white, with a black grand piano and a mannequin draped in a theatrical grey gown standing beside it.

'So Laurie,' she said in her soft French accent. 'Do you want to 'ear some magic?'

And so began the 40 minute session as she opened the lid of the piano and let him fiddle with the strings. Then she let him bounce a basket ball to understand how sound reverberates in a space. And then she sat down and asked the Lozenge which animal he could think of when she played a thumping tune on the low notes and then a little twinkling one on the high notes. And then they found 'Do' in the middle of the piano and he sang after her as she sang: do, re, mi, fa, soooooo. And then he drew a house and she drew some stairs in it with balls on the steps that looked like music notes on a score. Quite a few shekels well spent, I'd say. L was enraptured, as was I, and he asked Rachel: 'When can I come back?'

Rashimi and Grace had been frolicking in a park during that time. We collected them on the way back and the Lozenge explained to Rashimi that Rachel: 'Thpoke like Madame Gazelle in Peppa Pig'. So ze 'ole way back we were speakin' wiz a French accent and Rashimi said: 'Mummy is that FWENCH! Aaaah, it's nithe that FWENCH.'  And I realised that the boys are actually more French than I am - 1/4 (them) versus zero (me).

J and I have had three parties this week and have suddenly met huge numbers of great people from all over the world, of all ages and creeds and shapes and sizes. We're growing to love this extraordinary place which has so much to offer. It's an exercise in keeping your mind open at every moment, then everything and everyone, is waiting for you.

Last night the dress code was black tie or any form of national dress. As I got ready, Rashimi watched as I climbed into a long Palestinian 'thobe' dress I found in Jordan. 'Mummy, are you going to a party?Can I come?Are you exthited?Will it be DARK?'

And dark it was. A candlelit banquet for about 40 of us under the full moon in a courtyard. I sat next to a Belgian man in a kilt on one side; a Brit in a Moroccan djellaba just opposite, and made sure I drank one glass of water to every glass of wine so I didn't have booze breath, only a few hours after the party ended, hiccup, on the school run. 

A Palestinian wedding

Saturday afternoon. And Kersplosh! Only a few miles, but a universe away from the clean lines of the Hadassah hospital experience, J and I found ourselves at a big fat Palestinian wedding in Bethlehem.

Last year J spent 6 weeks living with a Palestinian family in Nablus, 50km north of Jerusalem, and this weekend the family invited us to their eldest daughter's wedding. There are 8 children: Basel, Ibrahim, Yacoub, Bader, Samira, Hitania, Ayoub and Beeni: ranging from 26 year old Basel, to 11 year old Beeni in her pale pink bridesmaid's dress and white ballet pumps.

They're a Christian family, and J and I arrived at St Nicholas Orthodox church in Beit Jala - a small village beside Bethlehem - having visited a few other churches, and the Intercontinental hotel for a quick glass of Taybeh (Palestine's only beer), on our way.

They greeted J like a relative, and were so friendly to me as they said to him Arabic: 'So this is Madame! Finally!'

The Orthodox church was decked with diaphanous white fabric and white roses - the small gathering of family equally as decked - with an onus on sequins, heavy makeup and some serious hair dos. It was hard to tell if the Orthodox choir were singing in Arabic or Latin or a mix. I occasionally caught something recognisable like Kyrie Eleison.

Then we scooped up auntie Nadia who lives with the family, of whom J became very fond during his time in their house, and drove to the reception in Bethlehem. I think the same diaphanous fabric and flowers had come from the church to the party, which seemed a very practical way to get the most out of the decorations. The long white tables in the hall were laid up for hundreds of people, and over the course of the evening, they all came trickling in to eat and to dance and to congratulate Samira and her new husband.

Suleiman, the father of the family chatted to us for much of the evening. 'Jeemie is a greeeeat man from Greeeat Breeetain!' he said to me. 'We want you to come and stay in our house with your children, please.'

The Christians are in a difficult situation in Palestine - with only 2 per cent in the occupied territories, and 8 per cent within Israel - Suleiman's daily fear, he told us, rather than the occupation, which they've grown used to over time, is the rise of extremism and the terror created by Islamic State and other groups. He explained there are only around 1,000 Christians living in Nablus now, and it's very difficult for them to get jobs and live how they would like.

As we watched the room fill up, J and I agreed that the wonderful thing about weddings and other rites of passage is you can never change how people choose to do things. Christian Arabs will still have their mega Christian Arab weddings, even under an occupation. The same goes for everybody. These are the threads that enable threatened cultures to stay alive.

And watching the very old to the very young, waving their arms and swaying their hips to the pulsating Arab tunes, you wouldn't believe there were chinks in this festive armour. It was wonderful to be there - and everyone made us feel like we were part of the family.

The weekend continued with a carefree vibe: Go carting, beaches, picnics, ice creams, friends and a couple of films. ('Tracks' about Roybn Davidson's 9 month journey across Australia on camels; and 'Which way is the Frontline from here' about the life and work of Tim Hetherington the photo journalist killed in Libya in 2011. Both wonderful films.)

The only sight which tinged my thoughts with sadness was the faded St Andrew flag, flapping alone above St Andrew's Scots Memorial Church near the Old City walls of Jerusalem.

With the independence debate raging back home, I realised as I looked at the flag, that I didn't feel as proud of it as once I used to. I've become accustomed to living in places over the last decade, where there are people fighting for land and identity and willing to hurt each other over differing ideals, in the knowledge that back home things are at least steady and united.

But this week of all weeks, it's harder to feel confident about that.

As Will Hutton wrote in this weekend's Observer:

'There are times in a country's affairs when it has to think big. The next 10 days are such a time. Without imaginative and creative statecraft, the polls now suggest Scotland could secede from a 300-year union, sundering genuine bonds of love, splitting families and wrenching all the interconnectedness forged from our shared history.

Absurdly, there will be two countries on the same small island that have so much in common. If Britain can't find a way of sticking together, it is the death of the liberal enlightenment before the atavistic forces of nationalism and ethnicity – a dark omen for the 21st century. Britain will cease as an idea. We will all be diminished.'

The flag looked more faded and flimsier than ever. It saddened me to admit it.

Donkey riding

Once I'd leapt through all the bureaucratic hoops to get a slot, and sat shivering on my own for three hours staring at the sesame seeds in my Stars of David gown, I was admitted to a little room of my own to wait for my slot in the operating theatre to come up.

Having lost my nerve with all the (m)administration, I googled the name of the doctor in charge of my operation, to see what her track record was. At least, I thought to myself, if I were to find some hiccup in her surgical history at that point - it wasn't too late to pull the rip chord and make a run for it in my Stars of David gown to come up with another plan.

The first entry I found revealed only a personal tragedy. In 2002, during the 2nd Intifada, my Jewish doctor's 18-year-old son was killed in a terror attack at his military training academy.

At the time she said to a newspaper:

"It is an untenable situation that I, a doctor at Hadassah hospital, am walking around with my head in the ground while Arab cleaning employees walk around with their heads held high. That is not why I moved to Israel with my family from [Europe]. I have no problem with Arabs living here, but this is the state of the Jews, and we must do whatever it takes to send this message out and fill it with meaning."

As an outsider, this treacherous ocean of tragedies throws you from one side of the ship to another, with never a moment's warning.

I wondered if her thoughts had changed, over the 12 years since her son's death. Then my telephone rang, and it was her friendly, business-like voice telling me she would meet me in the operating theatre in about an hour's time, and was everything okay and how was I feeling and was my husband with me? She recommended J be around for when I came around from the anaesthetic, so I called him to ask him to come back, and within half an hour I was being helped onto one of those trolleys and wheeled what felt like 20 miles to the operating theatres.

It's hard to know what to do on the trolley as you glide past other patients and hospital staff. I wondered if I should smile at people or look like I was ill - even though I wasn't. Though there's nothing like being wheeled around in a hospital to make you feel like you are ill. Instead I concentrated on the ceiling lighting systems and lower parts of the wall than I'd normally have eye contact with - and almost wished I had my camera with me. There would have been some crazy angles available.

I'm not sure if it was the super-strength anti-biotic I'd been given, or just the strangeness of the situation, but I had one of the Lozenge's school songs running over and over in my head: 'Hey ho, away we go, donkey riding, donkey riding' as the Eritrean nurse struggled to keep the trolley straight. It was one of those with dicey wheels like a dodgy supermarket trolley, and it kept veering towards the wall.

A couple of days in the hospital on my own had felt a bit like donkey riding, I thought, when really I wished I was on a prancing Arab steed, getting on with my life and starting work. For the whole summer I'd been mulling over a job offer to make 9 short films about the state of education with 9 children across 9 Arab countries: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen and Djibouti with a deadline of November/December. And I couldn't decide what to do. The region is on fire and education is one of the main routes out of the flames for people here. It was something I truly wanted to do, and fully believed in.

But the costs to us as a family; the travel and being away a lot; the personal risks in what was likely to be a shambolic organisational backdrop in each place; the rigmarole of visas to 9 places with no support and getting myself and my camera kit into each place without being held up by airport officials asking what my purpose was; and many, many other questions were stacking up in my conscience. Plus I already have quite a bit of work on here in Jerusalem and the situation in Gaza is not going away.

J listened to my reasoning for 3 months. As usual, mostly listening, and asking a carefully phrased question from time to time. But he let me get on with my own thinking.

And after a couple of days on my own in the hospital with no dwarf decibels, just Gertrude Bell for company, I had time to think. I remembered one of J's and my conversations about our roles as humans changing since we'd been living with dwarves. J explained he'd never felt more of an obligation to provide. And I reflected that there was no one in the world that could be the dwarves' Mother better me (even on a really bad day...). And the mere thought of someone else trying it on my behalf - even my most trusted friend or sister or mother - was not an option. Unless, of course I were no longer around to do it myself. Herewith the nub of the issue. This is not the time in history to get caught out in Yemen or Iraq.

So during my couple of lonely hospital days I'd come to the conclusion that this job could be someone else's this year. And I decided to stick to the job that no one else can do for me.

It's strange how, the baby-that-was-not-to-be, ended up creating for me, the space required in my body and mind to let the truth bubble to the surface. And those couple of days of donkey riding had enabled me to slow down enough to notice that truth as we hobbled along.

I called J to tell him, and he admitted it was the first time in our 10 years together that he'd had serious concerns about one of my jobs. Though J being J, had never stood in my way, and let me come to the decision myself. Agonising as it was.

So the guy pushing my trolley was Eritrean, the nurse that took my blood pressure was Polish, the assistant that plugged in the IV was Russian, the anaesthetist was American, and the doctor herself French. But they were all speaking Hebrew to each other.

They all asked if I was okay, and the French doctor stroked my arm and said everything was going to be fine. I thought as I looked at her sympathetic face, that I must be only a few years older than her son would have been had he lived.

The aneasthetist put the mask over my face - they all waved and smiled and said 'Good night' in English.

And that was the last thing I remembered until I opened my eyes to see an old man beside me with a long grey beard, his Jewish 'kippa' still on his head with a matching Stars of David gown to me, being watched over by his orthodox wife in her brown bobbed wig, holding his hand as he too came around from his operation. There were quite a few of us lined up in the room on our trolleys and I was probably the youngest by a few decades. I felt grateful to be awake and for it all to be over.

Poor J, at this stage, was lost in the hospital corridors having as many problems with the Hebrew-speaking hospital staff. An American-sounding nurse came to our rescue and tried to call him a few times. 'Oh dear' she said, 'He's really lost and he sounds kinda annoyed. He probably feels bad he's not with you. Don't worry - he'll find you soon I'm sure.'

After about 15 minutes J appeared bearing newspapers and bag of fruit. I was so happy to see him. Everything was suddenly all right just having him there.

We spent the rest of the afternoon together in the recovery room reading newspapers and mulling over life - which though the circumstances were strange and not exactly positive - felt like a tiny island away from all things dwarf, and our not uncomplicated working scenarios

And a little space for a rest, courtesy of our non baby.

Gertrude - a surprisingly well-timed companion

As a wonderful friend wrote to me recently: 'Emotional parts of life always have the most bureaucracy, don't they?'

As I sat for my fourth hour in Hadassah hospital, waiting for approvals, bits of paper, stamps and guarantees from the admissions section in order to have the operation the following day, being passed around charmless clerks who all asked indignantly: 'You speak no Hebrew?' - I mused her words.

But after what felt like a purgatory of waiting I was finally admitted to the ultra modern monolithic building which stands proud on the brow of a hill, overlooking a quasi-Alpine view of tree covered hillocks. A bit desiccated at this time of year, but the expanses of forest give the appearance of green from a distance.

As J drove me there at 6am the following morning, he said: 'There's something spooky about all these trees though. So many of them were planted to mask destroyed Palestinian villages that used to lie in these hills.' And we pondered the disappearance of these dwellings - the ghosts of lives once lived, before most of what was then Palestine was consumed by what is now the State of Israel. As one Palestinian girl explained to me: 'One of the greatest robberies of our time.'

I watched J's retreating backview as he left me at the hospital to go and take the Lozenge to school. I wanted to say: 'Please don't leave.' I suddenly felt rather alone, and a bit ridiculous - dressed in a thin robe covered with blue Stars of David, and knees to match thanks to the over-perky air conditioning.

I sat alone on a chair absorbing the scene: a few fake Monets on the walls, and the blinds still drawn, although the morning light was trying to prickle its way in. There was a scattering of sesame seeds on the table from the remains of someone's hasty bagel breakfast, and I smiled to myself, thinking it looked like the dwarves had been through. Then my thoughts flicked to the dwarves themselves as they would have been getting out of their beds and ready for the day with J and St Grace. (She finally made an appearance, 12 days late after her holiday in Sri Lanka, bearing cricket bats, Sri Lankan cricket shirts and pyjamas for the dwarves, a sari for me, a sarong for J and that omnipresent twinkling smile. She is the youngest of 11 siblings. And my is she hard to be annoyed with.)

After nearly 6 weeks of almost solid dwarf-time, I suddenly felt rather alone without them, and having shared almost every part of this strange gynaecological journey with them, I was missing their sticky little hands unpacking my handbag and the constant banter forcing my mind off everything else - which at this precise moment would have been useful. And I also regretted having packed J off to leave me to it and wished he was by my side.

I stared at the scattered sesame seeds for a while from my chair and then opened a book. J's Dad gave me the letters of Gertrude Bell last Christmas and it's like I've made a posthumous friendship. Born in County Durham, buried in Baghdad, she is an intriguing and inspiring personality and much of her writing strikes a chord.

During her first trip to Persia in 1892 she writes to her cousin, Horace: 'Are we the same people I wonder when all our surroundings, associations, acquaintances are changed?…How big the world is, how big and how wonderful. It comes to me as ridiculously presumptuous that I should dare to carry my little personality half across it and boldly attempt to measure with it things for which it has no table of meaurements than can possibly apply. So under protest, I write to you of Persia: I am not me, that is my only excuse. I am merely pouring out for you some of what I have received during the last two months.'

I echo her apology for every word I've written to date.

In winter 1899-1900 she writes home from Jerusalem where she spent time trying to learn Arabic: 'The first fortnight was perfectly desperate - I thought I should never be able to put two words together. added to the fact that the language is very difficult there are at least three sounds almost impossible to the European throat….It is an awful language'.

A nurse shouted to a colleague in Hebrew. The corridors in the gynaecology department were filling up with Israeli nurses and doctors and pregnant ultra orthodox women shuffling about rubbing their backs and stroking their stomachs and eating their way huge pots of yoghurt they pulled out of a communal fridge in the corridor.

Gertrude wouldn't recognise this place, I thought, looking back out onto the tree covered hills. In her day the Palestinian villages would have been full of Palestinian villagers living their lives. And the language of Modern Hebrew, now spoken by 9 million people - most of them Israeli citizens, was only recognised as one of the State of Palestine's official languages under the British Mandate, in 1922, only a few years before her death. So after all her Arabic training, I can imagine she'd have been as lost with Hebrew as I am.

All she would recognise on this particular little patch I reckoned, were the scatterings of sesame seeds, and perhaps the black veil of the Arab cleaner shuffling about the ward: though perhaps not this un-embroidered acrylic version

Switching to the Herald and Tribune I read about another beheading of American/Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff. She wouldn't recognise 'Islamic State' either - yet ironically with her involvement in the 1920s, drawing borders to create countries such as Iraq, to suit British interests, she was inadvertently paving the shaky and treacherous way for some of the realities we witness today in this region. 

Settling again

Our mornings now begin with a bit of a starter gun since one of us needs to leave the house at 7.15 with the Lozenge. Though now we've found a short cut through an ultra orthodox area between us and the school we've shaved 7 minutes off the journey - each morning minute a little shard of gold to be carefully used. As we drive we are flanked by Haredim in their black hats and coats, white socks, beards and sidelocks; women with starchy brown wigs and strings of multiple children - all rushing off somewhere. J said to me the other day: 'Since they don't work and they don't do military service - I always wonder where they're all rushing off to. I want to stop and ask one of them one day.'

And for the last 10 days, Rashimi and I have had the time to tootle about, the two of us, until the Lozenge reappears in the white high top mini bus outside our gate at 3.15. Rashimi's favourite start to the day is to sit naked at the kitchen table eating porridge,  while trying to pick up his little rubber crocodile with the kitchen tongs. His imaginary friend, Cololo, is normally in tow for most projects, including the olive harvest.

Rashimi makes sure I lay a place for Cololo at midday complete with a plate of Rashimi's preferred luncheon: falafel and hummus.

Sometimes the Lozenge's bus driver, Da'ub accompanies him down the two steps of the minibus and the 2 feet to our gate, his hand on the Lozenge's shaggy head in an avuncular fashion. The moment Rashimi sees him arrive he scuttles barefoot down the pathway yelling: 'Lauwiieeeee!' throwing himself at L, who juggles remains of packed lunch and whatever creations he's clutching from school to reciprocate the hug. 'Hello Washimi.' Then they spend the rest of the afternoon arguing, wrestling, finding worms in the garden or making dens before finally collapsing in front of the TV - still under a rug, though it's 30 degrees most days.

 Sometimes we go to the little park down the road covered in broken glass and try and make some conversation with the Arab Mums who give us a smile and pat the boys heads. On the way back we go to the bread shop where the baker gives the dwarves a pitta each, fresh from the oven, into which they sink their sticky faces and then don't eat their dinner. Last week we made creme caramel (from a packet) and croissants (not from a packet and a time consuming and buttery business) and the house smelt like a French bakery for the next couple of days.

Since St Grace is still away, J and I have watched the entire series of the Honourable Woman, an 8 part drama on BBC 2 about Israel and Palestine. It was brilliant and gripping and we are now in mourning that we've finished it. It was really quite violent in parts, and it made me realise how much we've come to accept this in television, film and on the internet these days - both dramatised but more chillingly, real. Douglas Murray wrote a piece in the Spectator recently about how we should not accept to view or worse still, circulate, the villainous 'Islamic State's' videos showing beheadings and crucifixions. Not only does it normalise this kind of violence, but we are playing into their evil hands by clicking 'view' or 'share'.

While the ceasefire seems to be enduring here in Israel/Gaza, you can't help but feel that this country is similar to body riddled with cancer and this latest bout of fighting like a raging attack of pneumonia. And while the pneumonia has cleared, the body still suffers from the cancer as before.

Gaza is in a state of ruin. Dfid has just pledged £17 million towards reconstruction efforts. You wonder how many times an area of land can be reconsructed.

Meanwhile Israel has just 'confiscated' an area of 1,000 acres of land around Bethlehem, from the Palestinians, in retaliation for the murder of the 3 Israeli students in June.  If like me, you're no good at envisaging acreage - think of an area twice the size of London's Olympic Park, or a patch bigger than the area used by the Glastonbury Festival.

Palestinian owners of the land have been given 45 days to submit formal objections to the announcement in Israeli courts, otherwise all confiscated lands would automatically become Israeli government property.

Is not over 2,000 deaths in Gaza - the large majority civilians and children - enough of a retaliation?

The cycle always leads back to another acerbically justified, but nonetheless illegal land grab.

One of Rashimi's and my adventures this week was to Katamon district in Jerusalem, where a few Palestinians I know once lived pre-1948, including Suha, founder of the Darat al Funun Gallery, and the author Ghada Karmi. This Des Res no longer belongs to Palestine. We wandered around San Simon park - famous for its Greek Orthodox monastery from where in 1948, Arab fighters tried in vain to defend the area.

I was in some ways impressed at this leafy quarter, that felt so safe and family friendly: the kind of place that a race of persecuted people should rightly dream of. And in many ways this dream has been created - but at what cost? For as long as the land grab continues, so will the Israeli people remain slaves to their greatest fear of losing it all, all over again.

Rashimi was less bothered about the meaning behind the leafy Des Res, and had a happy time scuttling in and out of plastic tunnels and flying down the hot slides while little gangs of Jewish children sat about with their Mums singing Hebrew nursery rhymes.

Last night I helped a friend move house with our car. She's moving to a little flat in a beautiful, crumbling district near Mehane Yehuda market, built in the late 1800s to house Jewish families who were moving out of the confines of the Old City walls at that time. We wove carefully with only an inch to spare either side of the car, through tiny alleys. The little square outside her flat was festooned with Israeli flags. Old men and women sat around chatting. We could have been in Greece, Italy or France. On our way back out, everyone helped, people joked and laughed and signalled so we could weave our way safely through the narrow streets.

I mentioned to my friend, who speaks good Hebrew and has lived here a few years, how this friendliness hadn't always been my impression of locals here.

'That's why native Israelis are called 'Sabra'', she explained. Referring to the cactus, or prickly pear, that's spiky on the outside while soft and sweet in the middle.