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.
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.
"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".
ReplyDeleteGive us a break already. When will you get into your head that Israeli is a LEGITIMATE state. Go now to the 30 something countries who voted in 1947 for the partition plan of Palestine if you have a problem.
All this constant whining about how CRUEL we are to plant trees over destroyed Palestinian lives.
We are PROUD of the reforestationof our country that is going on for decades not to hide destroyed Palestinian villages but because we want to make this country beautiful. If you want to hide destroyed Arab villages it would be much cheaper just to blow them up, you don't need to bother planting trees.
We are proud because we made that barren dump into a beautiful country. And don't you just hate it?
Who don't you and your husband move to Ramallah? No really, why don't you take you work and go live among your beloved "Palestinians". You seem so irritated with everything Israeli that I think this must be quite a masochistic stay for you.