A Quest for Normalcy

A Quest for Normalcy by Hassan Khader (writer, literary critic and editor of the literary journal,  al-Karmel) was born in Gaza and currently lives in Germany.

Sometime in the 1980s, a Japanese artist interviewed by a Palestinian journalist was quoted as saying: "If you Palestinians don't prevail, then there is something wrong in life". That sentence has been engraved in my memory ever since - but for the wrong reasons. I keep asking myself: what if something really is wrong in life? After all, thinking of the world as a place where rational choices are made, justice is done and dreams are fulfilled is an indication of too much trust in human intelligence. Fortunately, that kind of trust is being constantly contested and deconstructed by art. Such acts give art a highly subversive quality and explain why it doesn't surrender to conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, it can also explain why we humans are always fascinated by and attracted to art: it gives us another way of seeing ourselves and the world.

This is exactly what a Subjective Atlas of Palestine is all about. For a Palestinian, Palestine is a profession, a metaphor, and a reality defying categorization. Looking from outside, the checkpoints, the wall, the Orwellian regime of mobility restrictions and the uncertainty of locating Palestine in a non contested map, seem like a nightmare. From inside, the nightmare isn't less obvious. It's there in all possible details. However, among usually recognized manifestations, it has a comic aspect which can't be seen from a distance; like a surrealist dream come true, where things are not exactly what they seem and negotiating one's identity and place is an endless effort of normalization. Looking from inside, the nightmare is like a disease with which one can live, not only as a fait accompli but as a tactic of survival. Tactics of survival bring out the best as well as the worst of human behaviour.

The Palestinians are locked somewhere in the middle. Not an easy position for people who strive just to be 'normal' like others. Normalcy is not to be taken for granted, it has to be imagined and invented. Mothers sending their children to school in the morning, lovers meeting in a coffee shop, labourers on their way to work, taxi drivers waiting for passengers, teenagers roaming the streets, middle-aged men smoking water pipes and reading newspapers. All these people know that their reality is fragile and their tranquillity artificial. Yet they make the best of both, as if the world were stable and they are in control.

There is a lot of melancholy hanging in the air, a sense of black humour and even boredom. The map is formed and deformed, joyfully or sarcastically; daily life activities are cherished as precious proofs of resilience. Normalcy can be achieved in different ways, by different means. No-one would stop for a moment to ask: "How can I normalize my life?" The question is: "How can I keep time-tested means of normalcy functioning and oiled?" Palestine as a metaphor is much more complicated and multi-layered than the one portrayed by political rhetoric.

Behind every truth there is a much deeper one. The potential of Palestine as a metaphor has always been rich. The Palestinians are tired, they need a break. The energies they invest just to be like anyone else, their quest for a normal life and the hopes they nourish, are channelled into a tortured relationship with time and place. I think in such a relationship many people in different parts of the world are able to learn something, not only about the intimate and rich existence of the Palestinians, but about human nature as well.

The mantra of daily life

As we drove back into Jerusalem, St Grace asked me: 'I watched something on television this week. And it said there was a wall in Israel somewhere. Is there a wall?' I was a bit surprised she hadn't seen it herself on her travels about the place, or heard speak of it. It's HUGE. But it highlighted how easy it is to be in a little bubble - discovering only the things that are necessary to you that moment. It's perhaps our fault for not giving Grace a 'political tour' but it's hard to talk about politics and difficult subjects with her, because she's just so good.

I explained a bit about the wall, which the Palestinians, being Palestinians have used in many places as a giant canvas for their thought provoking, hardhitting and often comic art and propaganda. I would say that it is a reflection of who the Palestinians really are inside - this mass of resilient and resourceful people who have no recognised state (let's hope we keep working on that one) and not even their own currency. As a result a photojournalist, William Parry, has produced a beautiful book about it, called: 'Up Against the Wall'.

What I've noticed is that when I am working alone at home, things around here get me down. You open the local papers and read about a 5 year old Palestinian girl, Enass succumbing to her wounds after some Israeli settlers drove into her and her friend in Sinjil, a West Bank town. In the photograph of her pretty face, and slight body, you can just make out the remains of a spot of nail varnish on her middle nail. She died in hospital yesterday. A 13 year old boy was shot dead by Israeli Defence Forces near Ramallah. 13? Dozens more settlers have moved into an Arab area of East Jerusalem called Silwan, causing unrest and resentment and people are pointing fingers at both Zionist organisations who are buying up properties in the Old City and other places in East Jerusalem, and Arab owners who weaken to the lure of the multi miillion dollar packages they're offered to sell up and make way for settlers.

You wonder if this settler activity is any different from mafia activity around the world. Crime: in this case illegal housing, or dubious aquisition of housing, protected by government and administered with IDF security to protect them, is happening every day, and no one can do anything because it's endemic, and supported by government and security forces. And others outside of these circles who don't actively support it, are either too happy to have found a place in the sun where they can live; or have their heads in the ubiquitous mounds of sand and don't want to know.

A Palestinian man from Silwan district drove into one of the light rail stations tonight killing a 3 month old baby. The Jewish parents, according to relations, 'had been waiting a long time for a child.'

There are some days when even as an outsider, you can't help it getting you down. Even in our happy little family bubble, the drip drip of news from our near surroundings can tip your frame of mind to the negative after a while. And living here can easily create a mind full of inconsequential and often angry thoughts, buzzing around the head like bees. I wonder if bees can create honey when they're angry? I would say that this ultimate of all contstructive activities would have to take place with a bee feeling at peace with itself and with the rest of the hive.

Perhaps that's why honey these days, is quite so expensive. Here it costs about £10 for a small 300ml tub. Perhaps the bees are angry too.

The fury seeps and bubbles with every text sent by the British Consulte (at least 5 a day) warning of 'ongoing clashes' between Palestinians and IDF at various points around the country. It's hardly suprising. Don't believe anyone if they tell you this is not apartheid.

But this week I remembered that working and wandering alone, and reading the papers, can create this non-productive fury, so I have made a rule to myself to venture out with others as much as possible, so at least the negative thoughts can be spouted out through chat: or with my handy little sidekick Rashimi, who on a good day is a sparky little presence, and has also just got to grips with a scooter.

We've been venturing out to Salahdin Street to chat to shopkeepers we know, and buy things we need. It's when we hit the street that everything comes to calamitous live, and you realise that life goes on despite itself. You can look at the street and think: this is a nation with no hope, and not a chance with a challenge like that. Or you can look at the street and notice other things through the cracks. The man with the Islamic beard who I never think would want to talk to me, who stops us for a chat; the men selling the sesame bread who always try to rip me off by a few Shekels each time; the beautifully made up, headscarved and high heeled ladies shopping for handbags and chatting with their friends; the Muslim man in the phone shop greeting me with a kiss and giggling as he explains the complexities of telephoning the West Bank with my Israeli phone; the old men reading Al Quds newspaper over their coffee and cigarettes.

Even if the unreality of Palestine is in everyone's minds, just going through the actions of daily life is perhaps be like a mantra of daily existence that becomes the very tool for survival. People shake their heads and their fists, they laugh, they chortle, they shout, they cry, they wander and peruse, they shop, they smoke, they eat, they drink. And they are so brilliant at it, they also manage to make it look fun.

As Rashimi flies down the sticky pavements sprinkled with spilled sugary coffee and chewing gum, and shoots through the air thick with the smell of onions anad roasting shwarma and exhaust fumes shouting: 'Aaaaaarrrgh!!!' louder than any of the motorbikes, there are headscarved ladies diving for cover, and grown men jumping out the way. And everyone is laughing and crying 'habibeeeee, you're fast!' as he goes.

Then I got a call from a friend, Bisan, an artist who I met in Jordan when I made the film about the Darat gallery last year. He was raised in the Old City and is Palestinian with African roots. His hair is a huge afro thanks to his Chadian grandfather, and he knows everything about the Old City and this country having managed to negotiate his way through the labyrinthine tangle of regulations and blockades, and out into the international Art World in which he is finding success, despite being only in his late 20s. He doesn't sweat the small stuff and is clever and kind. His name is after a Palestinian town, which is immortalised in a song by the Arab diva, Fairuz, which his father used as code to communicate to Bisan's mother when he was in an Israeli jail in the 70's. There's no tour guide like a local, and we explored with a guide-friend of his, the tunnels underneath the Old City. There are Israeli tours of the tunnels any time you like, but the Centre for Jerusalem Studies is only allowed to run tours once a month, at a designated time and there was an Israeli security guy listening in to our whole tour, interrupting at regular intervals and making us move on.

The reason is that the excavation of the tunnels is of course, contentious. On many levels - both through the layers of city from the streets of Herodian to Umayyad, Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, which create the feeling you're inside a geographical cross section. You are - and also a historical and religious one. Excavation started just after the 1967 war, and has been difficult as the tunnels run underneath the Old City and and therefore people's shops and houses. It's maybe the archaelogical equivalent of fracking in terms of how it can shake things up.

But it's the closest that Jewish people will ever get to where the Holy of Holies in the temple would have been, before it was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans, and Dome of the Rock complex built on top. The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall remained exposed, and above ground, is the closest place to the holy of holies which remained accessible and has become a place of Jewish prayer for millenia.

It's when you dig deep that you find the real rifts. And the excavations are only exacerbating these feelings of suspicion. Having seen the cross section - you can see how much more there is to disagree about. And one side is clearly gaining ground for itself- both horizontally and vertically.

But thanks to Bisan, I saw in his manner the essence of survival here - just like we see in the street. We ended up at his small house in the Old City where he was raised with his 2 brothers. His Mum had left the tea tray out ready for us, and he handed me a book: 'Subjective Atlas of Palestine'.

I wandered home in the darkness to read the dwarfs a story before bed, passing young teenagers drinking beer, a slavering dog on a lead with an Arab boy much too young on the other end, and a clutch of extremely young IDF soldiers leaning against the wall.  When the dwarfs were asleep I sat and opened the book and realised this is the one guide I've needed all along. It is the epitome of the Palestinian spirit and should be handed to every outsider when they arrive here.

I'll copy the introduction above. To my mind, it explains everything.

So Much

Luckily we had a plan the night before we went to collect the dwarfs from Jordan. We were so excited about seeing them again if there hadn't been a plan we might have turned up early. There's a book illustrated by the marvellous Helen Oxenbury called: 'So Much' about a West Indian family in London. The family members all come around to the tiny terraced house for a party, and they all 'hug and kiss and squeeze the baby because they love him Sooooo Much' and even though are dwarfs are not exactly babies, you don't lose that physical urge. I will definitely be the 80 year old with the hairy face hugging and squeezing and kissing babies and children who come my way. Mrs Coyne our next door neighbour used to do it to us as children: 'Mummmummmummm' she nuzzled on our cheeks with her prickly chin. Now we're heading that way ourselves.

The evening out was in honour of a charming Palestinian friend's 60 birthday. He's immaculately groomed and funny, with a penchant for Cohiba cigars and cognac; and is married to an equally lovely English lady from Surrey who moved here when they married nearly 30 years ago.  What a big adventure it must have been back then - moving to Palestine with just a few bags and her fledgling career, which she has stuck at all this time in Jerusalem, working as an opthalmologist.  Back then it was not so easy to pop back home on a whim. As a result their house has entirely escaped the fickle whims of globalisation. It's a classic meld of England meets Palestine, from the flowered covers on the arm chairs and sofa, which almost matched the waistcoat he was wearing, to the Palestinian furniture and classic Arab portrait of his mother by the door - in tribute to her. The atmosphere in the house could have been 1950's Spain.

We had a wonderful evening with a English/Palestinian megamix of food. I haven't eaten a peppermint cream for a while - let alone washed down with cognac. We laughed a lot - and the tears ran down his cheeks as his daughters rang up and sang to their Dad in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and then all of the above with a Hebrew accent, still singing. They were all raised here and you feel this is a house that has escaped negativity and bitterness, despite the fact that the house and garden - full of lemon verbena bushes, lime tress and roses - is situated almost up against the 'dividing wall'. Its greedy and looming presence has consumed not only land, but also light and air. Often in the stories she tells, she says: 'This was before the wall'. It has charted not only a geographical divide between two nations, but a historical one too. She has known the Palestine of before, and after the wall, and lived through both intifadas whilst bringing up 3 daughters. But is still as English as they come.

The following day we set off early to collect the merry dwarf duo from their holiday camp with the Glammy in Jordan.

We arrived outside the Glammy's apartment and heard the scampering of feet as they descended 3 storeys. They were full of news of camping and circus expeditions, toasting marshmallows and birthday parties. Rashimi explained, trying to get his words out so fast, that little bits of spit formed at the corners of his mouth as he explained: 'Umm Tooli (The Glammy's Mum) popth these little thingth into her mouth and SMOKE cometh out!'  and: 'Then she thith down on the thofa with these little tubeth on her head which make her hair go all curly whirly' (complete with huge amounts of gesticulation and more spit).

We spent some time with them all in the flat full of golden sofas and lamps with dangling amber pendants, and chatted on the little balcony crammed with geraniums and a swinging seat. The week had been a happy one for all of them. The Glammy's foray into Buddhism is producing some interesting motivational posters on their fridge. I hope she hasn't caught my disease. The self help literature is everywhere, and she's currently devouring books on forgiveness and calm from the Taiwanese Buddhism Centre in Amman. It's a big step for a Muslim Jordanian woman who's not quite 30.

Many Jordanians are worrying about the regional security situation, and the Glammy asked me what I would advise if the so called Islamic State came rolling in (I can't believe she's asking me. All I could think of saying was: Run!'). She has a US passport but her mother doesn't. And with boatloads of people trying to enter Europe every week, and the visa portcullis ever more tightly clenched around Europe, now is not a good time to be thinking about fleeing the Arab world for somewhere safer.

But concern soon turned to mirth as the Glammy showed me a video of her greater clan, The Abadi tribe, throwing a wedding. The video was 15 minutes long and punctuated all the way through by men in traditional Arab headgear firing bullets into the air. In the backdrop, cruised a never ending stream of porters carrying steaming plates of the Jordanian national rice and lamb dish, mansaf, towards a banquet. Shot from above, to the soundtrack of gun shots, the huge round plates kept streaming and streaming. She howled with laughter. 'Well, I think if ISIS did ever enter this country - my tribe would have them for dinner. Or at least they would be taken prisoner and made to suffer a death by mansaf'.

We had dinner with some dear friends - Dutch and Syrian with two little people a bit younger than ours, and the following day, J went off for 2 weeks work away, and I set off back to 'Joothalem' with St Grace and the dwarfs. She's given the Lozenge the most beautiful yellow bicycle with stabilizers. He's been riding it up and down our garden each morning before school, and Rashimi has a little whirl every day when the Lozenge is safely out of the house. When the cat's away...

Proud to be here

A Palestinian great-grandmother in Hebron who I met this week. She recently had one eye removed by the Eye Hospital.

Now she's one eye down, but still smiling and proud to be, as she put it: 'Mia bil mia Falesteenia.' 100 per cent Palestinian.

Safeguarding the past

'You must go to Yad Vashem. Then you will understand everything about us.'

The words of an Israeli couple we met recently ring in my mind as J and I walk the cool cement corridors of the holocaust memorial museum. The design of the behemoth site overlooking hills and forest, means you have no choice but to walk through every one of the halls, as a snaking corridor weaves you left and right as you read, hear and imagine the terrible lead up to, implementation, and aftermath of one of history's most documented atrocities.

A huge triangular glass window at the far end of the building allows for a few steps of contemplation as you move from one room to another. The over riding sense is one of tranquility and remembrance. Letters, family albums, menorah candlesticks, shoes, stained striped pyjamas, maps, paintings, anti-Jewish propaganda. It's all here.

The synchronicity with the wonderful book I'm reading is chilling: The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, given to me years ago by my glorious godmother (thank you Caroline I'm finally reading it). The anti Jewish propaganda in the late 1800s was rife. And we mustn't forget that the horrors of the holocaust began with words. Dr Karl Lueger, a founder of the Christian Social Party writes: 'Jew Baiting is an excellent means for propaganda and getting ahead in politics'. And in 1899, someone in the Viennese Reichstrat calls for bounties for shooting Jews.  And this isn't contained to Austria. Much of Europe is creating this kind of propaganda at the time.

The weaving corridor culminates in the hall of remembrance, a dome inlaid with winding rows of documentation and paperwork of those that died, and a pastiche of sepia photographs of faces inlaid like the tiles in the Pantheon. The architect, Moshe Safdie, an Israeli/Canadian, born in Haifa in 1938 (also responsible for Montreal's Habitat 67 and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa) has done a fine job of allowing the information to collide with space and silence. The architecture allows you time, even with dozens of other people about you, to feel it as an individual. The glass, the cement, the views of trees and landscape. No embellishments. This is all there is. The information and the space to think is the priority.

This is a safeguarding of the past like nothing else I've seen in my life.

And two things strike me most: How the smouldering of anti-Semitic feeling and propaganda gathers heat and pace over a relatively short time, and turns into a global wild-fire which damages for ever, an entire race; and the heroism of certain non-Jewish individuals 'righteous among the nations', who are honoured with their own room in the museum, who shelter or save as many as they can, at the greatest risk to their own lives.

And on a national level, countries such as Bulgaria and Denmark are notable examples of heroic national attitude, and the saving of their Jewish populations at the time.

Atrocities through the ages are enabled not only by the seed of evil, but by those along the way who decide to fan the flames, or douse them. This is the most chilling thought: As we watch news clips of the Islamic State tanks rolling through swathes of Iraq and Syria, seemingly no different in their totalitarian confidence than the Nazi tanks, those on the sidelines all have it within them to go one way or the other.

The words 'never again' can feel a little empty in these parts.

J and I walk back through the Jerusalem forest, where the young Arab boy Mohammed Abu Ghdair died after three young Jewish boys pour petrol down his throat and set light to it this summer.

Back home, silence reigns. It's now Thursday and today, officially, we've begun to miss the dwarfs. We've left their latest Lego creations in the playroom as they are, like a shrine to the small forces in our lives. J and I are acheiving many things this week which are less likely with these small and determined forces at home. We sleep continuously each night until 7.30am; live with a half empty fridge without buying milk for a whole week; roam on our feet and never get in the car; play the piano without being unplugged; go running most days and fiddle about with my cameras and lenses, leaving them all over the floor without them being stroked with honey coated fingers.

And they are having a fine time in Jordan with the Glammy according to the daily photo updates I receive. 3 dimensional and everything:

I wander about our area, a little faster than normal, and can stop and chat in a shop without my arms being pulled longer and longer mid conversation towards the door by dwarfs. I find a friendly man in a vegetable shop in Saladin street who is delighted I speak a (tiny amount) of Arabic. Our Eastern pocket of the city is deeply disturbed as no men under 50 have been allowed into Al Aqsa mosque for months, there have been demonstrations every day as the Jewish festival season (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipur and Sukkot) mean that many Muslims have not been allowed entry into the Haram e Sharif where the Al Aqsa mosque stands. And a mosque was torched in the Nablus area this week, by Jewish settlers.

I explore his shop, and find some pomegranates and quinces. I hold out my shopping bag, but he's insistent on giving me one of the ubiquitous and horrible black plastic ones too so I have a bag within a bag. As he packs the exotic fruit, he reminds me of the name for the quince: Safarjan and tells me an Arabic proverb:

'He who learns to speak another language, finds protection amongst its people.'

A Geordie on the border

The first two days of the Lozenge's half term were respite in some ways. We rolled out of bed a little later and spent the time getting ready for the dwarfs' week in Jordan on their own with the Glammy. The Lozenge had a school friend over for a few hours. He's half French and half Danish and thought that St Grace was the Lozenge's Grandmother. St Grace and I looked at each other when we heard him say: 'Your Grandma says....' and St G laughed so hard I thought she was going to be sick. She's four years younger than me. But many years wiser, I'm sure.

The Lozenge spent the days indulging in his favourite pass times: cooking and packing. By the end of the first day there was a neat line of 'wolling thootcases' by the door. And a freshly baked banana cake - the Glammy's favourite. St Grace nipped to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before we left. After about 2 hours she called and said: 'Madam, I'm locked inside the church. There's a security problem and they won't let us out.' She returned safely in a thunderstorm soon after. There have been some welcome rainstorms recently, filling the air with the pungent hot smell of relieved earth and swarms of flies, mosquitoes and other bugs celebrating the damp.

The Lozenge was so excited about his adventure he asked tentatively: 'Mummy will you be thtaying Jordan too or will we be on our own?' I said I'd be leaving them there, which I knew was the answer he wanted to hear. But he politely said: 'Oh good. But we will miss you and we will pick you lots of appleth from the tree.' I wasn't sure what that meant, since the Glammy could not live in a more urban setting, but I was grateful for the thought.

At the first border checkpoint an Israeli soldier who looked about 16 years old, peeped in the window swiping flies and fat raindrops away from his face. 'Where are you guys from?' he asked in a familiar sounding accent. It turned out he was called Mark, an Irish/Israeli, raised in Newcastle, and had come to try his luck in Israel which meant the obligatory military service first and foremost. His Dad left the family when Mark was tiny, and is somewhere in Israel, but he didn't know where. He admitted, though he was loving the experience, the thing he missed most was Cadbury's chocolate.

The raindrops caused chaos for the crossing, one of the gates jammed and we had to wait, sandwiched between huge tour buses while someone fixed it. The first little cabin you reach on the Jordanian side was a frenzy of flies and frustrated drivers and border police, checking piles of papers and writing names and number plates on a table dotted with mouldering coffee cups. When we reached the main building, one of the policemen, Rakan who we see each time, waved and greeted us by our names with a warm hug. He's a Christian from Salt, near Amman, and keeps asking when we'll join him for lunch in his home. We were whistled through in no time and having dropped St Grace with her little bag to go and see her husband for the week, we were soon standing in the Glammy's familiar flat - the dwarfs rushed in as though it were their own - with her Mum, her sister and the fluffy cat, Cookie. Overjoyed to be reunited.

Then J and I wound our way back down the road towards the Dead Sea and the border crossing back to Israel: the dwarfs in the able and adoring arms of the Glammy, St Grace having a bit of a break with her husband. Jordan continues to offer a lot. Not just for our family, but for the region and even the world. The country, formerly famed for having, and being, nothing, has become the vital political and security lynch pin in a cradle of chaos.

We snuck through the border just before it closed for the Sabbath and found our friend Mark, still swatting flies and raindrops from his face outside the checkpoint cabin. We waved him over and as he stood up, I saw his gun was almost half his full height. Jordanian duty free has a good line in Cadbury's and we'd bought him a family sized bar on our way back through. I thought he might cry. 'No waaaaay! How do I return the favour to you?' And walked sheepishly back to his fellow cadets to resume his guard.

Bedouin birthday bonanza

Back to the hubbub! Just in time for a night time bake off (planned so the sous chef was asleep) before the larger dwarf birthday. J and I cracked open a bottle of wine and set to work.

By midnight we'd made 2 chocolate cakes, 2 carrot cakes, a huge vat of hummus, cheese biscuits, multiple moussakae and a large vegetarian lasagne.

Good thing too, as the Lozenge requested we invite 'my whole clath' which means 17 little critters plus parents. (From: Palestine, Israel, UK, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Holland, Bosnia, China, South Africa and Italy and Spain).

The next morning we arranged the party scene. A bedouin banquet.

I must say the critters and their parents were very appreciative and the birthday boy - now 5 years old - was also catatonic with excitement.

The parents looked overjoyed to find the odd bottle of beer and wine nestled in the cold box with the 'watermelon jooth' and tucked in. The critters spent most of their time critter-ing about on the trampoline so thankfully we didn't have to get our whistles out and start the party games.

J and I spent most of the time wondering how we'd all got this big?

By 7.30pm they'd all left - with a happy trail of cake crumbs and wrapping paper.

St Grace came into her own preparing and helping us clear up in her cool, calm way.

On the way to school the next day the Lozenge announced: 'Hey Mummy, and the best bit is I didn't die before my birthday! How cool ith THAT?!'

And today the button popped off my trousers. I must freeze the remainder of the cakes before I personify the rabbit jelly.

It is here

This weekend combined, for the first time in 33 years, the Jewish feast day of Yom Kippur (the day of atonement) and the Muslim festival of Eid Al Adha. These important celebrations also fell on the Sabbath, and as one of the Dutch teachers at the Lozenge's school pointed out: 'It's alsho International Animalsh Day, which we take very sherioushly in Holland'.

Just to cap it all off - as if the mass slaughter of chickens (YK) and sheep (EA) wasn't enough, someone decided Jerusalem also needed a Formula One this weekend. The city went from ghost town to gridlock, with most people on holiday, and a few fear-mongerers suggesting that: 'now would be the time' for extremists to set something off.

J and I hadn't foreseen this weekend megamix, and had planned a little escape for three nights 'bidun al kazaam' (Arabic for: without the dwarves).

For some reason I always think it necessary to whip up a few home made ready meals for the dwarves when we're away, even though I know I could leave St Grace and her charges with an empty fridge and they'd be fine. But maternal emotions run high before departures, and somehow Rashimi also muscled in there as a sous chef. So having bolted to Jordan for a few meetings the day before, attended the school class reps meeting and got roped into organising half the Christmas fair; filmed a little girl in the hospital for most of the morning and rushed to get funds for St Grace for while we were away; I screeched to a halt somewhere near the cooker - with an eager Rashimi right there, stark naked with wooden spoon in hand. Small lasagnes were first on the agenda. Rashimi perched on a stool, his determined mits pushing mine away as he flicked white sauce all over the kitchen, minced the mushrooms with a blunt knife and ate mouthfuls of half-cooked mince. We lost three teaspoons in the bubbling sauces and had to fish them out with the tongs. And that was merely chapter 1.

Having thought we'd leave at 1pm, J and I were just getting around to packing at 6pm, and we drew out of the garage an hour later, leaving the dwarves watching Tom and Jerry and happily eating popcorn they'd made with St Grace. I banished thoughts of terror attacks in our absence, as calm descended on the car. The Lozenge has been getting inquisitive about the subject of death, and voiced his concern to me that morning: 'I weeeally don't want to die before my birthday Mummy, becauthe then I won't get to eat my cake and have my friendth to my party.' I concentrated on this not becoming a superstitious omen.

We were in the crusader town of Akka in northern Israel by dinner time and stayed in a magical renovated palace overlooking the Mediterranean, which has incorporated some of the original ceiling and wall frescoes and coated the rest of the place with marble, beautiful furniture and love.

It's nestled within the ancient city walls, with normal life going on very normally about it. From our window in the mornings we could hear the sounds of family capers in the street below, and from the roof watching the sunset turn the hills to blue and then purple, with swallows ducking and diving against the orange sun, we could also see the roofs of people's houses decorated with washing neatly slung, water tanks and satellite dishes. The festival day was so quiet as we sat up there. Nothing but the beat of a bird wing and a woman calling to her children to come and eat.

Normal life for everyone, but for us, the greatest luxury of revisiting that little preserved package of togetherness, which you don't get to pay attention to as much as you'd like within the hubbub of home life.

There's something deafening about that hubbub, yet when it's suddenly not there, you hear even the most subdued of sounds, and can for once meditate on them.

Nothing becomes everything.

I wanted to include this poem which the playwright, Harold Pinter wrote for Antonia Fraser. It sums up everything for me. Sometimes you need a little breakie from the 'kazaam' to hear those tiny reverberations.


'It is here'

What sound was that?
I turn away, into the shaking room.
What was that sound that came in on the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?
It was the breath we took when we first met.
Listen. It is here.

Word for the day

The word for teddy bear in Arabic is: 'dabdoob' of which its broken plural for teddies is 'dabbadeeb'.

Yabba dabba doo.

An unfortunate 'hamza'

My birthday present from J is a beautiful sepia photograph in wide landscape showing a silhouette of Bedouin women leading a line of camels along a road. The Dead Sea is a just-visible snip of silver in the background. It's hanging above my computer, and when I look at it, I can almost feel their slow, hot, plod as they walk towards their destination, wherever that may be. It's a daily consolation to me, because it reminds me that even if my working life is reduced to this plodding speed in the frenzy of family life, I'm still moving slowly forwards and that's better than stopping entirely.


'Are you a Jew?' an old woman shouts at me from the other side of the outpatients clinic at the eye hospital. It's unfortunate, because all (nearly 6 feet) of me, is trying to look inconspicuous in a sea of head-scarfed villagers from the West Bank, with my fair complexion, wearing trousers, holding my film camera on a tripod.

But it's the small necklace I'm wearing that the old lady notices. A 'Hamza' a hand - used by both Muslims and Jews as a symbol of protection, made for me by a friend. 'It was a present from my Egyptian friend who is Muslim, so I doubt it's a Jewish one,' I respond cautiously. She waves her stick at me and marches past. As she walks off I wish I'd said: 'But the hamza is the same for everyone,' and not been defensive.

It's not the first time in a week I've heard this kind of thing. On a recent outing with some staff to the West Bank, a woman explains to me. 'Since this latest war on Gaza, I hate them now. I tried not to beforehand but now I can't help myself.'

Then we ask some friends of the Lozenge's to come and play but their Israeli Mum is afraid of driving to our house on the East side with her: 'Israeli plates'. But J and I are amazed she doesn't know that both Palestinians and Israelis alike have the same car plates in the city.

The poisonous fronds of politics can weave themselves around the shop floor of society quite easily in the current climate. 'The danger comes when we forget each others humanity,' someone says to me recently.

A doctor at the hospital tells me that in the 25 years she has worked here, she hasn't seen a change in behaviour in the villages around the West Bank: 'All the way through from the nits to the contraception'. She wonders if maybe people don't want to change, then concludes it must be to do with 'on high'.

In relation to what she tells me, I can't work out whether the communities here are stagnant because of the constraints they're under from Israel; if the constraint is already there due to 'on high' as she puts it - or un-malleable religious attitudes and blind faith which absolves human responsibility; or a combination of everything - perhaps even one because of the other, and the dangerous millefeuille that creates. And there's nothing like the prism of health care through which to view this layering.

I take a trip back up to one of the eye hospital's northern clinics for my story search and meet a perky nurse the same age as me. She's a Muslim, on her second marriage, she wants to lose weight, she nearly died in a car crash five years ago and lost a pregnancy five months in because of it. But regardless of everything, her eyes sparkle: 'But I'm still alive! And this husband is really a good man. We'll begin IVF soon, because children are really the only things that bring us happiness in this life.'

On the way home a heavily armoured, khaki green IDF vehicle makes her husband who came to fetch her, pull over in his car. They are there for over an hour as the soldiers inspect their papers and interrogate them. I ask the other staff in the van what's going on as we continue down the road. They are all tutting and craning their necks to see what's happening and one explains: 'The soldiers shouldn't even be here. This is the West Bank, not Israel. They are guarding the illegal settlements, and they do this kind of thing for fun as they are bored, and just because they can.' The atmosphere in the van falls silent as people return to their angry thoughts.

On our return into Jerusalem I chat to the driver. He explains the overall situation to me as every driver does. They're concerned that I'm not seeing the full picture with my newcomer's eyes. Although it means I'm often hearing similar details from each one, I'm grateful for every take on life in this land.

'What do I tell my children?' he asks. 'If they're in trouble could I really advise them to go to one of these Israeli soldiers or police for help? When they ask me why are these soldiers here, and why are there checkpoints, and what are all these guns, what do I tell them?'

I understand him, particularly as his children are only a little older than ours. I lament that the international community could surely be doing more to help.

He replies: 'The real problem is, that to help the Palestinians, you need permission from the Israelis. So no one will ever be able to help us because there is never permission to do what is really needed.'

Birthday day tripping

A (not quite significant) birthday morning. I wake up to a three layered cuddle from the men in my life, culminating with enthusiastic dwarf kisses all over my face. Rashimi has a double sticky handed face holding technique which means you can't escape them. 'Happy Birfday, Mummy!'

The day unfolds in the blue-skied sunny way that we never tire of. With Gran Gran and Grandfather in tow, we explore the first world war cemetery which is as moving as they come when you think of quite how many men have died over the centuries defending and attacking this sacred patch: including all these British in 1917. The whole of it stirs you as you gaze out towards this 'golden goblet full of scorpions' as Jerusalem has been described:

Here are the serene lines of it when it was first constructed in 1917:

And within these lines, glimpses of individual stories:

But for the dwarves, and their watermelon football, the expanse of green and the cool smooth steps have a more care free allure:

For the evening our friend Bassem and his nephew give us a free ride to a restaurant and back. Majda's: one of Ottolenghi's favourite haunts when he's in the country, is a little organic garden and restaurant serving exquisite concoctions of home grown delights with an exciting wine list. We sit laughing and chatting beneath a vine, with rugs around our shoulders as it's chilly at that hour on the little hill outside Jerusalem.

The weekend evolves naturally. We take a trip to Palestine's only brewery producing the golden and delicious Taybeh,

which tastes somehow nicer when you understand the constraints within which the little family business runs. With hardline Islam encroaching on the one hand, and Israeli bureaucracy on the other, it's a wonder the small factory runs at all. As we look over the hills from their patch, we see they are flanked by settlements. 'This is just something we get used to, and it doesn't stop us from wanting to keep growing,' says the wife of the owner.

The dwarves scamper up and down metal steps inspecting the tanks in the hops infused hangar.

On the way back we stop at a little restaurant with one of the best views over the hills towards the Jordan valley, accompanied by the melodious chimes from St George's orthodox church, and eat a traditional Palestinian lunch of hummus and Masakhan: chicken with onions and za'atar. Then the dwarves commandeer sweets and ice cream out of the waitress after they reluctantly run off together to request in Arabic: 'Fi helwaiaat?' My point is that if you know what you want in life, you need to learn to ask for it yourself.

Sunday, and Rashimi comes out with a line that I need to preserve forever: 'Gwan Gwan's gone to the mothque!' She and Grandfather set off to explore the Dome of the Rock and are delighted by it. It's not every day that Gran Gran visits a mosque.

J, the dwarves and I stick to the Anglican options in our area and attend our first service at St George's which feels extraordinarily familiar considering how far from home we are. Rashimi and the Lozenge are offered toys and games by a friendly lady, and they remain silent as they suck the lollies we brought.

Unfortunately the display of gentility is short lived as Rashimi spills water all over his shorts and we find him peeling off both his shorts and pants in the aisle. We settle for keeping the bright red pair of pants on, and he prances about in a bright red t-shirt to match, behind the Very Reverend Hosam, the Dean as he leaves the building, like a little red devil in the wake of holiness. All that's missing are the horns.

I explain the scene to St Grace when we return...but she isn't having her little pet compared to a devil. 'Noooo,' she laughs shaking her head vehemently and sweeps him up into her arms.