A trip to 'GoLand'

Black clouds loom in our skies these days, casting shadows on this troubled land, but also dousing it with raindrops of immeasurable value. The dwarfs and I have been rustling about the city in our raincoats. The atmosphere has changed since we arrived - with both Palestinians and Israelis living in fear of the next retribution attack as penance for the last.  And in the background, the Israeli state has resumed its practise of demolition orders - notably on homes of Palestinians who committed terror attacks in Jerusalem in the past month. But it seems like these are a deliberate way of harming innocent people, since those responsible for the attacks have either been killed by Israeli police, or are already facing trial. And it adds fuel to the flames already licking around society's most irascible quarters.

Since as internationals we're able glide mercurially from one side to the other, I've been making the most of this and roping the dwarfs, unknowingly, into a friendliness offensive or love-off with people we would normally not get chatting to. Just because we can, and I always fear we could become embroiled in the fear and the hate if we don't make an effort to venture out and keep an open mind.

In a park on the West side last week, I spoke to a beautiful orthodox Jewish lady with creamy skin, wearing a tight grey leopard print top, brown wig and black headband, who was strolling with her 1 year old daughter, and pregnant with the second child. 'My husband's a student here [yeshiva - the Jewish study of religious texts] and we moved here from New York a few months ago just to try it out,' she explained in a thick New York accent. 'But we don't really like it. You have to be so hard headed to survive here, so we might not stay - even though we're allowed to if we like.' The Jewish diaspora are allowed to embark on Aliyah: literally the 'act of going up' (to Jerusalem) to take citizenship and buy land in Israel whenever they like.

Meanwhile, the dwarfs were not towing the line with the friendliness offensive, and were physically blocking her one year old from entering the model train in the playground, Rashimi shouting: 'She ith NOT a nithe girl. This is OUR train.'

Her husband came to join her, dressed in black with the white strings symbolising some of the laws he's presumably studying, day in, day out. 'Hey, your boys look like they're a whole load of fun and a whole load of trouble, all bound up in one boy bubble!' she laughed as they wandered off.

She didn't mention the recent tit-for-tat terror and I regretted that I didn't ask her what she made of this current situation. But then, there were no Palestinians to be seen in the park that afternoon, so perhaps it didn't cross her mind.

The following day, the dwarfs and I tried to fly a kite and catch leaves in a tiny gust of wind at Liberty Bell park, also on the West Side. As the boys scooted about a tarmac area I got chatting to a Palestinian family taking a Friday stroll. 'We like this park and there aren't parks on the East side - so we come here. Although we feel a bit afraid, we don't think it should stop us living our lives,' they told us.

We took the Lozenge to have his ears tested. The doctor was South African, now Israeli having done his Aliyah 30 years ago, with a yarmulka and a friendly disposition. 'Well young man,  where do you come from with that beautiful accent. Is it UK by any chance?'

'No, I come from Jeruthalem,' replied the Lozenge.

The weekend arrived and J and I were wined, dined and breakfasted by various friends. A Palestinian couple took us out to breakfast in a lovely cafe which felt a bit like we were in France. Rashimi was with us as St Grace had nipped back to Jordan for a weekend, so while he tackled a plum tart sprinkled with icing sugar, we talked. She's a child psychologist, and he a lawyer - they work with Palestinians and Israelis in their team, and speak Arabic, Hebrew and English fluently. They are funny and modest and we laughed a lot over plates of patisserie. J and I mused on the way back to begin our respective days, that these kinds of people are the gold of this land, and its future also (if Palestinians are allowed to have one here).

After a five course dinner cooked for us on Friday evening by some equally wonderful Dutch friends, we set off on a family adventure to the Golan heights to meet an Israeli friend visiting from the UK and his family. We wiggled along the Jordan valley, the green undulating landscape dotted with palms and other tropical vegetation.  The green is a welcome change from the dustier heights of Jerusalem. The autumn rains had caused a spring-like burst of green and chubby cows grazed happily beside the road. After nearly 3 hours in the car, we reached Rami, or 'Wami' as he's known by the dwarfs, who spent the day guiding us around his home. We started at a memorial for his father, who was killed fighting in Lebanon in 1984 when Rami was 10. What a view, down to lake Galilee. His father sounded like a wonderful man, full of integrity and well deserving of this landscape spread before his memorial site:

Rami himself is completely free of hate, even though he was only 10 years old when his father was killed by Hizbollah fighters. And he's a mine of information and personal experience, we discovered, as he gave us a whistle-stop tour of this extraordinary highland area where Lebanon, Israel and Syria meet - with many a feud to mark it. When you look at a map of the area it is littered with dotted lines: Ottoman Villayet boundary; 1920 Franco British agreement boundary; 1923 mandate boundary; 1949 armistice demilitarised zone; 1967 ceasefire lines; 1974 disengagement lines...

We meandered about between minefields, disused Syrians barracks and other administrative buildings, pock marked with bullet holes and now within the Israeli border, since after the six day war in 1967 since when the area has been under Israeli control.

The weather was as wild as the region itself. We stopped at a look out post in an old Israeli bunker to look at the Syrian border, where on a  clear day you can see the black flags of Al Nusra, one of the Syrian opposition groups allied with Al Qaeda. The dwarfs are not used to wind and rain but enjoyed the climb up the rocky outpost, and fortunately it was cloudy. I wasn't sure I wanted to see those flags with my own eyes.

The area is also well known for its Druze villages of Majad al Shams, Buqata, Mas'ade and Ein Quiniyye. Druze is a branch of Shia Islam and they are independent communities here renowned for their hospitality and independent mindedness. While many Palestinians were driven out of their lands by Israelis since the 1940s, the Druze stayed put.  Their villages have a completely different feel from everywhere we've experienced so far - coloured houses, extravagant architecture in some places, plenty of building work creating more mismatched structures, dotted with large numbers of tractors of varying vintage.

We all had a Druze labaneh and za'atar flat bread sandwich made by this lady.

We can't wait to go back. And as we meandered back to Jerusalem in the darkness, Rashimi announced: 'Mummy, we did have a weally good time in GoLand!'

Sunday we lounged about, and the Lozenge decorated most door handles and knobs with 'Chrithmath Mouthtaches' made from pipe cleaners, and made a few little 'Chrithmath mithe' from walnuts, who are sitting by the oven keeping watch.

Light and dark, and a birthday brunch

The house soon felt more like a university digs with the Glammy, her sister, St Grace and the dwarves lounging about watching The Little Mermaid and playing hide and seek. Rashimi spent the first morning with the Glammy in their pyjamas, looking for bugs in the garden with a shoehorn and a sock on his hand.

I showed Mum this picture and she said: 'I somehow don't think Rashimi will go for blondes when he's older.'

St Grace showed them about the city - to the wonderful Mehane Yehuda market, where the Glammy came back exclaiming: 'Israeli men are HOT! I couldn't work out whether to stare at all the amazing food on display or them.' And then to Bethlehem where the guard heard that the raven haired ladies were Jordanian and ushered them quickly to the front of the queue. It's extremely difficult for Jordanians to visit Israel and Palestine so they were treated as honoured guests. They visited Mary's cave where allegedly she gave birth to Jesus. St Grace managed to persuade the Glammy out of drinking the 'milk' there which is created from shavings from the wall of the cave mixed with water, which allegedly helps women who are hoping for a child. Since the Glammy's name is the Arabic for the Virgin Mary she felt there was an extra connection. 'When you find a husband, you can come and drink the milk,' explained St Grace, laughing. She's in awe of the Glammy's romantic revolving door - spinning men out of her life as quickly as they came in. 'First you are friends. Then you can have the love. If you do it the other way, you will not be happy,' lectured St Grace to the Glammy.

We drove to some springs on the Israeli side of the Dead Sea and the Glammy recited most of Dr Seuss 'My name is Sam, I am, I am. Do you like green eggs and ham?' to the dwarfs in the back which meant no one asked for the iPad. The boys stripped off and swam in the little rocky pools. The raven haired beauties and I spectated from the safety of a rock.

The night before Rashimi's third birthday, the kitchen was a cloud of self raising flour and icing sugar, to an accompaniment of the Kinks. Rashimi pranced around the house in a half skip with a naked bottom, while the Lozenge tried to inflate balloons and bake fairy cakes all at once. The balloons were then cordially low slung about the house meaning any one taller than a dwarf had static balloon brushes to the head and face through every doorway. The Glammy hung the birthday banner only to realise she'd hung it backwards, Arabic style

Then we had a candlelit dinner all together but the dwarves kept blowing out the candles. We realised the only candles they see are birthday ones. They gobbled fish pie and we drank red wine which fueled J and I for a late night wrapping session of all the amazing trucks and toys from the Grandparents and others back home.

Rashimi's 'brunth' as he called it was a hoot. The trick with children's parties is to make them adult friendly. And we soon had lots of bleary eyed parents putting down their coffee cups and reaching for the jug of bloody mary. The Glammy tried some too.

 The 'brunth' was over and done with by 1pm so we watched our first film altogether - the first of the Harry Potter series which now looks quite dated - mostly because Daniel Radcliffe now has a beard and probably children. The dwarves loved it for a while, but we had to switch off half way as the Lozenge found it too scary. He's just started to be afraid of the dark. 'I don't like dark, I like light, Mummy. I don't like black, I like yellow.'

As we drove to school the next day, through the rain drenched streets, the Haredim - orthodox men - were resplendent with the plastic bags covering their precious hats to protect them from the raindrops. In this city where so many people flock to find true light, there is a growing amount of darkness. A Palestinian bus driver was found hanging in his bus from a wire - the Palestinians are sure he was murdered. He had a young family and no reason to take his own life, they say. Then further horror as a Synagogue was attacked by two young Palestinian cousins wielding knives and axes. An Israeli friend said: 'I'm really not the religious type, and I often think these orthodox guys all decked out in their relgious clothing are ridiculous. But no one deserves to die like that.'

The Palestinian perpetrators, who were shot dead by police, came from a district in Jerusalem called Jabal Makaber. I read a bit about it. Like many Arab areas in East Jerusalem, it is plagued by settlements that have sprung up in the area; house demolitions are rife. These people have no rights, and nowhere to go. Here is a post from 2010 by Peace Now, a leading voice of Israeli public pressure for peace:

A New Settlement in Jabel Mukaber

A new Jewish settlement was established this morning in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber (not too far from Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations). Israeli police evicted the Palestinian family from their home and handed the property over to private guards working for the settlers.
The reason for the eviction? An Israeli court ruled that the house had been purchased a foreign company called “Lowell Investments,” registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands. And Lowell Investments is represented in Israel by David Be’eri, one of the leaders of the Elad settler organization, the well-funded and politically powerful settler organization.
The family says that the sale is fraud. Possible and also possible not. The court ruled it isn’t. Many sales are secret so Palestinians can have deniability. Many sales are also done in a sleazy manner – getting one family member to sell out ownership rights for the entire extended family.

The Israeli state has created its own monster and is being eaten alive by it. You wonder how different 2015 might be, if Israel could promise to crack down on the building of illegal settlements. A tiny gesture like that, might allow some chinks of light into the dark corridor of the future.

This week, I met with a university lecturer from the US who is living and working in Ramallah, and she said the situation reminds her of the tale of the native American Indians, who were slowly and determinedly driven from their own land. Perhaps, as a British woman I know who married a Palestinian remarked, 'their natural warmth and hospitality has been their Achilles heel.'

The Lozenge and I went to his music class with his beautiful French-Israeli teacher. The road was almost empty, the Synagogue murder having taken place that morning, with both Palestinians and Israelis staying sheltered in their homes for fear of retribution attacks. Each music session L's teacher and I get to know each other a little better. 'Do you think you can make a difference here?' she asked me. We both agreed that we could be of limited use, but just by trying to live with an open mind, inviting all types into our lives, encouraging our children to see everyone as equal and hear both languages, was a start. And not to take fright and run away, we agreed. She arrived here 15 years ago from France and married an Israeli, just as the second intifada begun. 'I have barely known peace,' she said, 'but I love my life here.' A large cushion on her sofa was emblazoned with: 'Do what you love'. She is a lovely and creative force for good here, there's no doubt.

The Lozenge and I drove back through the dark and empty road, alongside the light rail train, usually packed with both Israelis and Palestinians returning home at that time in the evening. That night it was a ghost train - seats empty with all the lights on.

People drive with caution these days as recently, there have been enough cars used intentionally to mow down pedestrians to make us all remember we are driving a weapon. I saw an Arab family in a small car turn a corner while a Jewish man in yarmulka cap, was about to cross the road. The headscarves ladies stopped their car, waving him on and smiling, as if to say: 'We promise we're not trying to run you down.' He waved back at them and smiled, holding his cap in place as he ran to the other side.

This city houses reasonable minded people, also. It's important not to succumb to the panic.

I took the dwarves to a tennis class with the Lozenge's little French friend, Julien, or 'Julie Ann' as Rashimi calls him. The light was fading and Rashimi pointed to the sky. 'Look Mummy, a hot air balloon.' 'Yes Washimi, that'th the balloon that takes pictures of us,' answered the Lozenge.

'I will fly a hot air balloon when I'm grower and grower', said Rashimi.

I wondered how much of our lives they see from up there through the giant CCTV in the sky. There seem to be more of them than ever these days. An over-policed state is a frightened state, and how can this ever make things safer?

The ochre and the blue

Climb every mountain (as long as it's your idea)

A few hours after Gaza I walked back into our kitchen to find Mum and Dad sitting with Rashimi and the Lozenge as they tried to twirl spaghetti around their forks. It was a great moment to have them with us as it seems an age since the summer. I heard on the news that evening that for the first time since 2007, Gazans were able to export their produce to the West Bank. A picture of huge piles of Gazan cucumbers illustrated the story. I thought of Muneer's fish shop and his promise to export fish to Ramallah the minute the ban was lifted. It came as a significant ray of light, just like seeing Mum and Dad's faces in our noisy kitchen.

Even coming from the destruction zone of Gaza, Jerusalem feels increasingly troubled. In just a week, right wing Israeli groups have forced their way onto the Muslim holy site of Al Aqsa compound despite calls from a moderate (Sephardic) rabbi to stop this provocation. A right wing Rabbi was shot and badly injured. A Palestinian drove his car through a tram station injuring three people after which he was shot dead. 3 settlers were stabbed near Bethlehem. An Israeli soldier was stabbed in Tel Aviv. And a Palestinian has been kidnapped by settlers in Bethlehem. All this against a backdrop of continued settlement building, home demolition and land grabs, with ever more bitterness and despair in Palestinian ranks. The atmosphere is tangibly on edge. I asked a local shopkeeper, 'How is the situation?' Al wada'a sift' he replied: a Palestinian expression meaning the tar on the road. Filthy and black.

We escaped for the weekend to the peace of the desert, heading south to the Negev. First stop was a goat farm where we had a delicious goaty lunch with local red wine and the dwarfs scuttled happily about the rocky terrain. That night we stayed in a lovely little cluster of cabins overlooking the pale brown landscape dotted with vineyards, with a little shop where the owner, Moshe, and his Dutch wife sell local wines from neighbouring wineries. They've made everything themselves, from the cabins to the playhouse, and the little sculptures and details around the place. Just a few kilometres away to the West was Gaza, and I noticed the freedom which enabled Moshe and his wife to explore their own ingenuity, and live their own life. A distant dream only a few thousand dunes away, for the Gazans in their seaside prison.

The dwarves were in heaven and up early wandering about the sand in their pyjamas in the morning light.

We suggested a walk to see some desert flowers - delicate yellow crocuses which arrive every year during the rainy season. There was a bit of whining from the shorter legged members of the group, until the Lozenge spotted a little hill which he suggested we should climb. Suddenly the adventure became his and the whining petered out. Perhaps every choice needs a sense of ownership for it to mean something, including a desert adventure. We found the yellow flowers, and a little higher up some empty shell cases. A rusty reminder of where we were.

The Lozenge was on his own adventure, and he wasn't going to stop until he reached the top.

Which we did. 

Including even the smallest member of the team.

On Mum and Dad's last night we had a brilliant evening with our new octogenarian Israeli friends. We needed a local substitute for the Jordanian Duke, after all. They are warm and funny and after living in London for over 40 years, they are tuning themselves to this city in the same way as we are. It's changed so much since they were young students here. Not necessarily for the better, they admit.

Since Mum and Dad left I've been tootling about the West Bank with doctors and nurses from the hospital. We drive on winding roads through rocky hills all over the West Bank, through checkpoints, and separation walls. Though the news gets worse from the outside, while we're in the van the mood is often light and full of chat and humour. Nader the driver in wrap around shades taps his hands to the tune of 'Life is Life' playing on the radio. It's the attitude you need to have if you're Palestinian.

I filmed with a family of a little 2 year old girl living near Hebron. Although they're poor and fairly traditional, they opened their doors to us and when we left, handed us huge bags full of almonds and walnuts 'lowz wa jowz' from the trees on their little patch of land. The father loves his little girl with tight blonde curls so much, he can hardly stop himself from kissing her all the time. She stomps after him everywhere he goes, calling: 'Baba!'

I filmed the first of her two cataract operations in the hospital. As the surgeon scaped away the milky covering of the pupil, the operation was magnified on a huge screen in the corner, and after half an hour he had entirely removed the cataract. It must be a satisfying job. Her sight will soon be completely restored for a whole life ahead of her.

The last couple of days my head has felt like a soda stream with all the thought bubbles fizzing inside it. I had a preparation evening for the school fair with a few Scandinavian Mums. They were very adept at whipping up Christmas decorations out of paper. Their results were a little more impressive than the loo roll and cotton wool Santas I remember making when I was little. So I followed suit with the scissors, trying to make a paper snowflake to match theirs. After a few seconds I saw it was smoking. I'd managed to set fire to it by getting too close to the candle on the table. Much hilarity as I raced to the sink to douse the flaming flake. I think I'll stick to the baking stall and leave the snowflakes to the Scandis.

The Glammy and her sister have arrived to stay for the weekend, and the dwarves have two ladies each at their disposal. It's a certain dwarf's third birthday this weekend and they've come over specially.

The bathrooms are bedazzled with all the Glammy's lotions and potions, perfumes and sprays. The dwarfs are fascinated and their hair now smells of Marc Jacobs. Louis Vuitton handbags are draped in the playroom and the house is tingling with a happy and excitable atmosphere.

What once was Shujayiya

'Can you imagine,' asks Sami, gesticulating towards a pile of rubble with a wheelchair dangling on a string from one of the smashed floors, 'how you would move over 200 hundred patients from a hospital after a strike warning giving you only a couple of hours to escape?' Sami doesn't know how the workers in the Al Wafa hospital managed to save as many lives as they did before the building was bombed. Particularly as the hospital was for rehabilitation and many of the patients were unable to walk.

The mukhtar and his driver give us a tour of his district, almost every street pulverised into a rubble. The only straight lines in the mess are the roads which divide the mounds of cement and twisted wires, which only 6 months ago were functioning streets.

But through the stench of sewage from all the broken pipes, and the dust whipped up by the wind, where there is a straight line, or a clear patch, there are children and signs of life. The ubiquitous line of coloured washing hangs to dry in the dusty air. Little school girls in pristine white frilled socks and hair bobbles to match, pick their way to school through the mud. Within a mound of rubble, a room remains, and through the chink I see a barber in his makeshift salon under a dim light bulb, carefully shaving a customer. A boy takes his little brother's hand as they cross from one former street side  to the other. A donkey pulls a cart loaded with shiny red apples and perfect yellow bunches of bananas, casting a colourful contrast against the dusty destruction. Human survival against all odds. And the donkey looks well cared for.

In another street a bulldozer is scraping rubble into piles. Groups of young men work alongside with their hands. They wave and smile as I bring out my camera.

The mukhtar takes us to where he once lived. From the site of his house - now riddled with bullet holes and windows blown out, we see a fertile stretch of land, undeveloped, and in the distance, the border with Israel, from where the shells had hurtled for those 51 days of hell. We're standing on the front line. Looking behind us we inspect the remains of his district - a mosque - its minaret a metal framed skeleton against the sky; apartment blocks previously 6 or 7 storeys, now the height of a bungalow; an empty space, once a communal yard, now a giant mud puddle reflecting the ruins around.

 'My neighbours are all still under that rubble,' says the mukhtar, pointing to a ruined building and shaking his head. 'They were all at home when it was hit. Their children all killed.'  Looking at the big puddle in the middle, with tiny shoots of grass peeping above it, I imagine the children playing in this space. Their quarrels and their laughter. Now they're lying silent under the ruins of their house.

We drive out of the destruction zone past a field of tomato plants standing proud, already bearing fruit despite the short period since the war, and back to the clinic along the roads emblazoned with signs advertising Hamas - soldiers in camouflage, smiling proudly with their weapons, boasting strength, might and protection.

We interview four people who've lost one or both eyes during the attacks.

It's already time to leave though I feel like I've only just begun. As we say goodbye to Sami and promise to do everything we can to get him a 2 day break from Gaza, and some apple tobacco, I feel dizzied by my own freedom. The sand on the feet of my tripod is the only outward sign of where I've been lucky enough to visit, and lucky enough to leave.

The world will never look quite the same again.

After this summer's war, the director of the Israeli Army's mental health department commented: 'I don't want to call it a phenomenon, but 3 Israeli soldiers committing suicide after operation protective edge, is a significant event.'

Siege from every side

As we drive through Beit Hanoun on the outskirts of Gaza City we pass a blackened block of buildings with the front blown off, revealing the insides of demolished apartments. The rooms of ruined furniture are visible as if in a dolls house with the door open. I imagine a giant hand reaching in, to crush furniture and snatch people. Just as the shells would have snatched the lives of anyone left inside when they struck. Though Sami explains that most people escaped from this building before it was hit, during the summer's 'Operation Protective Edge'.

Sami worked as a nurse in Al Shifa hospital in Gaza throughout the 51 day war this summer. 'We really saw hell in those days. Sometimes when I shut my eyes at night I still see the children we were trying to treat on the floor, who had no skin left on their bodies which wasn't burned,' Sami tells me.

'You can't imagine what it was like. Bodies everywhere: many on each bed, bodies on the floor, bodies in the doorways, children - everywhere - screaming. And all we did was just save lives. Nothing more. And we had nothing.'

This war is over now but the scars run deep.  Gazan children of six years old have experienced three such wars in their lifetime. And these peole are braced for the next. They of anyone in this region understand how fragile and precious is this tiny patch of peacetime. As we pass one pile of rubble in an ordinary street, Sami explains: 'This was the house of an important member of Hamas. His wife and children were killed. We don't know where he is now. It was a nightmare because we didn't know where the shells were going to land next. Nowhere and no one was exempt.'

Many streets we pass have a house taken out, like a mouth with a missing tooth. Many of the strikes must have been calculated within inches.

For Sami, life has become even more of a straight jacket. He can't get cigarettes easily, or his favourite apple tobacco for his shisha pipe. The crossing from Rafah in the South, bordering with Egypt is now closed; the tunnels -  formerly the only other way of getting goods in, are smashed. There's barely a flow of anything, let alone people. Since 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza from Fatah, the situation has been in free fall. Sami admits: 'We all voted for Hamas because they were our last hope. We thought they could change things. Now we see the truth. Things have got worse'.

'It's like we're in a bottle with a cork in the top now. All I want is a trip to the West Bank. Just for 2 days in Ramallah - to have a change of scene and decompress. Then I will come back here and I will be able to work with more energy and less stress.'

Donkey carts trot beside us, loaded with fruit. Horse carts clack along weaving in and out of the traffic of ancient cars. We hop out to film a group of young men working with a JCB sorting out the rubble of a bombed building. All that remains is a huge hole, filled with rainwater, encircled with rubble and twisted wires. They smile at us and call: 'Welcome!' as they pull the contorted metal bars from the ruins, and drag them over to the metal straightening machine to use again.

If anything, this admirable recycling job is a pastime for angry young men. I remark on this to Sami. 'But what choice do we have?' he laughs. He's always laughing.

There's been a promise of $5.4 billion to re-re-re-build Gaza, but Sami explains the official building work has not yet begun, and won't do for months, due to the 'Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism' established by the UN and Israel where every rebuild needs to be assessed first. Israel needs to avoid sponsoring a regrouping of Hamas.

Israelis have long barred the entry of basic construction materials such as cement, metal pies and steel in to Gaza, insisting that they are 'dual use' items that Hamas could use to build more underground tunnels. This ban has become more draconian since the summer. And civilians are suffering yet again as a result.

Over 100,000 Gazans are living in temporary accommodation in UNWRA school buildings. And they'll be waiting for at least another 6 months until they can start to build. Men and women are segregated. Families, already smashed, are divided up. Some people are beginning to do the work themselves. 'No building materials are wasted here. It's like gold to us. Everything that can be used again, we use. What other choice do we have?' Sami says - laughing, again, as if the frequency of his laughter might conceal the flatness beneath.

We spend the day filming in the crowded hospital, the white coated doctors ducking and diving through clusters of grey looking patients. Without exception the people are friendly and welcoming. Everyone wants to talk, to tell us how it's been in the summer. At around 4pm Sami drops me at the hotel - a vast structure overlooking the sea with ornate golden lights and swirling carpets. 'We have only 8 hours of electricity a day. This is a timetable we know very well, just as we know the sunrise and the sunset. There's nothing to do here and nowhere to go, so I lose myself in Facebook whenever I have a moment to myself and when there's power,' Sami says before he heads home.

I find my way up to the hotel roof as the call to prayer sweeps over the city from an elegant grey mosque (funded by the Qataris I was told) on one side. I film the cityscape as the sun sinks below the Mediterranean, framing a few tiny fishing boats in silhouette. Children playing below prank about doing backflips down sandbanks, and a line of military cadets dressed in black jog in a line along the road. The sun sinks below the blue, and the only lights around me emanate from the hotel - its huge generator rumbling loudly below.

I go for dinner with some of the doctors. Muneer the owner of the fish restaurant greets us. His is yet another friendly, moustached face with twinkling eyes. He names each of the fish spread out on the icy bed at the entrance.

Then he chooses a selection for us and we sit in an underground room painted blue with assorted shells hanging in fishing nets. He arrives shortly with small bowls of spicy shell fish soup and some warm flat bread; then comes a huge pile of grilled fish, hummus and cucumber and tomato salad. As I pick with my fork, one of the doctors tells me he learned during his training in Ukraine: 'that fish, chicken and women should be taken with the hands,' encouraging me to lose the fork. It's much easier. The food is delicious. Over coffee and cigarettes Muneer comes to join us and I try to follow their conversation in Arabic. They help me fill in the gaps when required.

During the 51 days of war in the summer, Muneer sheltered over 100 people in the underground dining room where we're sitting. They were mostly members of his extended family who'd escaped from the shelling in the area of Shujaiya, the area in Gaza City that was worst hit.

'We had so many orphans in here who'd lost their parents, and we were all trying to look after them and find any of their relations who might still be alive. All our gardens were badly hit, so during this time we couldn't find parsley or lemon or even basic things like tomatoes to eat,' Muneer explains, puffing smoke from his nostrils.

It's increasingly difficult for him to work as there's hardly any power. What used to come cheap from Egypt is no longer coming. Israel has not permitted Gazans to fish beyond 6 miles from the coast since 2006. Often this distance is reduced to 3 miles. Anyone who crosses the line risks death. But like every Gazan I meet, Muneer smiles and laughs a lot, but I also wonder what us below this mask of warmth. They're a nation under siege. How can anything or anyone be 'normal.'

On our way back to the hotel we see what we think are children swimming in a puddle. 'You should take a picture!' says one of the doctors. As we draw closer we see the nocturnal swimmers are army cadets in training. 'The Gazan army?' I ask. 'Well, yes. Hamas army.' I put my camera away and keep my head low as we splash past in a shallower part of the same puddle.

The next morning I set out with Sami at 6.30am. 'It's an institutionalised siege,' Sami tells me, 'because everyone plays a part in it. Not just Israel, who are denying us all our rights and the flow of essential goods, even when they aren't bombing us. But the UN is part of the siege through its bureaucracy with everything, and making us wait for so long before we can officially begin to build. It comes from every side. And to the other side - well, at least we still have the sea.'

We interview one of the most senior doctors in Gaza, who also plays a pivotal role in politics here. Though he's officially with Fatah, Hamas need his influence as he's connected and respected. He is open minded and full of information. He and his wife live here, though his children study in Egypt. They can't come to visit him in Gaza, but they occasionally have fleeting time together in the West Bank.

He looks out of his surgery window as he describes his medical training in Edinburgh and a much enjoyed trip to the highlands. 'I think there's a big connection between the Palestinians and the Scottish,' he smiles. 'We all know what it is like to have a bigger and more powerful neighbour, and it effects who we are as a nation.'

Sami lays out a breakfast of hummus, za'atar (the Palestinian thyme and sesame seasoning) and warm flat bread before we set out for Shujayiya, one of the districts most damaged this summer. The senior doctor has arranged for us to have a tour by the mukhtar - town elder of that area. He drops us by the Islamic University and we drive on with the mukhtar and his driver - both decked in clean white 'keffiyeh' head dresses and the black rope around the top.

You can't tell from his face that he's the elder of a suburb that's been all but flattened. I'm always intrigued by the facade of a human face.

The crumbled facade of his district of Shujayiya is more revealing.

Grey cement and hailstones

The first sign of our unusual destination was the lack of a sign. As we sped down route 6, then route 40, even as we drew steadily closer to the snip of land, a tiny buffer between southern Israel and the sea, there was nothing to explain we were headed to Gaza. You wouldn't know of its existence, I thought, as I looked out of the window onto rich arable land flanking the motorway. Citrus and vines flourished alongside fields of neatly stacked straw bales, a colourful patchwork beneath heavy grey clouds.

I'd been awake most of the night gearing up for my trip, then at 3 am the burglar alarm went off. By 5am the Lozenge was in our bed whispering loudly in my ear:' Mummy, I want to go to Gatha!' (Mistaking it for Plaza, or should I say, Platha, the supermarket the dwarfs loved visiting in Amman). I listened to the rain slash against the windows and the Lozenge went back to sleep. J and I had breakfast before I left - the morning of our 8th wedding anniversary. The card he gave me read in Farsi:  'Every day, a spring wind.' We mulled over all the places the spring wind had blown us since we met. I put on my necklace from the Glammy which has my name written in golden Arabic letters. I find it helps with first impressions. A visual bridge between two cultures.

The first sign spelling out four of the most dreaded letters in Israel: G. A. Z. A. appeared in the form of a little sticker pointing towards a door, hastily slapped onto a plastic wall in the huge Israeli hangar on the border.

The hangar is big enough to house thousands, though who can go there? Very difficult for West Bankers to go in. Even harder for Gazans to come out. The only others we saw were two French journalists and some Norwegian NGO workers. I was with two Palestinians from a Jerusalem hospital - one from the West Bank, one from Jerusalem. The West Banker, Ahmad was closely shaved with a shiny, white face, glasses and a black velveteen jacket and black suede shoes which made him look rather like a mole. Hani was moustached and less polished. Neither of them had visited Gaza since their childhood and Ahmad's only memory of it was looking at ducks on the beach. We had a pile of medical kit from the hospital in Jerusalem which no one had cleared. Rubber gloves. Sterile wipes. Medical scrubs.The Gazans have no way of bringing anything in since the tunnels have been smashed in this summer's operation Protective Edge. The Rafah crossing in the south, bordering with Egypt has been shut since the Muslim Brotherhood were toppled there in the summer of 2013. The strip is more cut off than it has ever been. Every sterile wipe and rubber glove is urgently needed and carefully used. We waited while customs official after customs official came and asked us about the contents of the boxes.

'How long tip we can cross?'

'Wait. Just wait.'

Palestinians have had to become very good at waiting. It's become a national sport.

A couple of the customs officers were Israeli Arabs - Arabs whose parents accepted Israeli nationality between 1949 and 1967, and passed it onto their children and their children's children forming a bit of a human border area between Israel and Palestine. I wondered where the border area lay between identity papers and human souls. Both Hani and Ahmad took a subservient attitude, verbally bowing and scraping to the officials, as they attempted to negotiate the boxes through.

'Wait. Just wait.'

'For how many hours?'

'Just. Wait.'

My Palestinian travel companions were well searched. 'Have you got any money here for Hamas? Are you sure? Have you had many more casualties at the hospital during and since the war?' I wondered about the purpose of this final question. Was it simply to rub in some salt?

After three hours we were allowed to have our passports stamped, though I made sure they stamped mine on a piece of paper. An Israeli departure stamp in a passport would mean no entry to Arab countries. We struggled through the first revolving gate with our kit, passing each medical box through individually, after which we wheeled the fold up trolley through a kilometre of wired tunnel with corrugated iron roof, past ditches of fetid water, scattered broken cement drainage pipes and barbed wire. The no mans land seemed a greedy amount of space compared to the little snip of land it buffers. Gaza has a population of 1.8 million, clustered tightly over a surface area of 360km squared. I imagined what could be grown on this buffer's fertile soil.

We looked back at the looming watch towers and the huge wall - everything created from the same, grey cement matching the brooding clouds. The very same grey cement that is used in such a beautiful way in Israel's architecture, including Yad Vashem. No such aesthetic attention paid here on the border. And hardly a human to be seen but for the little trickle of people in the wire tunnel, us on foot, and a golf buggy of Palestinians headed in the other direction. As we approached the first checkpoint on the other side, hailstones pelted us from the sky and everyone waiting ran for cover, dragging their bags and an elderly man in a wheelchair through the muddy puddles.

A clutch of people assembled at the second check point where this time, Hamas customs officials were looking through bags. A group of Chilean surgeons had travelled across the world to help out in a Gazan hospital. Chile has the largest Palestinian population outside of the West Bank. They spoke very little English and no Arabic. I found myself with an unusual translation task as the bearded customs man waved bottles of Bethlehem wine at a Chilean surgeon, asking him in Arabic if he had any more bottles of alcohol on his person. Alcohol is forbidden here under Hamas' strict Islamic leadership. The confused looking Chilean pulled out some miniature whisky bottles from his combat trousers and handed them over.

A young man in immaculate jeans and shoes, somehow clean despite the puddles, a neat scarf and smart red glasses framing his bright, brown eyes approached and introduced himself. He was Sami, my fixer for the two days. He took my tripod and one heavy bag of kit from me and placed it carefully in the boot and encouraged me to take off my headscarf: 'We're not in Afghanistan, you know!' he laughed. We drew away from the border area through more puddles and pot holes towards Gaza City. A couple of wiry young boys on a horse drawn cart raced our Skoda up the muddy slope.

A Sri Lankan pastor and pagan pursuits

I got back from filming at 4pm which dovetailed neatly with the Lozenge's requirement of an assistant engineer for his new Lego helicopter. We never had the right pieces as Rashimi flew about hiding them from the lofty heights of his broomstick (the plunger to unblock the sink). And I realised that making short films in the West Bank and making Lego helicopters with not quite enough pieces and no instructions involve the same kind of technique, and a calm head - even if you're just pretending. Then St Grace's Methodist pastor from Sri Lanka came over for tea as he toured the Holy Land with his wife. After a huge slice of carrot cake, the spritely little man with wide brown eyes like a nocturnal animal, leapt from his seat and insisted on praying for us all in the kitchen. 'Oh LORD! We thank you for this your daughter into whose house we have been warmly welcomed, and her sons, they are your sons Lord! And her beautiful husband. Oh LORD we thank you for this warm welcome and this...' The Lozenge screeched into the kitchen into the middle of the Sri Lankan prayer circle shouting, 'Mummy I need a poo poo!'

The pastor continued as though nothing had happened: 'Lord, Yes Lord! For this wonderful house of wonderful people and we thank you for Grace, Lord,' 'Yes, Lord!' agreed his wife,'We thank you for your daughter Grace and that she has found this wonderful family Lord,' ('MUMMMMEEEEE, I've finiiiiiished,') 'Lord, we thank you for this wonderful cake and all the other food we've been given, and Lord, oh Lord, for these beautiful children. ('IVE FINIISHED MUMMMMMMEEEEEE') 'Yes Lord! You are King of love Lord!' (MUUMMMMMMMEEEEEE. I'VE FINIIIIIIIIIIIIISHED!') And so it continued with the pastor and the Lozenge competing ever louder for airwaves until St Grace ran out of the room chortling loudly to wipe the Lozenge's bottom. The prayer continued for at least another 10 minutes, by witch stage it was time for more pagan pursuits.

Halloween isn't acknowledged at the Lozenge's school since it's a pagan festival and the school is very Christian, which is why as Rashimi - not currently at the school - can be found rushing about cackling like a witch on the plunger broomstick, while the Lozenge fashions a ''thpathe wocket' from a cereal box humming: 'We will make you fishers of men' under his breath. Luckily one of the Consulates came up with a good old fashioned Halloween party complete with piñata smacking and excess sugar, with an adult version later on majoring on more liquid refreshments. The Lozenge was a 'Skellington' and Rashimi a very over excited 'gohtht' having been persuaded to leave the broomstick  plunger behind. (They don't make them like that any more, particularly not in China). J and I had a go at dressing up, and by the end of that particular day I didn't have to do too much to look like a witch, so it was another 1 minute dressing up routine.

It's been raining and raining and the grey skies and puddles cast the city in a completely different guise. We went to the Israel museum which is spectacular. Of course they've managed to get the original 'Adam' by Rodin. The dwarves stroked his bronze bottom. Where else would Adam stand, I ask you, but on these holy slopes? We wandered around a stunning model of the walled city from the time when the temple of Herod still stood

 - where the dwarves sat in an unknowing pieta...

And we were bamboozled by an enormous bamboo structure. It was only for over 6's to climb, apparently, according to the cautious guide. It would be more of a health hazard for every other human in the museum were the dwarves not allowed to climb it, I explained. 'It's your insurance job if they fall, not ours,' he said.

I fibbed to the next museum official saying Rashimi was four. 'No I'm not, I'm two!' he shrieked. J raised an eyebrow. I'm a more natural fibber in these circumstances. They let us through and it was magic. All bamboo sticks and what looked like shoe laces tying the joints. We could see for miles over the city from the rickety frame.

Rashimi climbed into the car and put his own seatbelt on for the first time. 'If I don't have my theat belt on, the police will see and they will shoot uth with their big gunth,' he explained to the Lozenge.

The Lozenge answered: 'No, Washimi, polithe don't shoot people. They will just make Mummy pay lots of money and then she will have no more left to buy us thtuff.'

Unfortunately, around here police, or at least IDF, do shoot people, and I sometimes wonder how much of this our dwarves catch onto, in the rumble of daily life in this beleaguered land.

Homecoming and a banana moon

Once I'd stopped thinking the multitude of other pedestrians were trying to walk into me on purpose on the London pavements, I had a magic few hours trotting about on my way to my niece Tilly's christening where two of the precious ladies in my life, Mum and Rosie, had enabled for me to be for a whistle-stop visit. Despite a dodgy experience in the hairdresser where she turned me into the wrong kinda fox (at what point did I ask her for orange?)...What a joy! The cool air, the golden and russet leaves - rather unfortunately matching my locks, and, the people looking err....happy. I marvelled as a Sikh man with a curling moustache and beautifully neat yellow turban tipped his head back and roared with laughter with another stranger in our lift at Euston station. Yes, the UK I'm sure is riddled with problems, but it was great to be back.  I gazed at more happy looking people and had lunch in a pub, then a trip on a sleeper through the country under a blanket of darkness, and put away a bottle of Merlot with 'Uncle Aweeee' as Rashimi calls him. There had been a mix up with the ticket but the conductor didn't mind a bit that it would be waiting for him to stamp on the platform at Blair Atholl. Humour. Trust. And seemingly lots of it still in this land, for all the gloom we're fed in the news.

It was a beautiful weekend where I got to be like an old lady and observe things going on - the way you never can when you're wrangling your own offspring. The strands of my life seemed to weave together: from a moving radio programme about the British leaving camp Bastion in Afghanistan which cast me back to those days, and J and my earlier married life - the golden trees a reminder of our November wedding day 8 years ago. And in the church, a prayer Mum had written for our baby brother Patrick, who didn't make it further than four months on this earth, and died on that day 35 years ago when I was four years old, followed by a reading from Deuteronomy which describes the moment when Moses sees the promised land  and then dies at the age of 112. As I read the names - the Plains of Moab, and Jericho - the city of palm trees - I could picture that view from Mount Nebo. We've seen it with our own eyes. And everything seemed to be represented that day and whipped together in a lovely round ball, albeit for being there without my own. And though I missed my boys, I was also grateful for that weekend that allowed me to put my head up and notice a few more things than normal.

The weekend brimmed with laughter and happiness and wine with that little beaming face in the midst of it all - welcomed into the community as she was, so warmly, yet unknowingly. And it made me realise how many important things happen in our lives which we will never have a recollection of. And though recollections seem like everything when you're adult - the most important work has probably gone into us by the time we start to remember any detail. The formatting of our hard wiring in that comfortable cocoon of unknowingness.

Roger the rector who had married Harry and Rosie, spoke wisely, and reminded us that by looking at the perfect and innocent face we can help ourselves to accept others, even those we may not like or agree with, by remembering that every human being starts in this perfect and beautiful state.

As the aeroplane cruised back towards that land that Moses was promised, I watched my neighbour - a teenage boy, lace the black straps of his tefiillin round and round his arm and nod over his Torah for a while, the black box snugly against his forehead below his yarmulke. Then he neatly ate his tray of kosher food and didn't allow himself to catch my eye. I wondered if at this age it's difficult to be different.

As we landed, a beautiful sunset turned the towers of Tel Aviv a rusty yellow and created silhouettes from the lines of palm trees. 'Welcome' said the Israeli passport controller with a warm smile. A first. I found the car and drove back along route 1 towards Jerusalem and towards the dwarves who had spent the weekend with St Grace while J was in Iraq, and me in Scotland. It was good to have un-scattered ourselves again.

The dwarves are particularly good at fond goodbyes and warm welcomes - and this welcome was no different. Within minutes we were on our tummies in the playroom and the room was filled with polystyrene aeroplanes and empty Haribo ('lips and teef') packets. Rashimi dressed up in his pirate outfit from uncle Duncle and dragged me outside to have a look at 'thidney the thpider' who was so small I could hardly see him, let alone his web. But he had been there all weekend, according to Rashimi, 'even in the wain.'

On their first night alone, poor St Grace got the fright of her life when she thought someone was trying to break into the house. In fact it was our security guards who wondered who was in the house as they knew J and I were away. As they shone their flashlights into her room, and rattled at the doors, St Grace ran into the boys' rooms and carried them into her own one while they slept. Then she locked her door and telephoned for help in the darkness from under her bed. Luckily she rang the right people whose numbers I'd given her, and they came over at 1am and resolved the problem. She did all the right things, and she and the dwarves shared a bed for the remaining nights so they'd be near her if there was a problem. She is a wonder that woman. The dwarves slept all the way through the panicked calls. As she explained to me: 'They are my child, so I do what I do with my child.'

I've been filming with a little eight year old girl in Ramallah, without my trusty Egyptian sidekick, who is sadly unable to come here from Jordan. How I missed her as I ran down the street in the little village in the West Bank with my film camera, tripod and a bag full of stuff - as a gaggle of school girls tittered behind me and copied my accent as I tried to give directions in Arabic. The current assistant is nice but not that energetic so she's always a bit far behind. She explained how she is trying to buy a flat in Jerusalem but everything is too expensive. Gazing out of the window onto the rubbish strewn verges of the West Bank she said: 'I think everything in this country is too expensive, apart from human lives.'

 I've been tootling about with the boys as usual when I'm not working. We wandered together down the busy main street near us to do the shopping, struggling back laden with pomegranates and potatoes and melons and onions, with bunches of complimentary mint and coriander and walnuts haemorrhaging from the bags. And I wondered how the dwarves had also convinced me to bring two scooters, a pirate hat and the cutlass with us on the trip. I made a reluctant Rashimi take the cutlass and the hat, but then he ran about waving it in the Lozenge's face, shouting: 'I'm going to cut your head off.' Not the best time and place for threats like this so I made him carry a melon instead.

I had a night out for the first time with other Mums from the Lozenge's school. Without exception they were funny and interesting, and quite an array of mostly blonde: 3 Swedes, 1 Dutch, 1 Danish, 1 Norwegian, 1 Palestinian, 1 Italian and 1 Brit (moi). Of the many great conversations I had over bottles of French and Italian wine (we're all wary of buying wine made by Israeli settlers so we stick to European in case) I agreed with a beautiful and pregnant Swede that we'd gone off flags. They often seem to represent the far right of things these days. But she admitted to being quite proud of her own flag last Thursday when her country agreed to recognise the State of Palestine, a symbolic gesture which does a lot to lift the spirits around here. In response the Israeli Foreign Minister sniped: 'The Swedish government should understand that Middle East relations are more complex than a piece of self-assembled IKEA furniture....' as he announced that Israel would be recalling its ambassador to Sweden.

The Lozenge and I stole off together for a music class. As we drove through the city, the light fading and the streetlights pinging on, he took my hand off the gear stick and held it in his, singing along to Paul Simon's 'I am an alien from Mars' one song on his favourite CD. As he wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed my cheek as we drove along, a man driving a tour bus on our right caught my eye and gave us a big smile. Rachel the beautiful French music teacher welcomed us with coffee for me and some cake for the Lozenge and got him to 'draw his dream.' He drew an elaborate picture of 'plumbing pipeth where all the water goeth around and around' and she fashioned his little dream into a music session starting with a pipe organ and explaining how air makes a noise when it rushes through a pipe - just like water when it gurgles with the air in a plumbing pipe. Then they hopped around the room doing quaver and crotchet rythms - ba, ba ba, ba, ba ba. We drove back, the cool dark air pierced by the howl of police cars racing towards some other zone of fury and violence in this magic and tragic city, and the Lozenge clambered from the front seat into the boot so he could watch the moon as we headed for home. 'I'm sure thomeone is up there looking down at us from that banana moon, Mummy.'