This week has provided some glorious escape routes from reality. The first in the form of a beautiful book: 'Travels with a Tangerine' about the Arab explorer, Ibn Battutah, who generously donated his name to a place now very dear and familiar to us, and who was perhaps the greatest and boldest explorer of his time. Travelling three times the distance of Marco Polo, Ibn Battutah, or IB, as he's known in the book, set out from his native Tangier in 1325 on the pilgrimage to Mecca, returning 29 years later. The Yemen based author and Arabist, Tim Mackintosh Smith, clearly becomes obsessed by IB's adventures, and begins a similar journey himself, as he explains, 'in the footnotes of Ibn Battutah,' basing his travel plan on whatever he can find written about it from the time, and since then.
I'm becoming as obsessed myself. Not least because of the tantalising descriptions of the untainted Orient of the day - when Cairo was a burgeoning metropolis of half a million people (the population of the city is now 22 million), when travel was difficult, because the act of travelling was difficult, not because of swathes of land being governed by the likes of Islamic State. There are more details about near death experiences from boils on the bottom or over consumption of the delicacy 'fissikh' fermented fish, than there are about human-on-human atrocity.
So in this sense, it's incredibly refreshing, and reminds me a little of our first dreams about coming to live in this region. The mystery and exoticism of spices in dusty markets and minarets in silhouette to a setting tangerine sun. Perhaps it's only when delving into the lives of people, either living or dead, that a place really comes to life. And maybe we'll never find such magic in an inanimate relic, as we do in a life lived. As the author quotes the poet, Rumi:
"When we are dead, seek for our resting place
Not in the earth, but in the hearts of men."
So each time I get a spare minute from dwarf, domestic or work life, I plunge myself into a grapefruit oil bath with the audacious Tangerine, and am transported. Away from the images of 21 Coptic Christians lined up on a winter beach waiting to die; away from khaki clad Israeli soldiers in tanks they call cars; away from the voices of desperate Western leaders promising to stamp out extremism.
It's perhaps another bit of detritus from all this violence and bad news, and being based in one of the so-called holiest places on earth, that people living here can forget to have fun. We've met some fantastic people since arriving here a year ago. Israelis, Palestinians and internationals from all over the world. And for the first time in our lives we're living in a proper party house. It being the saccharine and revolting Valentine's day last weekend, J and I threw a party in order for people to come and forget the gloom of politics, and ignore the pink pulsating hearts. We hired speakers and lights and I made a playlist which admittedly was aimed at those who were born circa 1975, but it was appreciated. Everyone had a designated costume and in the end we were about 60 people from Austin Powers and Lady Penelpe to Bjorn Borg and Marie Freidriksson Roxette. People brought food and drink. Lola Flores and Antonio Banderas from Matador arrived with warm tortilla, carefully carved Spanish cheese and a bottle of sherry. Edward Scissorhands and Winona never left the dance floor. It was a riot.
The dwarves were immensely helpful, both before and after: Beforehand we swept the whole garden and cleaned the dust from the recent dust storm from most surfaces.
Here they are on what looks like a fag break:
Then they helped us prepare the snacks.
Then they put on their waitors outfits and warmed up on the dancefloor.
Batman, (who was it who said: 'Know thyself'? Well this dwarf does) asked at 8.15pm, if he could go to bed. They'd had a dance off from the moment the speakers arrived. Not so Spiderman - who was to be found dangling off Rienhold Messner's carabinas and then spinning into infinity with the only other 3 year old, until 11.30pm when he finally accepted defeat and took refuge in our bed with Batman - the location furthest from the pumping sub woofer on the speakers. Reinhold Messner arrived with Gertrude Bell with a tray laden with pots of Tiramisu. We erred towards national stereotyping where possible, and in an international community - there were rich pickings.
Our lovely 87 year old landlady is fortunately stone deaf, so we had no complaints from upstairs. And the best bit about adult parties is everyone eats all the food you've made and appreciates it, no one pukes, and everyone had gone by 2.30am.
The clear up operation the next day was a family affair. I washed up, the dwarves washed the floors, and J did multiple runs to the bottle bank.
We'll be having another party soon. I'm sure Ibn Battutah would approve.
I'm becoming as obsessed myself. Not least because of the tantalising descriptions of the untainted Orient of the day - when Cairo was a burgeoning metropolis of half a million people (the population of the city is now 22 million), when travel was difficult, because the act of travelling was difficult, not because of swathes of land being governed by the likes of Islamic State. There are more details about near death experiences from boils on the bottom or over consumption of the delicacy 'fissikh' fermented fish, than there are about human-on-human atrocity.
So in this sense, it's incredibly refreshing, and reminds me a little of our first dreams about coming to live in this region. The mystery and exoticism of spices in dusty markets and minarets in silhouette to a setting tangerine sun. Perhaps it's only when delving into the lives of people, either living or dead, that a place really comes to life. And maybe we'll never find such magic in an inanimate relic, as we do in a life lived. As the author quotes the poet, Rumi:
"When we are dead, seek for our resting place
Not in the earth, but in the hearts of men."
So each time I get a spare minute from dwarf, domestic or work life, I plunge myself into a grapefruit oil bath with the audacious Tangerine, and am transported. Away from the images of 21 Coptic Christians lined up on a winter beach waiting to die; away from khaki clad Israeli soldiers in tanks they call cars; away from the voices of desperate Western leaders promising to stamp out extremism.
It's perhaps another bit of detritus from all this violence and bad news, and being based in one of the so-called holiest places on earth, that people living here can forget to have fun. We've met some fantastic people since arriving here a year ago. Israelis, Palestinians and internationals from all over the world. And for the first time in our lives we're living in a proper party house. It being the saccharine and revolting Valentine's day last weekend, J and I threw a party in order for people to come and forget the gloom of politics, and ignore the pink pulsating hearts. We hired speakers and lights and I made a playlist which admittedly was aimed at those who were born circa 1975, but it was appreciated. Everyone had a designated costume and in the end we were about 60 people from Austin Powers and Lady Penelpe to Bjorn Borg and Marie Freidriksson Roxette. People brought food and drink. Lola Flores and Antonio Banderas from Matador arrived with warm tortilla, carefully carved Spanish cheese and a bottle of sherry. Edward Scissorhands and Winona never left the dance floor. It was a riot.
The dwarves were immensely helpful, both before and after: Beforehand we swept the whole garden and cleaned the dust from the recent dust storm from most surfaces.
Here they are on what looks like a fag break:
Then they helped us prepare the snacks.
Then they put on their waitors outfits and warmed up on the dancefloor.
Batman, (who was it who said: 'Know thyself'? Well this dwarf does) asked at 8.15pm, if he could go to bed. They'd had a dance off from the moment the speakers arrived. Not so Spiderman - who was to be found dangling off Rienhold Messner's carabinas and then spinning into infinity with the only other 3 year old, until 11.30pm when he finally accepted defeat and took refuge in our bed with Batman - the location furthest from the pumping sub woofer on the speakers. Reinhold Messner arrived with Gertrude Bell with a tray laden with pots of Tiramisu. We erred towards national stereotyping where possible, and in an international community - there were rich pickings.
Our lovely 87 year old landlady is fortunately stone deaf, so we had no complaints from upstairs. And the best bit about adult parties is everyone eats all the food you've made and appreciates it, no one pukes, and everyone had gone by 2.30am.
The clear up operation the next day was a family affair. I washed up, the dwarves washed the floors, and J did multiple runs to the bottle bank.
We'll be having another party soon. I'm sure Ibn Battutah would approve.
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