Mohammad update

Do you remember this guy, Mohammad, a Syrian refugee from Jordan, who I made this little photo film about last year?

https://vimeo.com/98416648

Well, one year on, he's started school, with some nudging and shoving from us, and UK private sponsorship to replace his earnings so he can quit the day job until the summer holidays.

I went back to film him in the Jordanian town of Ramtha, near the Syrian border, yesterday. We haven't seen him for about 5 weeks and he must have grown 3 inches in that time. I told him he'd turned into an 'Alef' the 'Aaahh' sound of the Arabic alphabet which is drawn like a long, thin vertical line. He looked delighted.

We interviewed him at home first, and he told us how proud he was to be at school, how his life has changed, and how everyone treats him differently now. Then we followed him to his classroom where he had a religion lesson from a charming teacher with twinkling brown eyes. He gave Mohammad extra help with his handwriting and spellings (he's been out of school for nearly 3 years). And I can vouch there seemed nothing hardline about the religious instruction the boys were receiving. In fact my very unreligious Egyptian friend who I was with admitted she was really interested in what they were learning about the Koran.

We got all the boys to stand up and introduce themselves. 'I'm Ahmad from Homs.' 'I'm Abdullah from Dera'a'. 'I'm Zeid from Damascus.' You wonder about their future. But for now they're safe, and receiving five half-days education in one week. All funded by Jordanian government and aid agencies. There's something sticking to the sides, even amidst the chaos.

When I struggled back in the door with my kit at 6.30pm, having been out of the house for a full 12 hours, Rashimi came rushing out expecting it to be the Lozenge who'd been at a friend's house. When he saw me, he looked really disappointed and said: 'But why ithn't it Lauwie?'

And Rashimi has recently performed us his new Easter hymn, he learned at school: 'Lauwie in the Highest.'

Brothers.

Trying to avoid the pub brawl

Living in this country can be like standing too close to a pub-brawl. You can be unwittingly dragged into the fight and involved in the politics of hate, even as an outsider. And I've begun to suspect that hatred is more catching than love. But living here, at least, can make you aware of that.

The Israeli elections have happened, and although the right-wing Netanyahu government is still in charge - many say on the basis of security and the economy - there are scores of Israelis who are disappointed with the result.

The language and behaviour of hate continues in response. Israeli author and journalist Yehonatan Geffen wrote on his Facebook page: "...The most important thing that needs to be said after the election results to all those who chose the ballot for Bibi: Don’t cry when your children die in the next military campaign...You again elected the leader who promises us death and not life, fear and not hope. But despite the disappointment and hopelessness – we cannot give up, cry or complain. Few as we are, we must continue to battle and protest against the regime of fear and hatred and unite for love and peace.”

Last Friday, Geffen was beaten at the door of his home by a man who called him a 'leftist traitor'.

Language is a enough of a touch paper in this land. The pub brawl is lifted to the level of social media, and back down to be continued at the threshold of someone's home.

But there's nothing like an election to make you ask: 'Who are these people?' Discluding Palestinians who don't vote in Israeli elections, you look behind the blue star of the Israeli flag and you see it's as multifaceted as a checkerboard-cut topaz. Look at all these for instance - from the Haaretz newspaper polling a few days before the election:

Incredible, really, that it calls itself a country at all.

But it's springtime, which in this brittle land, softens everything. The hills around us whisper with grasses and wild flowers swaying in the March winds. The lunar landscape towards the Dead Sea has metamorphosed into grazing ground for the Bedouin communities' flocks of sheep and goats, staggering about the hillsides with swollen stomachs.

It's a perfect season to visit. My cousin Alexandra and her family have just been staying. The small fry of the household multiplied from 2 to 5. As I said to St Grace, as she unglued cheese coated pasta bows from the kitchen floor, 'If we can manage with 5, then we'll be fine with 3'. She laughed. She's the youngest of 11 children so nothing phases her.

At around 6.30 one morning, I was lying in bed reading, when Rashimi cruised in with Betsy, the oldest of the five smalls. He gave her a tour of my dressing table and asked: 'And do you know who thith man is?' holding my dancing Buddha statue that my friend Sophie gave me, in his hand. The little Buddha is carved from black stone, has a broad smile on his face and his arms raised above his head in a flamenco-esque pose. 'Well, this man is saying: 'HOOWAY for LIFE!'' Rashimi explained.

Rashimi's observation was echoed in the beaming face of the Israeli obstetrician J and I visited this week to get a 3D introduction to our baby-to-be. She works in the Wolfson family medicine centre, sandwiched between the 'Flatter Boutique - 'Irreverently Modest' and the 'Head Lice treatment. She must be in her 60s, and in her surgery, you can hardly move for baby photographs held by yarmulka-wearing, grinning Dads and exhausted but ecstatic Mums. As she pointed out the two directions of blood in the baby's heart, the lobes of the brain and all the other mind boggling miracles contained in a 20cm form, I asked her: 'I wonder how many of these you've seen?'

'Of course I can't count' she replied, 'but I can tell you that each one is as exciting as the last.' Then we said goodbye as she prepared her bag to go and conduct an emergency C-section on a 43 year old woman, pregnant with twins. 'These will be her only babies. These are very important babies!' She laughed.

One of J's colleagues married a beautiful Israeli girl last week. She's as petite as Mrs Pepperpot, though was an M16 assault-rifle instructor in the Israeli defence force during her military service, which is compulsory for Israeli women, for 18 months, and men for 3 years. Her family is secular, and the bride has moved from her military experience to a career in homeopathy. She's liberal-minded and sweet natured.

The couple had a symbolic service with a little canopy over their heads, a sip from the same glass and a smash of it under their feet. We danced to a silent disco with huge white headphones over our ears after 11pm so as not to disturb the neighbours in the residential district of Florentine in Tel Aviv. It could have been Rio or San Francisco. Her Mum didn't look far off my age, I thought, as we skipped about to a Hebrew folk tune. One other Brit had a bit to drink and decided to take on some of the Israeli guests about the topic of Gaza.

But it was a true celebration of life.

Like separating the skin from the inside of an eggshell, babies and weddings are always good methods of peeling apart the soul of a place from its politics. And when you're in that core, you feel very, very far from hatred.

I met up with the leader of Yemenite community in Israel this week for a story I'm researching. Jewish civilization has thrived in Yemen for over 2000 years, but is increasingly under threat. Israel is one of the most popular destinations for members of its beleaguered tribes who are increasingly at risk from sectarian violence there. I was expecting to meet someone more traditional looking, but Yigal was born here, so was dressed in jeans and shirt, with no skull cap. His father arrived from Yemen when he was 7 years old and passed on his role to Yigal, who represents the Yemenites here, and is closely in touch with the 40 families still remaining in Yemen. They don't want to leave their ancient heritage, but it could be that they'll be forced to leave in the near future. He seemed happy to talk and laughingly admitted: 'I'm not into politics anymore. It's a snake pit. I have 5 children, 9 grandchildren. For me now, it's all about Life. And this for me, is Life.'

The longer you live here, the more you see of the strengths within the fractured state and not just the polarised version you see from the outside. It's a state built on fear, perhaps. But also a state that should be able to emerge from the love of life. As J pointed out the other day: 'When you look at love of children, love of eating and love of life, there's no difference between a Palestinian and an Israeli.'

And for the future of Israel, hope is at the centre of both the left and right of the electorate. The left puts its hopes in diplomacy which will strengthen relationships with neighbouring countries; while the right puts its hopes in a beefy, robust leadership that can defend itself against its multiple enemies, who are also its neighbours.

Could we dare to hope that these hopes may unite, one day?

Another thing that got me thinking is a piece I read in Haaretz newspaper about the Israeli singer, Asaf Avidan, who said that he didn't consider himself Israeli and that collective fear was the only thing holding the country together, claiming that he considers himself not an 'Israeli artist', but an 'artist from Israel'.

He said: 'I don't show up to represent Israel. I'm not a politician. I'm not a diplomat.'

Once again, we need to peel off politics from some rosier parts of Israel, to see a future. This is particularly important in the case of art.

There's a movement called BDS which began in 2005 when Palestinian civil society issued a call for a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights.

It's a great idea and we are some of many internationals who try to avoid buying wine and other products coming from Israeli settlements. And it has become globally very popular meaning that at least 2 Israeli dance troupes, or should I say, dance troupes from Israel, have been boycotted from trying to perform internationally in the past few years.

I've always thought BDS was an important way to have some impact on Israeli apartheid, but many critics note that while the BDS movement is having very limited impact on the Israeli economy, Palestinians are being hit harder. Israeli companies employ more than 100,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whom earn as much as five times as much as they would locally.

Living here, if you manage to step a little back from the brawl, you see so much that is about a possible future and about a Good Life in a fractured land.

Blanket hatred or boycott, like some kind of political antibiotic, means that as you kill the harmful bacteria, you can inadvertently kill off the useful antibodies which might one day cure the state from the inside.

In other words. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This is a very important baby, too.

The reflection of silver on water

https://vimeo.com/119941368

Here is the story about little Lujain, who had 2 congenital cataracts removed at St John Eye Hospital. Her life has been transformed.

Lujain's name means: 'Liquid silver' or 'The reflection of silver on water.'

Blue Sky thinking

After an inconclusive search for the Holy, Mum and Dad, J and I witnessed the politics of the present day on a trip with Breaking the Silence to Hebron. I've written about them already, but this tour was slightly different.

Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. "We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life."

We started off in the nearby Israeli settlement to Hebron, Qiryat Arba'a. I'd never been inside a settlement before, though parts of Jerusalem feel very like this one. As Alon, the Israeli ex-soldier, explained to us what Palestinians trying to scrape a living in the land that remains theirs, go through on a daily basis, Dad looked wistfully at the ground covering of spring plant life, and said: 'Look at all the pretty flowers, who know nothing of all this.'

We walked around the ghost town of Hebron, remembering Alon's explanation of his stint in Gaza, where he and his fellow Israeli soldiers occupied a house where an elderly lady was still living. She had been unable to walk to safety with her family after the warning leaflets were distributed, urging people to leave before the army broke in. So she was left in the house on her own with Alon and his men. He explained how slowly it dawned on him that this Gazan grandmother was no different from his own grandmother, herself a Jew from Iraq. And how he began, from that moment, to question what the Israeli state was trying to achieve, and their ways of doing it. Organisations like Breaking the Silence are key to everyone's understanding of the other side.

But I realised, looking at Mum and Dad's reaction to these first hand accounts, and the opportunity to see the occupation with their own eyes, how difficult it is to visualise when you're not here. Before we came to live in Jerusalem, I wondered if people exaggerated the facts.

Now I know, they do not.

This graphics organisation, Visualizing Occupation, do a lot to explain the situation clearly.

The differing legal status between an Israeli child, and a Palestinian child:

And more clear graphics at this site:
http://972mag.com/special/visualizing-occupation-2/

As we walked down the friction point in Hebron, called: 'Shuhada Street' the irony of one possible way to translate it, struck me.

'Shu hada?' in Arabic, means, 'What is this?'

It's a question we should all be asking.

It's all about the Israeli state, and their blue sky thinking.

How looming and dark are the Palestinian skies in comparison.

That night we saw Tony Blair at the American Colony Hotel where we'd had dinner. His security men, paid for by the British taxpayer, were there, dripping with communications devices. TB was on the phone, his plastic complexion unwrinkled and silver fox hair unruffled. Dad and I concocted what we should have said to him as we left. I loved the idea of Dad attempting a citizen's arrest. I think he could have pulled it off. TB should be in jail. And it will take more than citizens, it seems.

This morning I greeted one of the Palestinian teachers at the dwarfs' school, as usual. She'd had her glossy, black hair cut into a neat Mum-bob, but between the bouncing sides of the bob-cut were her grim looking eyes. 'I'm so sad,' she said.

Netanyahu's victory in last night's elections is disastrous for Palestine. The prospects of a Palestinian state is now really and truly lying dead in the water; and along with it the promises of thousands of new homes for Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.

While Herzog and Livni's coalition might have staved off more building, and helped Washington and Europe to work towards some form of two state existence for this troubled land, Bibi - (Netanyahu's nickname) - has no such plans.

As Jeremy Bowen wrote on the BBC website:
'He (Netanyahu) issued a series of grim warnings about the consequences for Israel if he lost - Arabs with Israeli citizenship were voting, so his people needed to turn out.

He also made a series of promises that would worsen Israel's relations with the US and Europe if he continues as prime minister. He promised thousands of new homes for settlers in the occupied territories, and said he would not allow the Palestinians to have a state.'

Settlements are the thorns in the side of any peaceful solution, with their amoeba like reproduction, dotting the green hillsides with their immaculate white walls and red roofs.

I read in the New York Times this weekend there are now over 600,000 Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories - between the West Bank and East Jerusalem - many of them housed during Netanyhu's aggressive building campaign in the 1990s.

'I do not intend to vacate any settlements,' he has said.

And the outcome of this election gives Netanyahu a strong chance of forming a coalition government.

Along with the already dwindling hopes of Palestinians around their lands, Mum and Dad left to go back home leaving me feeling a little bereft without their staunch support, humour and holiday spirit.

So now I'm filling the gap with trying to write like a MoFo and finish a few deadlines before the next visitors, and then an Easter holiday.

Looking for J.Christ in Nazareth

I brought Mum and Dad back to Jerusalem with me. Not much chat on the plane as we all watched films and read books. Though I did have to do a bit of translation work between the air hostess and Mum and Dad, as they were both using their new 'noise excluding headphones' which made communication a little tricky. And I did wonder if it was a good idea for people in their later 60's to put anything over their ears which excluded even more sound. Anyway. They had a peaceful flight at least.

After a break from dwarfs, there's nothing nicer than just hanging out in a room with them and catching up. The first morning we got back, as Rashimi ate his cereal he stared into the mouth of his little rubber crocodile he's always playing with. 'Mummy, I don't want to go inside anyone'th mouth,' he said, shuddering at the look of the sharp little teeth. Life in micro. Having a 3 year old about helps you see everything differently. 'Mummy, I don't want you to die,' he continued. I wasn't sure if there was a link between the teeth and my potential departure from this life.

The dwarfs were bouncing off every flat surface when they saw us. Early mornings got earlier with the excitement of having Grandma and Grandpa in the fold. As I cranked slowly back into work mode, Mum and Dad were like our personal assistants - collecting Rashimi from school, dwarf wrangling, dwarf feeding, dwarf bathing. By the end of the first morning Dad had unblocked the drains, and fixed the un-openable front gate which had swelled with the sudden sunshine. They were in the house whenever I got back from filming and I wondered whimsically what our life would be like if we lived a little nearer them. But as Mum always says, what you lose, you gain. And at least for once in our lives we can offer both our sets of parents a change of scene unlike any other.

Last week I was filming the last of 4 films I'm making for the Eye Hospital here in Jerusalem. The final film is about a little 9 year old girl from near Ramallah in the West Bank, called Nur. Her name means 'light'. One of her eyes has a bad squint which makes the lid hang down, half closed. The other girls in her class are vile to her and call her 'maritha' - 'the sick one'. There's still a huge stigma to looking different in Arab communities. Nur won't even wear her glasses for fear of exacerbating her different-ness.

The operation was a double eye muscle surgery - one muscle in each eye. Nur arrived with her Granny at the hospital. Her Granny has not a tooth in her head, and can't walk without a stick, but she's the only one of Nur's family who has Israeli permission to travel from the West Bank into Jerusalem. As I've mentioned before, Palestinians in the West Bank have either a West Bank identification card, or an East Jerusalem one. Never both, and this limits movement and living for all.

Nur arrived in the children's ward looking really excited. Her family is very poor and she's not accustomed to being looked after. A male nurse gave her arm a stroke and deftly fashioned a bit of paper into a bunny rabbit, and a frog. Nur was delighted and spent the rest of the afternoon making the paper frog hop around the floor, and settling into her hospital bed. Her Granny sank into a chair by the bed, took off her shoes, and went straight to sleep. The journey from West Bank to Jerusalem, through checkpoints and chaging buses, is long and tiring, particularly for the elderly.

I filmed Nur's operation the following day, feeling glad of the barrier of my camera between the inverted eyeball being stitched, and my own eyes. I could concentrate on the exposure and angle which prevented squeamishness. The day after the operation, her eye was already looking much more similar to the other one. I'm praying the result is spectacular next week at the follow up appointment, both for the purposes of the film, and for Nur's life from now. I wonder how long it takes for a stigma to wear away, and for a little girl, who's just like all the rest of them inside, to be accepted by her own kind for the first time in her life.

Then we took the personal assistants on a trip to Nazareth. Mum and Dad come from different planes when it comes to Holy, so it's always interesting to travel with them both in these iconic lands. Dad's first reaction is always: 'No - that's got to be a load of todge' and Mum's shows more of a margin of disappointment when, as she put it,'The outskirts of Nazareth remind me a little of Aviemore. I think this could be the first and last visit to this place.' Living in the Holy Land, you soon get used to places no longer looking biblical. The wells, birthplaces, baptism sites and shrines, often well-covered with modern tatt and hidden behind coach loads of Asian tourists.  But for infrequent visitors, perhaps the disappointment is keener.

Still, the dwarfs have their purpose at times, and we were soon propelled into the present day. 'Who ith Jesuth?' asked Rashimi. And as Emile, the kindly guest house owner gave me laborious instructions in broken English, complete with map, about what we should see in Jesus' hometown, Rashimi came skipping out of the loo and yelled: 'Laurie's done a green poo poo!!' Dad was in the tiny cubicle with him, and J was called to go and look. I saw him and Dad looking down into the bowl, and then at each other, incredulous. 'Oh my GOD!,' they said in unison, 'That is really an emerald green! What on earth's he eaten?'

Trying to keep concentrating on the kindly instructions coming in my other ear, I had no choice but to try and ignore the commotion and keep listening to Emile.

But I managed to ask the Lozenge, who was skipping about and looking very well, what he'd eaten at school.

'Well...we did eat a bowl of gween powidge becauthe today was CRAZY Day at school!!'

We were shown to our family quarters and the dwarfs were delighted to see that we had to move a wardrobe from the doorway to make our rooms adjoining, and although there was no Narnia the other side, the wardrobe was a highlight in itself. Then we spent the rest of the day giggling about the mysterious cheques for Mum and Dad's holiday cottages they'd received from someone called J.Christ. Mum even went with the cheque to the bank, before the clerk questioned jokingly whether it was worth trying to cash it. Then Dad fell for it another time. We imagined getting in touch with J.Christ over email, asking if he would be bringing his father and H.Ghost with him, and surely they only needed one bed for the three of them. We could leave a jug of water with some wine glasses and see what they did with it.

I can't say I learned a whole lot more about the beginnings of the real J.Christ from the trip to Nazareth.

But the dwarfs enjoyed it. As the Lozenge and I nipped down the road early the next morning for some orange juice, he skipped beside me and said: 'Mummy, this is a lovely life, isn't it.'

'I weally don't want it to end.'

For mother's day he drew me a card with light bulbs dangling all over it.

The Lozenge with his Scotsman t-shirt in front of Palestinian graffiti-ed wall in Nazareth

Writing like a MoFo and passive communications

Sometimes the machine of life can grind on so efficiently, that when it comes to sitting down and just writing...I can't do it. I hate it. I feel the seat getting warm, and there's still nothing on the blank page. The page gives me blank look and I give it one back. Then I make a cup of green tea, and then Rashimi distracts me, which is actually just what I want. Though I know deep down, it really isn't. But then, he's my 3 year old and I think, he needs me here doing Lego stuff and digging. Wouldn't I rather be here than exchanging blank looks with my 27 inch screen? In a few years he'll be 10 and my screen will still be 27 inches. And believe me, that's big when you're only 10 inches from it.

So I found a website, and it seems I'm not the only one that gets this.

The author, Sugar, says: 'If someone died each time I checked my inbox, there would be no one left.'

Oh man. That's me.

She says: 'Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig. You need to do the same. … So write...Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.'

So, I've begun, and that's better than not beginning at all. So she says. And Rashimi is at school for the next 4 hours.

A couple of weeks ago I left for London at 4am, on a pilgrimage to a christening of a beautiful new godson, Casper, and to meet my new niece, Daisy and hang out with my still quite new niece, Tilly. Girl time - in many senses.

It felt disloyal, creeping away in the darkness before the dwarfs darted into the daytime. But by the time I cruised out of the plane in Heathrow, with one small bag, I realised I had time to breathe and notice what was going on around me. The normal situation is hurtling around the corner into arrivals with a trolley stacked with cases, and two dwarfs perched on top; orange juice down one leg of my jeans and chocolate finger prints on my top.

The first thing I noticed was a large vending machine selling SIM cards. Each time I go back home, the UK has moved on, and I feel like an old person remembering how things used to be. But seriously, I do remember a time when you bought packets of fags from a vending machine. Now the world has moved on and communications have become our new nicotine. I don't smoke these days, but I reminisced about those days when a handbag was not complete without a ten pack of Marlboro Lights and good friendships were made on the pavement outside the office.

As I stood, gawping, I wished I could exchange the loud phone call my neighbour was having on his iPhone 6 for a plume of smoke. I think we suffer more these days from passive communications than we ever did passive smoking. People puffing out conversational toxins are more vexatious to the spirit, I honestly believe. But at least it doesn't make your hair smell.

Then I noticed that most men in the airport were carrying a handbag and wearing designer neckscarves. And then an announcement warned not to let your children ride on trolleys. Our dwarfs wouldn't travel with us if they couldn't ride on a trolley. It's the whole point of a trolley and a smooth floored airport combo, is it not? But life in the Arab world (though not so security-conscious Israel) has taken us away from a nanny state.

I remember a taxi driver in Amman telling me once, as we gaped at four children standing up out of the car sunroof as their Dad hooned their hatchback along the road, that it was really dangerous when children did that, because sand and dust could get in their eyes.  Not the first risk on the list, I thought to myself.

But in the UK, the nanny state trains us to be over cautious. Maybe that's why so many men are now in scarves.

Then I spent a glorious 4 days with friends and family. Tilly, a wide eyed one year old. I don't get the chance to watch her unfurl on a daily basis, but she's gone from a tiny bud to a beautiful flower since I last saw her. And Daisy, at just 5 weeks, a perfect parcel of peace, slumbering and sipping her way through those early weeks. And clearly adored by her brother, Fergus. He's so kind and gentle. I don't remember quite such a smooth ride when Rashimi was born. I have clear visions of the Lozenge waving a wooden spoon above Rashimi's head, while checking I was watching.

I realised on my way back that we've mislaid most of our baby kit. I have no recollection if 2 years ago, in our frantic departure from London, I dumped the whole lot outside the door of Mind in Camden, or if it's all in a suitcase somewhere. I'll have to post a message on the Jerusalem parents Facebook group asking for second hand kit.

Maybe we might even find the original Moses basket.

Of Gods and Men, but don't forget about nature

A Bedouin prayer, answered

J and I watched the beautiful French film, Of Gods and Men again last week. It struck just as much as the first time we saw it, though the aftertaste was perhaps more chilling this time.

Based around the true story of an order of Trappist monks living in Algeria, the film focuses on the monks' work in a local Arab community and their excruciating decision about whether to stay, or leave, as the inevitable threat from Islamist extremists looms closer.

They stay. And one night, they are taken from their remote monastery and murdered in the snow covered fields by the Islamists.

These events happened 20 years ago, and it's hard not to feel that since then the situation has got a whole lot worse.

One subtitle quotes a phrase from Blaise Pascal: “Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.”

Here in Jerusalem we are reminded of this daily, not only when we watch films such as these.

Israeli extremists set fire to a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem this week. A mosque near Bethlehem was torched by a similar group a few days earlier.

I was speaking to a live wire of a man from the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides education, social services and healthcare to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. He said he's certain there will be another war in Gaza this summer.

Banksy's just been to Gaza. Have a look at some of his work there.
www.banksy.co.uk

I wonder what the Gazans make of it.

Netanyahu has finally made the famed, uninvited visit to Washington, angering Obama by going straight to Congress. He railed about the threat of Iran - just as everyone knew he would.

But what does this mean for your average Palestinian?

Not much, really. They're more concerned about Palestinian Authority workers not being paid due to Israel's withholding of tax revenues, meaning that workers in all public services are working for almost nothing or not working at all. Think hospitals, police...

The local security infrastructure is a much closer concern for your average Palestinian man or woman. Iran feels a long way away.

Against this backdrop, I was lucky enough to spend a day in the patch of land between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea with a Bedouin expert, interviewing some Bedouin families for a possible story.

It's a tough life for the Bedouin people in Palestine. All clans have suffered multiple displacements and for the most part, they exist in temporary constructions trying to rear sheep and goats, with the constant threat of demolition or eviction orders. One of the areas on particularly shaky ground is the one I visited yesterday. The Israeli ministry of housing is hungrily waiting for the opportunity to build  more settlements on these lands, meaning the Bedouin would be forced into what have been described as 'urban sink holes' threatening their culture and way of life.

But, as for all subsistence communities, not only Gods, and Men, but the climactic conditions, play a large part in their state of mind - albeit as temporary and precarious as the rickety dwellings.

As Abu Ra'ed, Abu Mohammad and Abu Suleiman explained to me, this spring has been the best in years. The rain and snow have enabled the usually lunar landscape to transform itself into swathes of grass and wildflowers. The clans have saved so much money by not having to give expensive fodder to their animals, and both livestock and Bedouin are literally, rolling in clover.

They are living in the moment. Bedouin style.

The joy was infectious.

Sausages and true friends

I didn't think we were in need of a break. But when we stepped out of Prague terminal 3 snuffling and snorting like 4 truffle pigs, thanks to the cyclical coughs and colds we've been harbouring for the past month, I felt my shoulders relaxing as I sank into the familiarity of Europe. Not home, crucially, but a few steps closer. Then, as though sniffing out some of our own kind, we found ourselves gazing at the mottled and dusty array of sausages, salamis, frankfurters and hams in the pork Deli, tactfully placed right next to the end of the tunnel which spits out daily arrivals from Israel.

Perhaps we did need that break after all....50 metres squared, stuffed with P O R K. And women wearing clothes I too once wore, like mini skirts. And one even had blue hair. The worst bit about being an ex-pat is you never meld into your host country, and then you cease to fit in back home too. Though actually, being with-child in Jerusalem - which has to be the reproduction capital of the world - I will soon look much more like every other Haredi Orthodox or Arab woman on the pavement.

But anyway, the array of pork products put us completely off course and we ended up snuffling and shuffling our way up to the opposite end of the airport from the baggage reclaim. The dwarfs whined about aching legs, but after no slack from us, the Lozenge solved the problem by putting Rashimi in an airport child's buggy which enabled R to rest and L to forget they were actually having to w-a-l-k. (Never call it a walk. Or you'll have a dwarf revolt on your hands.)

They're excited about the baby-to-be, and the Lozenge sometimes likes to practise on the horrified 'I'm-NOT-a-baby! Rashimi, hence his delight about pushing him in a buggy. They've announced that when it's born, they want to call it: 'Bunny Floppy Ears'.

And then we arrived in an area supposedly the equivalent of Hackney in Prague, at a grey, flat-faced building, hiding a stack of beautiful parquet floored and tall windowed apartments. Our friends now live in one of them. We fell into their arms. True, true, dear friends. A bit like the pork deli, a rare thing in Jerusalem. Not that the people aren't nice here. We just don't have the history quite yet.

And talking of history, it's really not my strong point, but after plates of shining orange frankfurters, buttery potatoes and beer (there I was thinking we'd have a far-from-falafel-detox while we were away...) we wandered up to their nearby park which looks out over the city and looked at the blue misty perspective, punctuated by Gothic spires and rows of coloured houses, each one with a different facade from its neighbour.

The city seems to have all the majesty of Vienna, but with little rebellious and individual-natured twists. The population seems to be un-mixed, with the exception of Vietnamese who fulfil the same role as Pakistanis in London when it comes to small grocery shops.

And despite the Gothic churches, the atmosphere felt gloriously far from the sombre aura of humans under the weight of scrupulously observed religion. Not a headscarf or a side-lock in sight. And you know what, it was magic.

I wondered how long it takes for you to start being influenced by your surroundings to the extent that you change, as I gawped at arty snaps of semi naked women on the walls of one restaurant loo and tried not to feel shocked.

From cafe to restaurant we wandered - 4 adults, 4 children - sipping on molten chocolate in cafes, scampering through parks whose robust, well designed playgrounds made our little local Arab ones look rather vintage and flaky

The Jerusalem version

and trying to avoid the doggy-doo-doo littering the pavements. Here in Jerusalem the Israelis are the only ones with pet dogs, and generally they do the dog poo in the bag thing. And Arabs don't do dogs. So in a country with vast amounts of disturbing detritus on the ground, the one thing you don't get is d.d.d. So of course, we 4, were always the ones to tread right in it.

There was unfortunately a four day whine-a-thon from the youngest member of our pack. Rashimi, it appears is more comfortable in the Southern Med being carted about in a 4 x 4. Walking the cold streets in a Parka jacket was not his idea of fun. And he wasn't afraid to let us know. What with Bunny Floppy Ears on board, I can't really carry him at the mo, so poor J had a permanent Rashimi badge or stole as he wielded him, whining and crying, along path, after road, after forest lane. The truffle pig virus, may also have had something to do with it. But you never know where virus ends and petulance begins with dwarfs.

Interesting being in a country whose blight was formerly communism. As I speed walked ahead to avoid hearing the wailing of Rashimi, I wondered if the 'reds under the bed' could honestly have seemed as threatening as this crISIS the world is struggling to contend with today. Did the Cold War feel as dramatic as this frenzied, wicked sandstorm whipped up by the Islamic State nutcases? Hard to believe it was as bad. But then read about the Stazi and the pogroms, and the same kernels of all encompassing evil are there.

Gloriously there was some synchronicity between my book about Ibn Battutah, the medieval Tangerine explorer and the Gothic Cathedrals we looked at. While Ibn Battutah was on his epic mission from Tangiers to Mecca which took him 29 years, the spires at St Barbara's Cathedral near Prague, were being carved, and frescoes still wet on her very walls.

The Black Death was also a link to my understanding of the time. While, in 1348 at the time of the Great Plague in Damascus, Ibn Battutah witnessed "all conditions of men assembling in the Omayyad Mosque until it overflowed with them. They spent the night there in prayers, liturgies and supplications. After the dawn prayer, they all went out together, barefoot, carrying Qur'ans...." Not that this supplication worked, as the very same plague swept through the Europe, including what is now the Czech Republic. And we visited, in the town of Kutna Hora, an Ossuary, whose interior is decorated entirely with skulls and bones of victims of the very same plague and others thereafter. In the middle of the church there is a huge chandelier made entirely from the grey remains - dripping with femurs and dainty little hand bones, with piles of crania. The dwarfs were f a s c i n a t e d. As I stared at the skull mountain in the middle, I wondered why we worry about anything in this life, if this is the outcome for each of us.

Back in Jerusalem, cloaked with warm, spring air, the Mediterranean dwarf sprang back to life, and our lives continued as before, with perhaps some pork-infused energy and the feeling of having been in a friendship-spa. The dwarf duo and I visited the Mount of Olives, where wild flowers covered the ground,

and the Lozenge picked 'thalad' for his imaginary friends Lotta and Squeak the Rabbit and took handfuls of green things home to make a potion. Which he did, with the hand blender and a huge dose of food colouring which he and Rashimi spilt all over the floor, dying the white cupboards a watery green colour.

'salad' picking on the Mount of Olives

They ran about in the shabby playground and I watched young Arab girls swinging on the monkey bars in their jeans while their Mums, decked from head to toe in headscarf and long, acrylic 'manteau' coat, watched from the picnic table. The transition from monkey bars to motherhood seemed rather close to me as I sat watching them all.

Our break also meant that I did some soul searching about small annoyances about having St Grace always, always in the house. Particularly because even though she does work, she's also very good at resting.

Cantankerous is not a word that should be used to describe old men. It should be used to describe pregnant women. And in a few months, there will be an emphasis on the 'tank'. And she's not my only victim. After chasing news editors to try and get one of them to commission a story, woe betide the ones who are still keeping me waiting...I will keep on at them until they answer; until I am the size of a semi-detached; until I get someone to take one of my ideas.

But it turns out, that sadly St Grace is suffering from absent-but-overbearing-husband-syndrome. It seems he has an informant here in Jerusalem who tells him what she's up to. Sometimes even making up lies about what she does. He doesn't want her to go anywhere on her day off. When she explains that he can do what he likes in Jordan and she would like him to trust her enough to go out with some girlfriends on her days off to relax, his reply is: 'But you are a woman. And I am a man.' How many bone-headed, (I can vouch, after the visit to that Ossuary, that this is what they are) fearful males are there on the planet, of every religion, trying to limit life for women full of curiosity and potential? We worry for her - because it must be a suffocating and enervating source of unhappiness for her. And it does cast a pall around the house too. Plus it means she never goes anywhere.

Living in the same house, she and I could hardly have more different existences.

Mine, despite the bin that never shuts right outside my office door because Rashimi has tampered with it; and my desk door that falls off in my hand each time as the Lozenge has unscrewed the hinges; the food colouring staining the floor from the potion spillages; the fact my hands are so raspy I scratch myself with my own skin; my mind is a flip chart and a hive of muddled ideas and intentions and brainwaves and little moments of career-despair and then the odd light bulb moment; and our bed is surrounded by Playmobil and Lego vehicles and  I get bread stick crumbs (left by a nonchalantly snacking dwarfs) on my cheek when I go to bed at night. I'll soon be the size of a small dorm-o-bile and I'm risking the mirth, or worse: indifference, of really busy news editors as I try and campaign for my little video stories to go a bit further than an NGO webpage. But, I'm free! And the man I live with is ready to brainstorm aforementioned little ideas whether it be 6.30am or pm. I get a cuddle when things aren't going right, and a cheer when things are. How did I get so lucky? It has at least, helped me be less cantankerous to St G as we talk through her situation over a quick cup of tea before I begin work at 7.45 am.

And perhaps a recent smile may have been thanks to Sri Lanka's recent victory over England in the cricket.

And maybe it's not just me who's influenced by the heavy hand of convention and religion in this city: after a sunny weekend, and our first picnic (on March 1st, no less) J was watching the boys as they played in another park. The Lozenge came running up, panting to tell him: 'Daddy, Washimi has just been talking to some girls he's never even met before!'

We should continue to get out of here for some European infusions.

It's clearly not just about the pork.