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