There were a few surprised looks when we explained we were going to Tasmania for the Easter holidays. A long way to go, but a necessary pilgrimage to visit J's beloved uncle Frank and auntie Odile.
The day before we left I went to meet the Lozenge at his Easter service at the Garden Tomb, where L explained, 'Was where the rock was moved away'. It's a rock-cut tomb which was unearthed in 1867 and is considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, with the rocky escarpment nearby proposed by some scholars to be Golgotha.
I entered the site to the sound of singing chidden, about half an hour late and saw the Lozenge fast asleep in a ray of sunshine, his head lolling against his teacher's shoulder on the front row. 'He's gone!' his teacher mouthed to me.
At the end of the service L realised he'd lost his monkey back pack which he takes to school every day, so we went in search of the bus and driver, Yacoub, apparently somewhere in the vicinity. I asked L which driver it had been: 'the one with the brown face and the ball-y head. You know, his head look-liketh a ball.'
We spotted the familiar high top minibus approaching a roundabout by the tomb. Yacoub saw us, waved, stopped the minibus in the middle of the roundabout, got up from the drivers seat to forage in the back and came back into view, waving the back pack at us. We scurried up to him, a line of traffic forming behind his bus, and grabbed the rucksack with many thank yous. The automatic door slid closed, and Yacoub cruised off blowing kisses in L's direction and waving goodbye. A head like a ball, maybe, but a very warm heart, and another vital cog in the wheel of our lives here in Jerusalem.
We went home to begin packing, via a shop where L wanted to buy 'a plain book so I can draw all the animals in Australia. Like flies, and stuff.'
We began the two day journey, driving over the border to Jordan to catch a flight to Dubai. We had a day to kill in Dubai. And kill it we did. As we wandered around a mall with a brace of whining dwarves, it felt like I had a rock on a rope in each hand, with a whining noise emitting from both sides around hip level. Perhaps my hatred of the mall travelled down my arms and into the boys making them behave this way. It being a Friday, the place was rammed and artificially warm - that warmth that creeps in below the cool cushion of air conditioning and takes over when there are too many bodies in a space.
The boys kept getting Burberry-ed and Louis Vuitton-ed as they were smacked in the head by designer handbag toting women. After an expensive and unsatisfactory lunch at TGI Fridays we found a cinema showing Cinderella, which was actually quite wonderful, though now the dwarves are paranoid that I'll die and they'll have to live with a stepmother. I reassured them I was planning to live for as long as possible, and not all stepmothers were evil, anyway.
Back at the aiport for the next leg of the journey to Singapore, the dwarves inhaled more junk food. J had bought a packet of chilli flavour crisps which they wanted to try. 'They're chilli ones, so watch out,' I said. The Lozenge wailed: 'I don't want to try a cold crithp.' But Rashimi reassured him: ' Don't wowwy. I jutht touched one, and it wathn't cold.' They ate the whole packet between them.
Singapore was well worth the stop, seeing our wonderful friends and their four children, and visiting the grave of J's grandfather, who was killed by the Japanese there during in 1944, at the age of only 29. It was moving to see his great grandchildren scurrying about the serene cemetery which is similar in style and meticulous upkeep to the war cemetery here in Jerusalem.
We reached Tasmania two days later. 'Listen' said J as we were falling asleep on the first night. 'Listen to that silence.' We felt the furthest we could have been from East Jerusalem. The following morning we awoke to the sound of a possum scuttling about on the tin roof overhead and unfamiliar birdsong. The boys slept long each night, after running about in the wide open spaces all day long. We sat in the garden of the homestead looking at the landscape stretching out before us. 'Bliss', said J. 'Not a settlement in sight.' With only half a million people on an island not much bigger than Ireland - human traces are as minimal as they could be for a developed country. Driving along the road, you get a fright if you see another car approaching.
With no wifi, no phonecalls and no security alerts, we were totally disconnected from where we live, and totally connected to each other as a result. The effect was almost tangible, I thought, as I lay on my back beside the Lozenge, who'd borrowed my leopard print shades so he could 'have a really big look at the clouds in the sky and find animal shapes.'
We did the journey back almost in one. The dwarves making the most of the in-flight entertainments and the multiple videos I'd crammed onto the ipads. Rashimi the Decibel, whose voice has got no less loud even after the growth of his vocabulary, has been into one series called: 'The Dragon's Lair': a cartoon based in medieval times with a knight called, Dirk. He announced to me, from a reclining position in his seat: 'Mummy, I want to be a town cwier! And you even get a bell.' I would say that he's already perfectly qualified for the job.
We reached the border between Jordan and Israel to find we were sandwiched with enormous tour buses, and slowed down by crowds and crowds of Palestinians with trolleys overbalancing with plastic tanks of water and bedding rolls. The queues for Arabs entering Israel are always lengthy, but this was out of the ordinary. It turned out that they were Palestinians returning from the Hajj to Mecca. As we returned from our respective pilgrimage, I felt inspired by the sight. The resilience of the Palestinians, who although leaving and re-entering the state of Israel and the West Bank must take years in the planning, they still go ahead and do it anyway. No wonder they all looked so elated.
Since we walked back into our home, I've been here with the boys on my own, as J is in Jordan for work and St Grace still on holiday in Sri Lanka. The dwarves have been visiting me at 2.30am asking if it's 'morning time'. By 6.45am we're already raring to go and it feels like lunch time.
This morning I had to coax the boys into their clothes with some disco dressing. They chose the music to the Conga, which we danced out around the table in the hall. I took the lead. 'Bunny Floppy Ears' (what the dwarves call the baby-to-be) is at the front!' shrieked the Lozenge, as they jiggled behind me, both stark naked, kicking their legs out to each side.
Our post-holiday resolutions are to: Keep up to speed with our Arabic. The boys have a play-class every Monday afternoon, but it's hard to know how much is sinking in. And to get more adventurous on the food. The Lozenge only ever wants a 'gouda cheethe flatbread sandwich' every day for his lunch. It's got to get more exciting than that.
Back to life in Israel and the Occupied Territories. I read today via Ma'an new agency that: 'Israeli settlers have stolen large amounts of nutrient-rich soil belonging to Palestinians in the Salfit-district village of Kafr ad Dik, on Sunday. Witnesses said that Israeli bulldozers moved huge piles of the fertile soil from Kafr ad Dik into the illegal Israeli settlement of Lishim. According to researcher Khaled Maali, the red soil was of an extremely high quality.'
Can you go any lower than stealing the very ground from under someones feet?
It is such a tragic yet stunning analogy for what Palestinians are up against. The rug was pulled from under their feet decades ago, and now the settlers are on their way out with the soil.
The day before we left I went to meet the Lozenge at his Easter service at the Garden Tomb, where L explained, 'Was where the rock was moved away'. It's a rock-cut tomb which was unearthed in 1867 and is considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, with the rocky escarpment nearby proposed by some scholars to be Golgotha.
I entered the site to the sound of singing chidden, about half an hour late and saw the Lozenge fast asleep in a ray of sunshine, his head lolling against his teacher's shoulder on the front row. 'He's gone!' his teacher mouthed to me.
At the end of the service L realised he'd lost his monkey back pack which he takes to school every day, so we went in search of the bus and driver, Yacoub, apparently somewhere in the vicinity. I asked L which driver it had been: 'the one with the brown face and the ball-y head. You know, his head look-liketh a ball.'
We spotted the familiar high top minibus approaching a roundabout by the tomb. Yacoub saw us, waved, stopped the minibus in the middle of the roundabout, got up from the drivers seat to forage in the back and came back into view, waving the back pack at us. We scurried up to him, a line of traffic forming behind his bus, and grabbed the rucksack with many thank yous. The automatic door slid closed, and Yacoub cruised off blowing kisses in L's direction and waving goodbye. A head like a ball, maybe, but a very warm heart, and another vital cog in the wheel of our lives here in Jerusalem.
We went home to begin packing, via a shop where L wanted to buy 'a plain book so I can draw all the animals in Australia. Like flies, and stuff.'
We began the two day journey, driving over the border to Jordan to catch a flight to Dubai. We had a day to kill in Dubai. And kill it we did. As we wandered around a mall with a brace of whining dwarves, it felt like I had a rock on a rope in each hand, with a whining noise emitting from both sides around hip level. Perhaps my hatred of the mall travelled down my arms and into the boys making them behave this way. It being a Friday, the place was rammed and artificially warm - that warmth that creeps in below the cool cushion of air conditioning and takes over when there are too many bodies in a space.
The boys kept getting Burberry-ed and Louis Vuitton-ed as they were smacked in the head by designer handbag toting women. After an expensive and unsatisfactory lunch at TGI Fridays we found a cinema showing Cinderella, which was actually quite wonderful, though now the dwarves are paranoid that I'll die and they'll have to live with a stepmother. I reassured them I was planning to live for as long as possible, and not all stepmothers were evil, anyway.
Back at the aiport for the next leg of the journey to Singapore, the dwarves inhaled more junk food. J had bought a packet of chilli flavour crisps which they wanted to try. 'They're chilli ones, so watch out,' I said. The Lozenge wailed: 'I don't want to try a cold crithp.' But Rashimi reassured him: ' Don't wowwy. I jutht touched one, and it wathn't cold.' They ate the whole packet between them.
Singapore was well worth the stop, seeing our wonderful friends and their four children, and visiting the grave of J's grandfather, who was killed by the Japanese there during in 1944, at the age of only 29. It was moving to see his great grandchildren scurrying about the serene cemetery which is similar in style and meticulous upkeep to the war cemetery here in Jerusalem.
We reached Tasmania two days later. 'Listen' said J as we were falling asleep on the first night. 'Listen to that silence.' We felt the furthest we could have been from East Jerusalem. The following morning we awoke to the sound of a possum scuttling about on the tin roof overhead and unfamiliar birdsong. The boys slept long each night, after running about in the wide open spaces all day long. We sat in the garden of the homestead looking at the landscape stretching out before us. 'Bliss', said J. 'Not a settlement in sight.' With only half a million people on an island not much bigger than Ireland - human traces are as minimal as they could be for a developed country. Driving along the road, you get a fright if you see another car approaching.
With no wifi, no phonecalls and no security alerts, we were totally disconnected from where we live, and totally connected to each other as a result. The effect was almost tangible, I thought, as I lay on my back beside the Lozenge, who'd borrowed my leopard print shades so he could 'have a really big look at the clouds in the sky and find animal shapes.'
We did the journey back almost in one. The dwarves making the most of the in-flight entertainments and the multiple videos I'd crammed onto the ipads. Rashimi the Decibel, whose voice has got no less loud even after the growth of his vocabulary, has been into one series called: 'The Dragon's Lair': a cartoon based in medieval times with a knight called, Dirk. He announced to me, from a reclining position in his seat: 'Mummy, I want to be a town cwier! And you even get a bell.' I would say that he's already perfectly qualified for the job.
We reached the border between Jordan and Israel to find we were sandwiched with enormous tour buses, and slowed down by crowds and crowds of Palestinians with trolleys overbalancing with plastic tanks of water and bedding rolls. The queues for Arabs entering Israel are always lengthy, but this was out of the ordinary. It turned out that they were Palestinians returning from the Hajj to Mecca. As we returned from our respective pilgrimage, I felt inspired by the sight. The resilience of the Palestinians, who although leaving and re-entering the state of Israel and the West Bank must take years in the planning, they still go ahead and do it anyway. No wonder they all looked so elated.
Since we walked back into our home, I've been here with the boys on my own, as J is in Jordan for work and St Grace still on holiday in Sri Lanka. The dwarves have been visiting me at 2.30am asking if it's 'morning time'. By 6.45am we're already raring to go and it feels like lunch time.
This morning I had to coax the boys into their clothes with some disco dressing. They chose the music to the Conga, which we danced out around the table in the hall. I took the lead. 'Bunny Floppy Ears' (what the dwarves call the baby-to-be) is at the front!' shrieked the Lozenge, as they jiggled behind me, both stark naked, kicking their legs out to each side.
Our post-holiday resolutions are to: Keep up to speed with our Arabic. The boys have a play-class every Monday afternoon, but it's hard to know how much is sinking in. And to get more adventurous on the food. The Lozenge only ever wants a 'gouda cheethe flatbread sandwich' every day for his lunch. It's got to get more exciting than that.
Back to life in Israel and the Occupied Territories. I read today via Ma'an new agency that: 'Israeli settlers have stolen large amounts of nutrient-rich soil belonging to Palestinians in the Salfit-district village of Kafr ad Dik, on Sunday. Witnesses said that Israeli bulldozers moved huge piles of the fertile soil from Kafr ad Dik into the illegal Israeli settlement of Lishim. According to researcher Khaled Maali, the red soil was of an extremely high quality.'
Can you go any lower than stealing the very ground from under someones feet?
It is such a tragic yet stunning analogy for what Palestinians are up against. The rug was pulled from under their feet decades ago, and now the settlers are on their way out with the soil.
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