The problem with with dwarfs growing like beanstalks is you end up getting more and more involved with school activities which can lead to a dangerously unadventurous expat-life-bubble if you're not careful. Though I did really love squeezing my over sized form onto a tiny plastic child's chair in the classroom as the Lozenge's class did their presentation on 'changes'.
The Lozenge did his presentation with his little Scottish friend whose knees are half the size of the Lozenge's but the exact same hue of pale blue. And I thought the Lozenge might take off with the excitement of it all. He jumped up and down on the spot as he explained what happens to a grain of wheat, all the way through growth and through the mill before it magically transforms into a loaf of bread. Large gobs of spit formed at either side of this mouth as he explained the process, verbally tripping himself over with the words as they came flooding out just like the grain down the tube.
His teacher thinks he's going to be a farmer. Ah well, it's in the blood. And the world will always need them.
He got home and he helped us figure out how to use the new spiralizer auntie Rosie gave us, and happily curled out shreds of courgette for an hour, explaining to us how the machine worked.
Then we ventured away from international school experiences with a family jaunt to Jordan over the weekend, beginning with an evening with the Duke and his wife, Basma. The dwarfs came with us in their pyjamas and trotted happily up the stone steps, hugging the salvaged headless Roman sculptures as they went, and almost immediately conked out on the Duke's double bed in their sleeping bags. It being 'cold' for Jordanians that evening, the heating was ratcheted up, and J and I spent the evening pinching ourselves to prevent a heat and feast coma at the very stone table around which we all sat. The other guests were all Jordanian and most hadn't been to Jerusalem since 1967, including the Duke himself. So they were interested to hear about the situation and what it is to live there. Just before we left, Basma hustled me into her boudoir and gave me three different coloured nail polishes she'd bought for me. 'The gold is very popular this season,' she said. I looked at her beautiful polished nails, over half way through a child-free lifetime, and then down at my own unpolished ones. It might take a little more than this season's colour, I thought to myself. As I reached to pick up a slumbering Rashimi in his sleeping bag and take him to the car she looked horrified. 'No! Please don't carry. You must look after yourself.' And she called for Mamdouh's slightly younger friend to bundle up Rashimi's dead weight while J got to grips with the Lozenge.
The following day we arrived at the Glammy's apartment at 9am. She lives there with her Mum and her new husband, Bader, and seems to be as happy as a bee on a clover flower. The dwarfs rushed into her arms where she was crouching by the door waiting for them - ruby lips, glossy black hair and a t-shirt with a huge leopard face covering the front. The Lozenge turned around and looked at J and I. 'Mummy, when are you going?' he asked.
J and I had the weekend to ourselves. On the Sunday we went to visit the wonderful Widad, who I'd initially interviewed about her work 2 years ago - the day when I dropped my camera lens down her marble staircase and trod in one of her little terrier's turds in the basement. She's a great friend of the Duke's, and she's still alive and well at the honourable age of 88 and was sitting with her two brothers, Munir and Fou'ad - 90 and 92 respectively - who were visiting from the US. Since we left Jordan, Widad has opened a magical museum to house her collection of dresses, jewellery and artifacts from all over the Arab world. It must be the only collection of its kind, and although fascinating, it is difficult to walk between the technicolored rows of gowns, signed: Syria; Yemen; Iraq; Libya, without feeling depression and anguish at the current situation.
Before visiting the museum we sat chatting with Widad and her brothers. Their family is from Jerusalem but they haven't been able to visit much since 1967. Fou'ad explained: 'The problem with getting this old, is that you find yourself always disappointed, whether you're visiting places you used to know as a child, or seeing people you haven't seen since then. One friend keeps arranging for me to meet up with old girlfriends, I always find myself being constantly disappointed when I see what they've become.'
I wondered whether the women see it that way also, or if they find it in themselves to be a little more magnanimous.
Both he and the Duke lamented that the Palestinians hadn't accepted the first deal that was offered to them in the form of the UN's partition plan for the country in 1947. 'Imagine the situation we might be in now. We might actually still have our own country,' Fou'ad sighed.
The Duke quoted the Danish scientist, inventor and poet Piet Hein:
'The noble art of losing face, may one day save the human race, and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace.'
And as we left Widad's house, the Duke told us to leave our car, and come with him. First he took us across the road, knocked on an inconspicuous door, and suddenly we found ourselves in the studio of Queen Rania's dress maker - a great friend of both the Duke, and Widad. Her workshop was buzzing as two elderly Arab women embroidered and weaved golden threads and beads onto brightly coloured chiffon and silk. The walls were covered with spools of thread in gradient shades, the hangers groaning with beautiful dresses and gowns.
From there we drove as far West as you can go in Amman and out the other side of the city. The air grew warmer and more humid as we wound down a hill and vegetation grew more dense. After about 40 minutes we'd reached the home of the Iraq al Amir Women Cooperative Society - a pet project of the Duke's, who tried to help them market their wares until the aid machine moved in and made the cooperative a bit lazy. It was a soporific place, and the looms didn't exactly look like they whirred all day. But the gift shop was filled with pretty ceramics made on the premises and in the paper making room there were two young girls from Stuttgart who were helping the women create paper from plants and other natural ingredients around them. A far cry from their small business in Germany where they are pioneering 'inner skins': leather items made from sheep, pig and cow entrails which they collect from the abattoirs. But a cultural information exchange it was. The Bedouin ladies of the cooperative rallied when the Duke arrived with us in tow and we were soon eating from a huge round metallic dish loaded with 'waraq dawali wa djejeh' warm stuffed vine leaves and chicken.
As we wiggled back up the road to Amman, the Duke explained his frustrations about his country: How the lack of Jordanian work ethic was only being further shown up by the Syrian influx, just as it had been by the Palestinian and Iraqi influx before it. The huge twin tower buildings which have changed the city scape and were being constructed when we lived in Amman 2 years ago, have not developed since. They stand there dominating the sky line, unfinished and missing some glass in the windows, with no funding to continue. Yet the malls boasting Burberry, Louis Vuitton and 'Fusion Burger' are all anyone seems to want. What happens to the likes of the womens cooperative in this climate? The country is being propped up politically and economically to such an extent, that it's hard to see where the real country ends and the fabricated one begins. Everyone needs Jordan to stand tall in these times. It's the last bulwark against the leaking darkness surrounding it. But at what cost to itself?
The following morning J and I did the school run together - a perk of working for HMG is that you get UK bank holidays too. So we set off for school with the dwarfs who requested their current favourite song: 'Money for nothing' by Dire Straights. As the Lozenge grooved in time to the rock track, J said: 'If this doesn't make you want to play the guitar, nothing would.' I could picture what the dwarfs were imagining by the lyrics: '...and chicks for free'. In the minds of a 5 and 3 year old, a chick is still small, yellow and fluffy. I'm happy for it to stay that way for the meantime. After a dual drop, J and I had a leisurely breakfast in the Jerusalem-meets-NYC part of town where if weren't for the low rise houses, you could be hanging out in Greenwich Village. From the menu to the clientele with trendy glasses, running shoes and a pooch on a lead, we felt a long way from our neighbourhood of veiled ladies and kebab shops. But this is one of the many, many great things about living in this city. The variety and the constant culture shift you get moving only a few metres.
We sped from there along route 1 to Jaffa port, where we spent the morning wandering about the flea market, buying LPs to play on the 1980s Bang and Olufsen we inherited from J's Dad, and eating a Israeli-Arab fusion lunch of pickled mackerel and smoked aubergine paste in the shade from the scorching sunshine. We reminisced over the Duke's remark from the weekend when he said he'd heard how sophisticated were the parts of Palestine that Israel had consumed. 'I hear they keep things so clean, and things are run well. We Arabs have let ourselves down and let ourselves go,' he sighed. Looking at the slightly dilapidated but funked-up flea market, we understood the extreme frustration he must feel. Jaffa flea market is a happy, joyful and interesting place to be. But for all the remnants of Arab life, culture and cuisine, it's still been consumed by Israel. The call to prayer resounded in the air from the nearby mosque.
The past two days have been languid and hot. The long grass we've had all spring in the garden is burning to crispy stalks outside; the Nutella liquefied in its jar on the sticky jams shelf in the kitchen. The Lozenge has had a sick bug and I spent the day with him lying in a heap on the carpet in the playroom, half-heartedly building Lego constructions and wallowing in the sacrilege of a television screen on all day while the sun blistered the ground outside. St Grace claimed he had a 'cold stomach'. This must be a Sri Lankan thing. And in 38 degrees, I wasn't sure I agreed. I asked the Lozenge if he thought it was something he'd eaten, or if it was a bug. 'I don't remember eating a bug, but maybe it was drinking the bath water with wee wee in it.' However, whatever the ailment, he was back up and running in no time. This dwarf has a strong constitution and soon he was in the kitchen with his coloured pens planning 'a hatching party' for Bunny Floppy Ears. 'Do you think Bunny Floppy Ears would like crithps or cake as party food when he comes? Oh no! But he'll have no teeth! So what will he eat at the party?'
The Lozenge did his presentation with his little Scottish friend whose knees are half the size of the Lozenge's but the exact same hue of pale blue. And I thought the Lozenge might take off with the excitement of it all. He jumped up and down on the spot as he explained what happens to a grain of wheat, all the way through growth and through the mill before it magically transforms into a loaf of bread. Large gobs of spit formed at either side of this mouth as he explained the process, verbally tripping himself over with the words as they came flooding out just like the grain down the tube.
His teacher thinks he's going to be a farmer. Ah well, it's in the blood. And the world will always need them.
He got home and he helped us figure out how to use the new spiralizer auntie Rosie gave us, and happily curled out shreds of courgette for an hour, explaining to us how the machine worked.
Then we ventured away from international school experiences with a family jaunt to Jordan over the weekend, beginning with an evening with the Duke and his wife, Basma. The dwarfs came with us in their pyjamas and trotted happily up the stone steps, hugging the salvaged headless Roman sculptures as they went, and almost immediately conked out on the Duke's double bed in their sleeping bags. It being 'cold' for Jordanians that evening, the heating was ratcheted up, and J and I spent the evening pinching ourselves to prevent a heat and feast coma at the very stone table around which we all sat. The other guests were all Jordanian and most hadn't been to Jerusalem since 1967, including the Duke himself. So they were interested to hear about the situation and what it is to live there. Just before we left, Basma hustled me into her boudoir and gave me three different coloured nail polishes she'd bought for me. 'The gold is very popular this season,' she said. I looked at her beautiful polished nails, over half way through a child-free lifetime, and then down at my own unpolished ones. It might take a little more than this season's colour, I thought to myself. As I reached to pick up a slumbering Rashimi in his sleeping bag and take him to the car she looked horrified. 'No! Please don't carry. You must look after yourself.' And she called for Mamdouh's slightly younger friend to bundle up Rashimi's dead weight while J got to grips with the Lozenge.
The following day we arrived at the Glammy's apartment at 9am. She lives there with her Mum and her new husband, Bader, and seems to be as happy as a bee on a clover flower. The dwarfs rushed into her arms where she was crouching by the door waiting for them - ruby lips, glossy black hair and a t-shirt with a huge leopard face covering the front. The Lozenge turned around and looked at J and I. 'Mummy, when are you going?' he asked.
J and I had the weekend to ourselves. On the Sunday we went to visit the wonderful Widad, who I'd initially interviewed about her work 2 years ago - the day when I dropped my camera lens down her marble staircase and trod in one of her little terrier's turds in the basement. She's a great friend of the Duke's, and she's still alive and well at the honourable age of 88 and was sitting with her two brothers, Munir and Fou'ad - 90 and 92 respectively - who were visiting from the US. Since we left Jordan, Widad has opened a magical museum to house her collection of dresses, jewellery and artifacts from all over the Arab world. It must be the only collection of its kind, and although fascinating, it is difficult to walk between the technicolored rows of gowns, signed: Syria; Yemen; Iraq; Libya, without feeling depression and anguish at the current situation.
I wondered whether the women see it that way also, or if they find it in themselves to be a little more magnanimous.
Both he and the Duke lamented that the Palestinians hadn't accepted the first deal that was offered to them in the form of the UN's partition plan for the country in 1947. 'Imagine the situation we might be in now. We might actually still have our own country,' Fou'ad sighed.
The Duke quoted the Danish scientist, inventor and poet Piet Hein:
'The noble art of losing face, may one day save the human race, and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace.'
And as we left Widad's house, the Duke told us to leave our car, and come with him. First he took us across the road, knocked on an inconspicuous door, and suddenly we found ourselves in the studio of Queen Rania's dress maker - a great friend of both the Duke, and Widad. Her workshop was buzzing as two elderly Arab women embroidered and weaved golden threads and beads onto brightly coloured chiffon and silk. The walls were covered with spools of thread in gradient shades, the hangers groaning with beautiful dresses and gowns.
From there we drove as far West as you can go in Amman and out the other side of the city. The air grew warmer and more humid as we wound down a hill and vegetation grew more dense. After about 40 minutes we'd reached the home of the Iraq al Amir Women Cooperative Society - a pet project of the Duke's, who tried to help them market their wares until the aid machine moved in and made the cooperative a bit lazy. It was a soporific place, and the looms didn't exactly look like they whirred all day. But the gift shop was filled with pretty ceramics made on the premises and in the paper making room there were two young girls from Stuttgart who were helping the women create paper from plants and other natural ingredients around them. A far cry from their small business in Germany where they are pioneering 'inner skins': leather items made from sheep, pig and cow entrails which they collect from the abattoirs. But a cultural information exchange it was. The Bedouin ladies of the cooperative rallied when the Duke arrived with us in tow and we were soon eating from a huge round metallic dish loaded with 'waraq dawali wa djejeh' warm stuffed vine leaves and chicken.
As we wiggled back up the road to Amman, the Duke explained his frustrations about his country: How the lack of Jordanian work ethic was only being further shown up by the Syrian influx, just as it had been by the Palestinian and Iraqi influx before it. The huge twin tower buildings which have changed the city scape and were being constructed when we lived in Amman 2 years ago, have not developed since. They stand there dominating the sky line, unfinished and missing some glass in the windows, with no funding to continue. Yet the malls boasting Burberry, Louis Vuitton and 'Fusion Burger' are all anyone seems to want. What happens to the likes of the womens cooperative in this climate? The country is being propped up politically and economically to such an extent, that it's hard to see where the real country ends and the fabricated one begins. Everyone needs Jordan to stand tall in these times. It's the last bulwark against the leaking darkness surrounding it. But at what cost to itself?
The following morning J and I did the school run together - a perk of working for HMG is that you get UK bank holidays too. So we set off for school with the dwarfs who requested their current favourite song: 'Money for nothing' by Dire Straights. As the Lozenge grooved in time to the rock track, J said: 'If this doesn't make you want to play the guitar, nothing would.' I could picture what the dwarfs were imagining by the lyrics: '...and chicks for free'. In the minds of a 5 and 3 year old, a chick is still small, yellow and fluffy. I'm happy for it to stay that way for the meantime. After a dual drop, J and I had a leisurely breakfast in the Jerusalem-meets-NYC part of town where if weren't for the low rise houses, you could be hanging out in Greenwich Village. From the menu to the clientele with trendy glasses, running shoes and a pooch on a lead, we felt a long way from our neighbourhood of veiled ladies and kebab shops. But this is one of the many, many great things about living in this city. The variety and the constant culture shift you get moving only a few metres.
We sped from there along route 1 to Jaffa port, where we spent the morning wandering about the flea market, buying LPs to play on the 1980s Bang and Olufsen we inherited from J's Dad, and eating a Israeli-Arab fusion lunch of pickled mackerel and smoked aubergine paste in the shade from the scorching sunshine. We reminisced over the Duke's remark from the weekend when he said he'd heard how sophisticated were the parts of Palestine that Israel had consumed. 'I hear they keep things so clean, and things are run well. We Arabs have let ourselves down and let ourselves go,' he sighed. Looking at the slightly dilapidated but funked-up flea market, we understood the extreme frustration he must feel. Jaffa flea market is a happy, joyful and interesting place to be. But for all the remnants of Arab life, culture and cuisine, it's still been consumed by Israel. The call to prayer resounded in the air from the nearby mosque.
The past two days have been languid and hot. The long grass we've had all spring in the garden is burning to crispy stalks outside; the Nutella liquefied in its jar on the sticky jams shelf in the kitchen. The Lozenge has had a sick bug and I spent the day with him lying in a heap on the carpet in the playroom, half-heartedly building Lego constructions and wallowing in the sacrilege of a television screen on all day while the sun blistered the ground outside. St Grace claimed he had a 'cold stomach'. This must be a Sri Lankan thing. And in 38 degrees, I wasn't sure I agreed. I asked the Lozenge if he thought it was something he'd eaten, or if it was a bug. 'I don't remember eating a bug, but maybe it was drinking the bath water with wee wee in it.' However, whatever the ailment, he was back up and running in no time. This dwarf has a strong constitution and soon he was in the kitchen with his coloured pens planning 'a hatching party' for Bunny Floppy Ears. 'Do you think Bunny Floppy Ears would like crithps or cake as party food when he comes? Oh no! But he'll have no teeth! So what will he eat at the party?'
