There's nothing like threading a naked body into an acrylic spiderman suit in 40 degrees. But for the last few days, Rashimi has insisted. He comes padding along, holding it out for me to help him get his two sweaty legs into the suit, ripping open the scratchy velcro tabs to fasten at his back. But like a diva squeezing two hot feet into five inch stilettos - style comes before comfort. And he runs happily off to spin some webs, with a slight wedgie at the back. The suit's a bit small so he's more like Spiderman the orphan these days.
In order to prevent the spontaneous combustion of Rashimi, I've ensured we visit at least one swimming pool per day.
After a morning of fly catching with St Grace, where the Lozenge collected at least 30 black corpses in a jam jar ('I'm going to keep the lid on so they don't start breathing again' he whispered); and a lime and spoon race where Spiderman was caught indulging in some foul play by applying glue to the spoon; we set out. Me and the 2 neon lilos - the 3 of us very inflated, 2 float-aid noodles and 2 boys, goggles already on, in swimming trunks and a Spiderman suit. No risk of being run over with this kind of a caravan.
The closest pool is at the American Colony Hotel - with beautiful gardens and creeping vines already heavy with purple bunches of grapes. We settled on a couple of loungers around the manicured poolside beside a tall woman with short blonde hair.
Rashimi started stroking my tummy. 'The baby will come out of your tummy naked!' said the Lozenge. 'After this one you could have more and more babieth and then it would be BABY world. Can we have 2 more babieth after this one. Please!' said Rashimi. 'And I'd like some pistachio ice cream, pleathe,' said the Lozenge.
The call to prayer sounded from the minaret over-looking our semi-clad activity. 'There'th the church.' 'No, that's a mosque - you can tell by the crescent moon on the top. A church has a cross.' 'And Jesuth was nailed to the cross,' said the Lozenge in a reverent tone.
I noticed the blonde lady was smirking and as we jumped in the pool I got chatting to her. It turned out she was a Norwegian midwife, living in Ramallah with her husband, training Palestinian midwives in the West Bank. A better poolside position we could not have hoped for - particularly 3 days before BFE's due date.
By this point we were in the water, and as I leant onto the side to chat to the lady, the Lozenge was swinging from the back of my bikini top, trying to undo it, and Rashimi clasped around the front - his nut brown dimpled hands gripping my bosoms, shouting 'I wish I had BOOBIES!'
Her face lit up when I told her we hoped to have our baby in the Holy Family Hospital. 'It's a lovely place and the midwives there are fabulous.'
The conditions in the government hospitals, she lamented, were very far from this standard - which was part of the purpose of her projects here. To improve facilities in government maternity wards, and to train up midwives for more home births to be possible. We discussed the fundamental issue of freedom of movement for Palestinians, which causes enormous problems for women in labour reaching any hospital in time. Checkpoints, flying checkpoints, the Separation wall, road blocks and roads within the West Bank for the use of Israeli settlers only, all hamper travel for any Palestinian. But for a Palestinian woman in labour the combination is a disaster. It would be interesting to see how long it would take Mary and Joseph to reach Bethlehem from Nazareth in the modern day West Bank. Perhaps it was quicker back then, on a donkey?
The organisation, Visualising Palestine, as ever, puts it as clearly as could be:
Between 2000 and 2006 at least 68 women gave birth at checkpoints of whom 35 miscarried and five died in childbirth. According to BBC report in 2008 an Israeli soldier in command of a checkpoint outside Nablus was relieved from duty and imprisoned for 2 weeks after he refused to allow a Palestinian woman in labour to pass through. The woman was forced to give birth at the check point and the baby was still born.
2 weeks. Shucks.
But it reflects the same parallel reality for Israelis and Palestinians we see every day.
If the perpetrator of the stabbings at the gay pride march last week had been a Palestinian, the chances are he would have been shot, and his family's property demolished.
But both this crime and the arson attack by Israeli settlers last week - killing the 18 month old baby, Ali Saad Dawabsha in Doma near Nablus - is the result of longstanding impunity towards settler violence, and the facilitation of the settlements themselves.
If Palestinian terrorism is the equivalent of Frankenstein's monster for Israel, then Israeli terrorism is Dr Frankinstein's natural-born child. Like a spoilt adolescent who has enjoyed conditions of impunity for a lifetime within the family - at some point he/she may turn on his own family. So now it's not only the Palestinians who are targets for Jewish extremists - but any Israeli, particularly any who lean to the centre or left as we saw in the Gay Pride march.
I read a statistic yesterday in the local press, that 91.5% of investigations into settler attacks on Palestinians were closed without indictments, despite Israeli authorities' claims of being committed to cracking down on nationalistically motivated crimes.
We'll be seeing news like this for a while, until the statistic changes.
In order to prevent the spontaneous combustion of Rashimi, I've ensured we visit at least one swimming pool per day.
After a morning of fly catching with St Grace, where the Lozenge collected at least 30 black corpses in a jam jar ('I'm going to keep the lid on so they don't start breathing again' he whispered); and a lime and spoon race where Spiderman was caught indulging in some foul play by applying glue to the spoon; we set out. Me and the 2 neon lilos - the 3 of us very inflated, 2 float-aid noodles and 2 boys, goggles already on, in swimming trunks and a Spiderman suit. No risk of being run over with this kind of a caravan.
The closest pool is at the American Colony Hotel - with beautiful gardens and creeping vines already heavy with purple bunches of grapes. We settled on a couple of loungers around the manicured poolside beside a tall woman with short blonde hair.
Rashimi started stroking my tummy. 'The baby will come out of your tummy naked!' said the Lozenge. 'After this one you could have more and more babieth and then it would be BABY world. Can we have 2 more babieth after this one. Please!' said Rashimi. 'And I'd like some pistachio ice cream, pleathe,' said the Lozenge.
The call to prayer sounded from the minaret over-looking our semi-clad activity. 'There'th the church.' 'No, that's a mosque - you can tell by the crescent moon on the top. A church has a cross.' 'And Jesuth was nailed to the cross,' said the Lozenge in a reverent tone.
I noticed the blonde lady was smirking and as we jumped in the pool I got chatting to her. It turned out she was a Norwegian midwife, living in Ramallah with her husband, training Palestinian midwives in the West Bank. A better poolside position we could not have hoped for - particularly 3 days before BFE's due date.
By this point we were in the water, and as I leant onto the side to chat to the lady, the Lozenge was swinging from the back of my bikini top, trying to undo it, and Rashimi clasped around the front - his nut brown dimpled hands gripping my bosoms, shouting 'I wish I had BOOBIES!'
Her face lit up when I told her we hoped to have our baby in the Holy Family Hospital. 'It's a lovely place and the midwives there are fabulous.'
The conditions in the government hospitals, she lamented, were very far from this standard - which was part of the purpose of her projects here. To improve facilities in government maternity wards, and to train up midwives for more home births to be possible. We discussed the fundamental issue of freedom of movement for Palestinians, which causes enormous problems for women in labour reaching any hospital in time. Checkpoints, flying checkpoints, the Separation wall, road blocks and roads within the West Bank for the use of Israeli settlers only, all hamper travel for any Palestinian. But for a Palestinian woman in labour the combination is a disaster. It would be interesting to see how long it would take Mary and Joseph to reach Bethlehem from Nazareth in the modern day West Bank. Perhaps it was quicker back then, on a donkey?
The organisation, Visualising Palestine, as ever, puts it as clearly as could be:
Between 2000 and 2006 at least 68 women gave birth at checkpoints of whom 35 miscarried and five died in childbirth. According to BBC report in 2008 an Israeli soldier in command of a checkpoint outside Nablus was relieved from duty and imprisoned for 2 weeks after he refused to allow a Palestinian woman in labour to pass through. The woman was forced to give birth at the check point and the baby was still born.
2 weeks. Shucks.
But it reflects the same parallel reality for Israelis and Palestinians we see every day.
If the perpetrator of the stabbings at the gay pride march last week had been a Palestinian, the chances are he would have been shot, and his family's property demolished.
But both this crime and the arson attack by Israeli settlers last week - killing the 18 month old baby, Ali Saad Dawabsha in Doma near Nablus - is the result of longstanding impunity towards settler violence, and the facilitation of the settlements themselves.
If Palestinian terrorism is the equivalent of Frankenstein's monster for Israel, then Israeli terrorism is Dr Frankinstein's natural-born child. Like a spoilt adolescent who has enjoyed conditions of impunity for a lifetime within the family - at some point he/she may turn on his own family. So now it's not only the Palestinians who are targets for Jewish extremists - but any Israeli, particularly any who lean to the centre or left as we saw in the Gay Pride march.
I read a statistic yesterday in the local press, that 91.5% of investigations into settler attacks on Palestinians were closed without indictments, despite Israeli authorities' claims of being committed to cracking down on nationalistically motivated crimes.
We'll be seeing news like this for a while, until the statistic changes.
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