I open one eye and see the silhouette of the Lozenge beside me in the bed. Petra the pea - now 8 weeks old - lies between us, snuffling and wriggling and pawing her face impatiently with a tiny hand. The Lozenge moves his shaggy head closer to ours as he squints through the half light. 'I can see the bird that is making the funny weaaaa! weeaaa! noise. Look it'th that one there!' I crane my neck sleepily around to see out of the window. Our surround sound is the morning cacophony of bird song from the tall trees surrounding our cool house, providing us shade in the warm afternoons and uplifting chirrups at 6am. A pigeon roo-coos. 'Mummy the pigeons you get here are not the same as the oneth in London are they?' the Lozenge asks. 'They have an orange rim around their eye and these ones jutht black? ' I mulled over his question with one arm on a cool sheet; the other under two of our three small people as J and Rashimi organise breakfast in the kitchen. I feel as though we are cocooned in a feathered nest. The night before we'd made a map for the Lozenge's homework. 'Your child can draw a map of their journey to school' the teacher had written. So the Lozenge drew our garage, some trees, the tram gliding along on its cable, the golden semicircle of the dome of the rock, St George's cathedral and some horse droppings by the side of the road. We'd scooted through some horse poo the previous day. I enjoyed the detail and the over-scaled dimensions of the horse poo - almost the same size as the cathedral windows.
I look at his map which he clutches in his hand in the bed and I think of all the things he didn't draw on it. The multiple checkpoints that sprung up a couple of days ago: spikes along half of the road, cordons and cones and a groups of Israeli police with enormous automatic weapons. The horse droppings were left by the police horses now patrolling daily. The nocturnal soundscape, before the birdsong begins, is a circling chopper - growing fainter and then louder as it hovers around and around above our troubled little East Jerusalem district. I wonder, when we no longer live here, if the Pea will be able to sleep without the sound of a helicopter and screaming and wailing sirens which pierce our every night.
Our soft bubble of mallowy life with a new baby - focusing on the basic early requirements of sleeping and feeding and shushing and cooing, as we slowly get to know each other through smiles and songs accompanied by the constant patter and regular shriek of the dwarves - is a million miles from the stormy sea on which our bubble rests. It's strange how you can live in a place where you hear and smell and sense the violence underneath, but never really see it or witness it first hand. 7 Israelis have been stabbed in the last few weeks, and many, many Palestinians killed in demonstrations, and shootings since the summer. The fear on both sides hovers like the helicopter at fever pitch - the Israelis for fear of being stabbed or rammed by a car; the Palestinians from being shot by over zealous Israeli police or soldiers. And the Palestine penitentiary -- their very own country which neither truly exists yet from which they have no escape -- becomes an even higher security jail with checks and blocks restricting their movement and increasing their daily struggle. Life is hell for Palestinians right now. Morale is low. And we live in the centre of it all, unable to change a thing. We walk the streets and chat to our local friends, comiserating and reassuring them we feel it for them. 'Umm Petraaaa!' calls the man from the dry cleaning shop near our house. 'Keyf al baby? Keyf bintik?' (how's the baby? how's your girl?) We smile and wave at those we know. But we can't change a thing for them.
Though we don't feel afraid for ourselves. The Lozenge confided in me the other day: 'Mummy, we learned at school that when the alarm goes and the light flahses, it's 'CODE RED' and it means robbers might be trying to get in, so we go into the underground bunker.' While I'm grateful the school take security seriously, I don't feel we are at risk in any way. But if I looked obviously Jewish or obviously Arab, I would not feel like this. And I would be terrified for my children. Particularly teenaged boys who are often the focus of Israeli bullets. Live rounds are used at demonstrations. 3 Palestinian children have been killed like this recently.
A few days ago we had our first rain in months, and I wheeled the Pea around our neighbourhood to get a sense of things. A surveillance balloon hovered, a white bubble against the unusually grey sky - keeping tabs on our Arab neighbourhood and those in the old city. I smelt a waft of damp Jasmine as I struggled to push the pram over potholes and piles of uncollected trash and up and down from high pavements; meandering around an unearthed tree root in the middle of one. But for us, these really are our only obstacles here. It was October 6th, and the Lozenge's 6th birthday. Also the day of the funeral of the 13 year old boy who was shot by the IDF, still wearing his school uniform as he walked home from school past a demonstration of fellow Palestinians. The IDF were using live rounds of bullets to defend themselves from the stones. Can you imagine if police and soldiers used life bullets to quell demonstrations or uprisings in Europe? 'A mistake' they say. The boy was killed just around the corner from the Holy Family hospital where Petra was safely delievered into my arms.
I met a Palestinian friend and we talked.
She explained she can no longer visit her parents who are in their 70s and need her help, becuase they live in the Old City which that week Palestinians had been blocked from entering. Most Palestinians we meet say they can never remember things being so bad they are forbidden to enter the Old City. 'It is becoming like Hebron now,' she lamented.
It feels like civil war, really. In a recent trip to the market an Israeli shopkeeper spat when I spoke in Arabic, mistaking him for an Arab. 'Yeeeuch. Arabic - Yeeeuch!' He flobbed on the ground and it landed near my feet. I put down the bunch of parsley I was about to buy from his stall, and wheeled the buggy on. Arabs I talked to in Wadi Jowz below our house said things have never felt so bad, and the killing so arbitrary yet so targetted by one for 'the other'.
The damp jasmine leaves are a metaphor for Arab spirits these days.
Yet I lie with the Lozenge and the Pea this morning and listen to the duet rythms of their breathing. The Lozenge begins to hum 'Deck the Halls' under his breath (it's been Christmas here since May). And my mind retraces 8 weeks of the Pea's life from how it began so happily in Bethlehem on that hot summer night of August 17th.
I look at his map which he clutches in his hand in the bed and I think of all the things he didn't draw on it. The multiple checkpoints that sprung up a couple of days ago: spikes along half of the road, cordons and cones and a groups of Israeli police with enormous automatic weapons. The horse droppings were left by the police horses now patrolling daily. The nocturnal soundscape, before the birdsong begins, is a circling chopper - growing fainter and then louder as it hovers around and around above our troubled little East Jerusalem district. I wonder, when we no longer live here, if the Pea will be able to sleep without the sound of a helicopter and screaming and wailing sirens which pierce our every night.
Our soft bubble of mallowy life with a new baby - focusing on the basic early requirements of sleeping and feeding and shushing and cooing, as we slowly get to know each other through smiles and songs accompanied by the constant patter and regular shriek of the dwarves - is a million miles from the stormy sea on which our bubble rests. It's strange how you can live in a place where you hear and smell and sense the violence underneath, but never really see it or witness it first hand. 7 Israelis have been stabbed in the last few weeks, and many, many Palestinians killed in demonstrations, and shootings since the summer. The fear on both sides hovers like the helicopter at fever pitch - the Israelis for fear of being stabbed or rammed by a car; the Palestinians from being shot by over zealous Israeli police or soldiers. And the Palestine penitentiary -- their very own country which neither truly exists yet from which they have no escape -- becomes an even higher security jail with checks and blocks restricting their movement and increasing their daily struggle. Life is hell for Palestinians right now. Morale is low. And we live in the centre of it all, unable to change a thing. We walk the streets and chat to our local friends, comiserating and reassuring them we feel it for them. 'Umm Petraaaa!' calls the man from the dry cleaning shop near our house. 'Keyf al baby? Keyf bintik?' (how's the baby? how's your girl?) We smile and wave at those we know. But we can't change a thing for them.
Though we don't feel afraid for ourselves. The Lozenge confided in me the other day: 'Mummy, we learned at school that when the alarm goes and the light flahses, it's 'CODE RED' and it means robbers might be trying to get in, so we go into the underground bunker.' While I'm grateful the school take security seriously, I don't feel we are at risk in any way. But if I looked obviously Jewish or obviously Arab, I would not feel like this. And I would be terrified for my children. Particularly teenaged boys who are often the focus of Israeli bullets. Live rounds are used at demonstrations. 3 Palestinian children have been killed like this recently.
A few days ago we had our first rain in months, and I wheeled the Pea around our neighbourhood to get a sense of things. A surveillance balloon hovered, a white bubble against the unusually grey sky - keeping tabs on our Arab neighbourhood and those in the old city. I smelt a waft of damp Jasmine as I struggled to push the pram over potholes and piles of uncollected trash and up and down from high pavements; meandering around an unearthed tree root in the middle of one. But for us, these really are our only obstacles here. It was October 6th, and the Lozenge's 6th birthday. Also the day of the funeral of the 13 year old boy who was shot by the IDF, still wearing his school uniform as he walked home from school past a demonstration of fellow Palestinians. The IDF were using live rounds of bullets to defend themselves from the stones. Can you imagine if police and soldiers used life bullets to quell demonstrations or uprisings in Europe? 'A mistake' they say. The boy was killed just around the corner from the Holy Family hospital where Petra was safely delievered into my arms.
I met a Palestinian friend and we talked.
She explained she can no longer visit her parents who are in their 70s and need her help, becuase they live in the Old City which that week Palestinians had been blocked from entering. Most Palestinians we meet say they can never remember things being so bad they are forbidden to enter the Old City. 'It is becoming like Hebron now,' she lamented.
It feels like civil war, really. In a recent trip to the market an Israeli shopkeeper spat when I spoke in Arabic, mistaking him for an Arab. 'Yeeeuch. Arabic - Yeeeuch!' He flobbed on the ground and it landed near my feet. I put down the bunch of parsley I was about to buy from his stall, and wheeled the buggy on. Arabs I talked to in Wadi Jowz below our house said things have never felt so bad, and the killing so arbitrary yet so targetted by one for 'the other'.
The damp jasmine leaves are a metaphor for Arab spirits these days.
Yet I lie with the Lozenge and the Pea this morning and listen to the duet rythms of their breathing. The Lozenge begins to hum 'Deck the Halls' under his breath (it's been Christmas here since May). And my mind retraces 8 weeks of the Pea's life from how it began so happily in Bethlehem on that hot summer night of August 17th.
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