Speak Life

It hadn't rained for so many months. The brown earth was gasping, it seemed.

There used to be an ancient Palestinian custom for an autumn drought: to lead a lady sitting backwards on a donkey through the village.

So there must have been a lady doing that somewhere because it's been raining so much them drains have been straining, and flood water has lapped around our ankles for a week. It's beautiful. The dwarfs love it and wear their wellies with nothing else on around the house. In homage to the puddles.

Christmas fever is truly upon us. 'I'm an angel in the nativity play,' Rashimi says to the Lozenge. 'There's only 2 angels you know. In the play. Only two.'  And the Lozenge says: 'Well, you can't have too many angels all going around saving people. Because then you'd forget to save yourself.'

Daddy is now officially a 'bot. The Pea spends much of her day kissing my iphone - because that's where her Daddy's face appears to her most often at the moment. Sometimes on a call, the dwarfs take the Daddy 'bot into the playroom so he can watch their Lego building. Then something happens and they run out - leaving Daddy in there. We need iphones that walk so that Daddy 'bots can follow us about the house rather than being stranded.

The potatoes have all got holes in them from Rashimi's rampant spud-gunning. 'After you die, Mummy', he asks idly refuelling his gun with spud, 'can you still think?'

We light the advent candles from Grandma every night except that the naughty advent candle warden one night let them burn down to number 23 when we're only at 16. She's related to the tooth fairy that one. A little bit scatty. The candles are now hidden so the dwarfs won't see until it's really 23.

Auntie Rosie and Tilly visited. We started out with 'Cook with Rosie' in Jerusalem for the first time. She helped 8 pairs of small hands to pat mince into Syrian meatballs, and afterwards they stuffed dates with apricot and walnuts, then rolled them in coconut. A couple of parties, some funny hung-over days wrangling small people, and finally a trip to the Marwani mosque - underneath the Dome of the Rock compound in the Old City - a 7th century mosque only used today when there's an overflow during Ramadan. The crusaders used it as their stables, and the stone pillars still have holes where they tied the ropes for the horses. Simple, stunning 7th century arches, with metres and metres of carpet and chinks of sunlight diving diagonally across.

And now, all the scaffolding has come down inside the Dome of the Rock revealing a newly painted ceiling.

 I met a friendly Israeli man who works in a local supermarket Super Deal also known to us instead, as Super Rip-Off. He's a 'Mizrahi' meaning a Jew from the Arab world. He was born in Mosul in 1949 before all Jews were evicted after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. We talked for a while about how my husband was in Baghdad, and I asked him if he had any photographs of that time. 'Oh no. Nothing like that. No memories either. Just that stamp of where I was born'. We spoke in Arabic - he wears a Jewish skull cap. This is the place to be to understand we're all entwined. No walls can separate us even if they try.

The father Christmas lists have been written. 'A globe of the world please, a football please, a boomerang please, please. Writes the Lozenge. 'Please Santa,' writes Rashimi, with some help from his brother, 'Flying. I want to fly'. And, 'The Force'. Please. Love Hamish. With a back to front 'h' at the end.

The Lozenge stands on stage in the nativity play in a beautiful crown crafted by St Grace. 'The best crown on the stage,' the Lozenge says proudly. It's tall and golden with plastic gems stuck all over it. And Sashimi is there at the front with an itchy tinsel Halo which he itches the whole way through the nativity play. It's a very sweet play as they always are.

The same day these dreadful snippets of news are coming from Aleppo. And then we go and visit the wonderful Alrowwad centre where the boy I made the short film about works. It's tucked in near to the graffiti-covered wall which locks these people in, through nothing they've done wrong, other than be born. There. We raised a speck of money for them lately, and the founder, Abdelfattah explains how he just wants young people to want to live, not to die. And to live, and love, and be happy. He says: 'To hear a young person of 9 or 10 say they just have no hope and they want to die. Well, I just can't explain it. So we keep going - doing this, whether we have money, or we don't have money.'

Rashimi has a sore tummy (which later we realise is the vomiting bug), so he's in a bit of strop when we go and visit, and won't shake anyone's hand, or say hello. But we watch a wonderful Dabke - Palestinian dance display. The Pea walks into the middle of the dance floor, and sits down and claps her hands.

And the boys watch and don't want to stop watching.  Even Rashimi with his sore tummy. The Lozenge is love-bombed by loads of Palestinian boys after their dance class. If only we were allowed to report more about love bombing than just bombing.

And we drive back from school today - the dwarfs' last day there before we fly off home to see our family, and the Lozenge and his little friend Vera from Sweden are singing along on the back seat of the car to the song they learned in assembly. 'Speak Life' it's called' they say, 'Do you know it Mummy?' I say I don't and I swizzle it up on the iphone, still hot from Daddy 'bot moments and we play it and they sing along. And it's almost as sweet as the nativity play. But none of this they know. And this little gospel-soul-or-something song says it all. Without them even knowing about people their age wanting to die. Or not wanting to die, and having to die anyway. So we drive. And they sing. And the Pea claps. And now I have to write it all down.

'Some days life feels perfect. Other days it just aint workin. The good the bad, the right the wrong.  And everything in between. It's crazy. Amazing. We can turn a heart with the words we say. Mountains crumble with every syllable. Hope can live or die. So speak life. Speak life. To the deadest darkest night. Speak life. Speak life. When the sun won't shine and you don't know why. Look into the eyes of the broken hearted. See them come alive as soon as you speak hope, you speak love, you speak life. You speak life.'

And that is the thought we leave you with, the dwarfs and I, as we prepare to hop in a cab in a few hours, and head to the homeland.We are looking forward to speaking life with you all. Happy Christmas.

A brown week

The Gaza Garden. Maybe we can boil the whole world down into cacti and succulents?

The Daddy diet is becoming a little more intense as Christmas approaches. Dwarfs get fatigued, and Mummy can turn into a monster. The Pea is extremely mobile so I put a little bell in her pocket these days so I know where she is in the house. Like a hair-less pet goat, she tinkles about getting up to mischief. St Grace is playing: 'See how many hair clips you can squeeze onto a square inch of head' with her. Otherwise known as 'continued excitement over her first girl'.

The dwarf returns from school are accompanied by intermittent exhausted sobbing and wailing from the three of them - like wail relays. Then they scoff an awful lot of food, having at first complained about it not being what they feel like, and then leave me with a pile of washing up having not said thank you. And then they go WILD and won't go to bed. Day in. Day out. And they wonder why occasionally..I...shout.

What with all that and the political sitch: it's easy to be in a brown study. Twerps on central stage, and the rise of the right. Legalisation of settlements here in the West Bank. Honestly? A possible ban to the call to prayer? Can they be serious? Right wing activists marching in Zion square here in Jerusalem as I type. Aleppo. And the brown fields from no rain. Three drops today - our total in three weeks. Climate change and chaos every which way.

But, said author Toni Morrison: 'This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear...I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.'

But, says Isabel Wilkerson, author of the Warmth of Other Suns, and award winning journalist. 'Our country is like a really old house. I love old houses, but old houses need a lot of work. And the work is never done. Just when you think you've finished one renovation it's time to do something else. And something else has gone wrong. And that's what our country is like. You may not want to go into that basement, but if you really don't go into that basement it's at your own peril. And I think that whatever you are ignoring is not going to go away, and is only going to get worse. And whatever you're ignoring will be there to be reckoned with, until you reckon with it. And that's what we're called upon to do. Where we are right now.'

So last week I went to Gaza with Mark, the sculptor I made the film about, to pin three bronze swifts on the front of the hospital there. 'Little prayers on wings', he says. Messages of hope spreading further each day, from the olive tree roots in central Jerusalem. We arrived without the bolts by mistake, but since we were in Gaza - where they have to make the impossible, possible, every day - a man was magicked from nowhere with his young son, who was wielding a welding and a drilling machine. Mark nipped up the ladder, and within under an hour, the three little swifts were pinned there, soaring up to more hopeful skies.

A sad reminder of the state of the country, below us:

The manager of the hospital, a charming Gazan, announced on email: 'The seagulls are now on the front of our building!' No. 'Swift'. Mark replied. 'Sununu.' In Arabic. After 8 months of searching for the Arabic word, I find it. Sununu. It has such a lovely ring to it.

Maged, ex-mayor of Gaza city and about as zen a man I have ever met, took us to his paradise - or 'jannah' as they say in Arabic. I wondered as we sat amongst greenery - lush grass, citrus trees, jacaranda and aquatic plants; prickles of cacti interspersing the succulents - does a jannah or paradise, seem even more like such when it's surrounded by 'nar': hell or fire? The house is a mandate-era house like our one - meaning it was built when the Brits were in charge, circa 1920-30. He doesn't live in it but the feel is homely and loved - a big hall with doors coming off it, leading to a garden full of birds, cockatoos, quails, diamond doves, goldfinches. He arranged for us a huge pile of pastries and cans of coke. An occular surgeon, peaceful man: generous, kind, considerate, patient. Everything that Gaza needs. Mark and I asked ourselves: 'Which came first? The peaceful man or the garden?'

Then Mark and Paul were kept sitting for 1.5 hours in the Israeli jail-like border crossing. They were given no explanation. Just wait, we were all told. Becuase the Israelis can. And the world has bigger problems at the moment which the Israeli State knows well. It makes you wonder if the problem in this small land isn't at least part of the cause of the bigger one we're witnessing now.

Mark is now planning how we can make this swift idea bigger and bigger. A subliminal message of the swift, of hope: a feather whisper of their arrival. That little screech. It's spring. We're here. It could have wings.

Then to Nazareth with a car-full of small people and St Grace, who Graced me with her large company in amongst the smalls in the back. It was Laurie's friend Hadi's birthday. Hadi hails from Nazareth and is from a magnanimous and charming Arab family who laid it on in a big way. The Pea's eyes were pea soup plates all day. From the  church of the annunciation and a dazzle of stained glass, and a mother and child from almost every nation in the world.

A japanese mother and child.

A Venezuelan mother and child.

Followed by an enormous and delicious lunch followed by a chocoate patissier session for 8 little people - in white chefs bonnets. After they'd rolled and squidged and sprinkled their own box of chocolates to take home, it rained chocolate. Can you imagine? I thought Lozenge would laugh up both kidneys with ecstasy.

Who needs an annunciation when you have chocolate rain.

****

'Mummy, my toooooooof' was the call from the Lozenge as the little peg-let fell out on the way to Rashimi's birthday dinner. I stored it in one of the little boxes in the car dashboard. Then we experienced the madness of six 5 year olds. And in my haste to put them all to bed, and then myself, I only just remembered to bring the little peggy from the car. And then passed out cold after only one bottle of beer, only to FORGET to be that tooth fairy. I woke up to a wailing Lozenge who had found the tooth and no money, and I had to pull a stunt by scrabbling for a coin, dropping it by the bed and blaming it on him, whilst explaining sometimes toothfairies forgot to take the tooth.

The following night I left a note: 'sorry i forgot' in the tiniest writing, with a trademark wand sign-off. And confessed to Mum on text who wrote back: 'I was also a flawed tooth fairy and used to hide money in funny places while lambie (Auntie Rosie) searched and I could then remove the tooth from under the pilow. Or once I told her the tooth fairy's sack was so clackingly full of teeth, not one more peggie would fit....'

Rashimi is less concerned about toothie pegs since he still has all of his. 'Mummy, he asks, can we talk about Donald Trump. Over breakfast?'

'I want to know why he is he a idiot? And why does he not want people who are not from America, to go to America?' Does that mean we can't go and see Tooli (the Glammy - who's now living there).

My main respite from dwarf-ville at the moment is my work. And though with tripod and stack of cameras and lenses, respite isn't always the word that springs from my flexed biceps as I trot down the garden path at day break. It gets me out, out, and away. This week I've had the enormous fortune to hang out with these guys at Alrowwad in Aida refugee camp, near Bethlehem, under a kilometre from the birthplace of the Pea.

https://vimeo.com/193707767

It's astonishing what certain people all round the world do, with practically nothing. And this is a case in point. I was mesmerised by the Dabke - Palestinian national dancing. Learned a few steps myself. Chatted to all the young people dancing there, who toured Europe last summer, including Edinburgh festival. Someone carved me a little wooden key - the abiding symbol of the Palestinian right to return to their homes one day; and another boy carved a wooden shard painted with Palestinian colours which he handed me.

I filmed Motasem (focus of the film) in his house in the 'camp'. Though it feels part of the city - these people are still refugees. I was welcomed into his Granny's front room. 'God Bless our Home' hung from a rafter with a Palestinian black and white scarf surrounding it. She, a Muslim, was ill so stayed seated, while her best friend, a Christian, whistled around her kitchen making me an Arabic coffee. 'We are all mixed here in this camp - sometimes we forget who is who. It's very sad what's happening in other places where Muslims and Christians can't live together.' We lamented that Jews were also living amongst them in these villages before Israel was created in '48, and communities were split asunder. Motasem's step Mum cooked us lunch - chicken and rice, with children roughly the Pea's age. So I had all the moves and grooves, but none of the responsibility.

Motasem has two family members in prison; and one has been killed. The Israeli occupation knows no limits, yet Motasem shuns violence. Beautiful resistance - they call it. And boy can he dance. 'Bring your husband! Bring your children next time!' they called after me as I left with all my camera equipment, tummy full of rice and chicken, memory cards full of footage, and heart full of love.

To end the week of the brown study, which actually turned out to be anything but, the Pea had a mishap. Having been carried away with the Lozenge's chocolate brownie mixture in the kitchen, she transfered her small form, tummy first, with the wooden spoon she was licking into the bathroom where Rashimi was doing a poo. While my back was turned she must have plunged her little paw into the loo and tucked into more of what she thought was brownie mixture. Rashimi's face said it all, as the poor little poo eater wretched and gagged, a tell-tale ragged piece of loo-roll stuck to her shoe.

Understandably she threw up all night. Her brown study turned out to be far worse than mine. And please may we forget this story before her 21st birthday party...

Crosses in the ball park

I open my eyes at 6am to see the silhouettes of 2 shaggy heads peeping meercat-like around the doorway. Then they run and dive on top of me - a dwarf burrowing under each arm. 'We missed you Mummy. So much. We are so happy you're home'. The Lozenge gives me a card with a tiny chocolate brownie wrapped in silver paper on which he's written: 'Mumy.' There's one with 'Dady' on it in the fridge. The note reads: 'I rily mist you when you had gon'. J and I had left each other at Amman airport for another 6 weeks. I wanted to write J a similar note - it seemed all wrong not to be coming back home together.

Now I'm looking at my small handful of stones I collected on the beach in Oman: a pink one for the Pea - the colour of the rose red city itself; a perfectly rounded one with a small stone lodged in the middle for the Lozenge; and a beautiful piece of blanched coral like a miniature body with two outstreched arms, for Rashimi. But now I'm back in the thick of it, my own arms have an overstretched feeling from carrying our beloved human gnocchi yesterday. All around the crafts fair we went. The Pea kept pulling off all the necklaces and scarves from the table. So I hoisted her often onto one hip - saving the precious Palestinian produce from being dragged to the dust.  We got chatting to a Palestinian man selling painted stools made by blind people. As he helped me walk home with some I'd bought, we got onto politics. I almost sobbed as we discussed the many woes. But the Palestinians are used to all that, and being let down time and time again by their leaders. So he was much more sanguine than I: 'As long as the sun comes up each morning, everything will be alright my dear.'

The sun did come up this weekend morning, and I spent it in and out of the bed between spelling help for the Lozenge's homework, who was finding dictionary explanations of words: 'excellent, explode, face, fact, fair,' and having to put them in order. I could use many of these words in a sentence about the state of the world right now, I think to myself. Rashimi prancing around singing: 'I wanna live in Ameeericaaaaa! I wanna live in Ameeericaaaa!' Though I'm really not sure I would wanna at the moment. His singing clashes with the Trump news; and a podcast on Leonard Cohen. The timing of great forboding: the departure of a wise man and the political ascent of a douchebag in the same week. But then the Pea pulls me out of my melancholy by performing a baby body-slam onto her brothers under the duvet.

A day with children. Our small boat dipping and rising on the crest of wave before dipping again, then some storm clouds. The weather never stays the same for long in dwarf land.

I've been having many moments of melancholy for instance when the boys look at the front page of a magazine and ask: 'Who is that nasty looking man with the angry eyes?' And we end up talking about Putin over breakfast. How do you explain a man who kills children, to children? And all night the Pea has been coughing, and all day she's been sobbing and holding her arms high, like that little piece of coral, wanting me to lift her up again and again. I put her in her high chair, I dance the hokey cokey to her while I wash up, suds flying. A quick little samba around her chair with the mop. It works for a while. Then we four leap into the car and drive up to the Mount of Olives. 'Louder!' shout the dwarfs from the back - now nearly 2 feet tall and hardly dwarfs, I can barely lift them without over-stretching my arms either. They're enjoying listening to The Obvious Child by Paul Simon. Rashimi loves the drum beat which stirs us all as we stream, hands clapping, up, up, past the golden Dome of the Rock below us.

Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost its bite
I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don't expect to sleep through the night
Some people say a lie's a lie's a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?

And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark


This time - this life, speeding by.

The foreboding gloom of world politics.

This is the age of miracle and wonder. Really?

It has got the better of me today. Along with scenes of two dwarves fighting over gold and silver spray paint with which we are decorating fir cones as it's really really going to be Christmas soon, this time; the Pea plucks the paint water jar from Rashimi's hand and quaffs the ochre liquid. Then she totters off and slips on a line of coloured pencils smashing the paint water jar. Wailing. Then more wailing, all day, over a new tooth or a cold, or who knows what. Maybe it is my punishment for escaping to the beautiful silence of the mountains in Oman with J. So I take it out on a pomegranate, and spank it until the seeds pop out. Then I feed my ruby spoils to the three critters, who gobble it jewel by jewel. Then they look deeply into my cross face, realise I mean business, and help me tidy the chaotic house to the Peatbog Faeries on LOUD. Even louder than earlier in the car. It is loud. And very Scottish. And I do a pseudo angry jig. 'Are you still cross?' asks Rashimi.

We do our nightly ritual of a few poems read by torchlight while they lie in the darkness.

Who's that tickling my back, asks the wall?
It's me says the caterpillar, I'm learning to crawl.

And by the time they are asleep in bed and the house is quiet once more, I love them again.  Almost as much and also as much as I love their Daddy far away.

O Man - what a place

Watching a green turtle, flippering a slow walk back to the sea having laid and covered her eggs, as green turtles have done for the past 200 million years brought 10 years of married life into focus as a microscopic drop in this ocean of time. We'd watched the female at night with an Omani guide on a beach at the south eastern most tip of the Arabian peninsula. She deftly flicked sand over her heap of eggs, creating a dip for herself in the warm sand of the unpopulated beach: illuminated by a bright moon in a black sky, pin pricked with stars - the only visitors that night, our small group of curious onlookers, and the turtles themselves. While the mothers buried eggs, newly hatched turtles scurried to the waves. 'Only 2 in 1000 will reach maturity' explained the guide, and the females that survive will find their way back to this very same beach to lay their eggs, in 25 years time.

It was the end to a beautiful week in a place that felt so far from our daily existences in Jerusalem and Baghdad. Eternities away from the topsy turvy life with small people or Iraqi politics. Mum and Dad generously moved in for 10 days so J and I were liberated to explore without travel cot or sticker books. And Oman seemed so far from the Arab World we've grown accustomed to: our Jerusalem neighbourhood with its trash-filled skips and piles of rubble; unexplained building sites and noise and trouble; police cars angrily honking and helicopters hovering at night.

We were transported to another kind of Arabian land of cleaner streets and architected lines;  pastel low-rise houses below soaring brown stone mountains; juniper and rose strewn plateaus above misty ravines; dark ochre fortresses made of mud 'al dhob' from where we get 'adobe' and flowing cool water in ancient irrigation systems called: 'felaj'; date palm oases and smooth tarmac roads leading through the desert.

This pinkish land was a magical place for a holiday, and time to take stock of ten years past, and also the future, in golden silence in the mountains; and beside lapping turquoise water of the Persian Gulf.

The effects were immediate and lovely. Like the dwarfs' current favourite book: 'The Sound of Silence' where a little Japanese boy goes in search of silence, and finds it between the noises, and underneath everything; we didn't even have to look for it. A mountain view like no other I have seen, and at times, not even a bird call or a whisper of wind. All the thought bubbles we had in our minds, had time to bob to the surface, popping effortlessly and having time to spread into the air and into our conversation. It was almost like every minute of this peace got better and better until we reached a point of meditation almost - in our uninterruptedness together. We got back to the package that we all carry around with our other halves, which is made of gold and truth, but the quotidian demands can mean we sometimes forget to pay daily homage or respect to it.

The essential room for any fort

Jars for storing date juice

So the turtles were our last adventure after mountain hikes and 6 days of conversations. While America was electing its next leader, we saw the arrow quivering towards that devastating result, and with sinking hearts pulled ourselves out of bed to go and look at the turtles once again before the sun rose over the Persian gulf.

The World Wildlife Fund were there already, gently gluing a GPS to the shell of the female turtle. They explained the turtles are under threat so they're trying to find out more about their habits - where they swim, and why numbers are dwindling. The main threats are built up beaches which confuse the baby turtles who automatically walk towards lights, and away from, rather than towards, the sea. And also the amount of plastics in the ocean.

Again, we watched the mother turtle bury herself into a sandy dip in the beach, covering her eggs with a deft flick of each flipper, until the little pile of eggs was safely protected 1 metre under the sand. Still in the darkness a tiny newly hatched turtle scurried towards to waves, trying to avoid crabs and other predators lying in wait.  As it began to grow light, the adult female dragged herself out of the trench and slowly and painstakingly flippered her way back to the water.

As the week to ourselves drew to a close - this precious nugget of time crammed into hard-working chunks of absence from each other, J reassured me as we drove towards the airport: 'We have so many excitements to look forward to not least of which is life.' We'd stopped at the souq, buying some Omani hats from a Kashmiri man with an islamic whispy beard. But he looked me in the eye, had no problems with shaking my hand, and explained to us as the election results came through: 'Trump. He danger man. He has head like child. Not mature.' Then we were kept waiting in the bus while a VIP sheikh was driven to the door of our plane and as J put it: 'pressed puffy cheek to puffy perfumed cheek and squeezed mallows hands together in farewell.' Us in the bus, waited while they took their time, unapologetically.

I trained my anxious mind back to the ancient green turtle and its 200 million year stretch on the planet. The perfection of nature, and the imperfection of everything mankind seems to be capable of in return. We soared out of Muscat, over its low rise white buildings and straight roads throughout the desert; and I looked out of the window and remembered the sight of the female turtle staggering her steady way into the rising sun, and back into the waves to carry her who knows where next.

A break in the daddy diet

'Back home in 10 mins xx' would be a normal communication most days between husband and wife, but this year it's been distilled into something more concentrated. After 7 weeks this little text ping sent our household into delirium. As J walked in, I felt we had too few arms between us, as we five became immediately entwined around each other, small arms around longer legs, and longer arms around smaller necks; the dwarfs emitting little cries of: 'Daddeeeeee.' Then the Pea took her position suckered tight to her Daddy's leg or torso where she remained for the following fortnight. 'Daddaddaddadda' she muttered as she stumbled, newly a biped as if with two wooden legs. A shining index finger pointing his way. And for me, tears of joy followed by a lightness of heart and a featheryness of foot. For J's presence around the house; but also for another brain on every decision from what to eat for dinner, which way to drive into the West Bank, and what to do for a children's party.

The dwarf party. Oh my - I overestimated our organisational skills once again - though would that I had taken J's raised eyebrow seriously as I suggested what I thought might work for this year: A Star Wars theme for 24 small people. The dwarfs had reluctantly agreed to share a party, so in trooped all their friends, dressed in Star Wars costumes and ready for fun - at least 15 nationalities under one roof.

This was where we could have come against the rocks. I realised too late whilst J and I tried to herd 24 children between 7 and 5 years old into groups to begin the treasure hunt around our local district in East Jerusalem. I'd roped in the friendly man in the dry cleaner to hold some clues: 'Darth Vader has spilled egg down his cloak, where would he go to get his cloak cleaned?' And also our friends in the pizza restaurant: 'Yoda needs a pizza recipe for his special green pizza - where will he find it?' This is not normally the way of birthday parties in East Jerusalem, and there were some surprised looks.

I realised why, after the children broke out of the gate, like terriers out of the traps - and I found myself racing down our crowded high street with the sticky black pavement, with six under 7's running around searching for clues dressed as Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, Yoda and a belly dancer: weaving amongst all the hijab-ed ladies and men speeding by in their cars. I harked back to J's raised eyebrow and wondered when I'd ever learn to take it seriously.

But we made it around. And back for a Star Wars cake which Sashimi pointed out: 'does not look like at all like the death star Mummy. But it is very tasty.'

We held a Syrian dinner for 24 big people to raise money for Aleppo. The kitchen hummed with fun-laced perfectionism thanks to J's uncle Frankie and aunt Odile who were staying. Though we did a massive over catering job, Arab style, and were eating pomegranate tabouleh for a week afterwards.

Two weeks passed all too fast, and all of a sudden J and I found ourselves driving out of the garage and past our gate: the boys standing half way up in nothing but their pants, the Pea tottering on the middle railing with St Grace supporting her. They were all waving and smiling: 'Bye Dadddeeeee,' the Pea pressing her palm to her small flat nose and blowing a kiss our way, not to see him again for another 8 weeks. J struggled to hold back his tears. It is definitely the hardest for him, this bizarre existence.

We crossed the border. We've become so used to all this over 4 years. The gun-toting Israeli teenager at the checkpoint who would look more at home in a Mediterranean night club; the warm Jordanian welcome amid the dust and Dead Sea flies, some of whom always manage to hitch a ride in the car with us to Amman. I'm on swatting duty if J is at the wheel. The driving as if everyone is out to kill you; the winding road up the hill to Amman leaving a silver sliver of the Dead Sea below, past the minarets and the muddle of houses with no apparent planning.

We had lunch with the Duke in Jordan before J got his flight, and sat on his terrace surrounded by artefacts and home made installations, eating wild boar and fatteh salad, with a Pakistani from Rawalpindi who works for the US Federal Bank, and a Jordanian keen on teaching us idioms. We hadn't seen the Duke and his wife for a long while and he sighed and laughed: 'Ah, ia Lucy. Alan Wasahlan' then laughed again: ' Whenever an Arab doesn't know what to say he says: Ahlan Wasahlan.' (welcome) The Duke chuckled.

I drove back home again that night - the dwarfs and a Pea all clean and combed after bath time with St Grace. Then the first rains of the autumn began and the boys ran outside shrieking in excitement, naked but for a raincoat each, a little smaller on  them than last year - bare bottoms peeking out. They ran back inside and giggling hysterically, tied the Pea's ankles together with a dressing gown cord. She kept standing up, then falling on her face, legs folded like a frog, and looking quizically at her ankles wondering how her new found feet were failing her.

J has less to take his mind off the separation. He explained how he looked at himself in the mirror and asked himself quite what, exactly, he was doing in a small cubicle, inside an enormous cement wall, separating himself from greater Baghdad. Separating himself from everyone he knows and loves. These are extraordinary days.

Active hope and a seven year old moon-o-phile

Active hope is the antidote to cynicism says Maria Popova, utterer of much wisdom and author of the weekly Brain-pickings which a friend put me on to, leaving me asking myself how I did without it.

The Tree of Hope now stands in the centre of the Old City and here is the first cut of the film I made about Mark the talented sculptor, and the making of it.

https://vimeo.com/185045037

password: hope

And in this region where despair so often reigns - we find examples of hope nestling in the thorns in the most surprising places. At a recent event at a Jerusalem street which houses Arabs on one side; Israelis on the other; we find art on the inhabitants' walls. One such inhabitant hands me his card which reads: 'The head of the parents committee in Turi schools. A peaceful man.' And his neighbour, an Arab who works with Ultra Orthodox Jewish ambulance first aid teams so he can be at the scene of the accident more quickly than if he were driving his own vehicle because of stringent security restrictions on Palestinians. And the extremely moving visit I paid with a new friend, to Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, just the other side of the separation wall, very close to the birthplace of the Pea, where I met Abdelfattah, the head of Alrowwad for culture and arts. A doctor of science, he turned his back on work as a biologist to throw himself into theatre, and toured the UK this summer with his troupe - all young people from the camp - including to the Edinburgh Festival.

Popovawrites: 'Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naivety.'

But I think she's also right to include the word 'active' alongside. Everyone's looking for hope, and most people want things to be better. Just this week we held a fashion show to sell unwanted, quality clothes, and raised nearly $4,000. It came from nothing - unused clothes formerly dangling dejected in our closets - became a something. Everything can be a something.

St Grace explains. 'It's good, a sale like this madam, because when you buy, you feel good, you feel peace, right?' She was fully involved and donated lots of new or nearly new clothes for the cause, and shopped for many of her friends.

I notice that all our friends want to come, want to join. We internationals can also be negatively influenced by the Holy Land's complex political situation. And it makes us shy - more reluctant to creep out of our holes and fly a hopeful flag. And often we can stand around and wring our hands and feel guilty that things look like they're getting worse. And yet we're still living here - so does that make us complicit?

But the flag of hope is flying this week. And our new seven year old is in the mix with his heart and his soul. 'Give me a child before he is seven...' Well if this seven year old man child is anything to go by, 'Shop til you drop' is something for naughties-born males.

A good chunk of our money is due to the spending of the Lozenge himself: bangles for some of girlfriends in class; a wallet for his best girlfriend's Mum; an emerald green silky Ra-Ra skirt for the Pea; a pair of leggings for Tilly T his cousin; a couple of tops for Daisy his other cousin; some shorts for himself and a tie for Daddy.

He shops. Then he drops. Half way through their night time poem, called Benediction, by James Berry, I notice both dwarfs are fast asleep with their sticky heads deep into their pillows, while I stumble through our nightly ritual by torchlight.

'Thanks to the ear that someone may hear; Thanks to seeing that someone may see; Thanks to feeling that someone may feel; Thanks to touch that one may be touched; Thanks to flowering of white moon and spreading shawl of black night holding villages and cities together.'

The Lozenge loves the moon. It was his first word. So the birthday card I give him has a huge full moon on it with a small person looking up at it surrounded by the night.

He reads his own birthday card with the moon on it, and looks happy and interested.

What else about this seven year old? He skips often. Almost as often as he sings. He still runs naked unabashed. He makes me my lunch: a gouda cheese sandwich, firmly pressed down with a shadow of fingerprints on top. He carries his 13kg-worth of sister and belly laughs at her first attempts

at words.

He goes to school on the little white bus every morning driven by Yacoub the driver 'with the ball-y head'. Rashimi has made him a card with: I LVOE YUO LARUIE on it. For which the Lozenge must be grateful as he ensures a birthday cupcake is delivered to his brother's classroom. 'He won't be expecting it but he'll be really pleased.' When I tell this to J, who has a big brother who was not at all nice to him, J says this means more to him than anything in the world.

We go out for the Lozenge's birthday dinner with 9 small people and one other adult (not a recommended ratio). One little Palestinian friend disappears on the Lozenge's scooter over the brow of a hill out of sight on our way to the restaurant. 'Haaaaaadiiiiiii Cooooommmmme Baaaaaack!' I yell running as fast as I can after him. The other 8 small people look perturbed and run off in pursuit of Hadi. Now I've lost all of them. Bad plan. The other Mum intercepts Rashimi from a small train about to run him over. Then they scoff chicken nuggets and grilled cheese sandwiches. I feverishly grasp a bottle of beer.

Half way through my burger the Lozenge says he needs a number two and could I assist in the bottom wiping in a bit. Seven...hmm. I insist he's great at doing it by himself. But no. Another bite into my burger and the Lozenge says: 'Mummy, I've got something really cool to show you. Please come and look.' I'm reluctant. And I take a while. But finally, I get there.

'Look Mummy', he says pointing up to the dark sky. 'Look. The moon'.

J is back any minute, and my only concern is our little Pea who has no words really, yet she has reasons of the heart, that cannot be spoken. 'Dadda' she says, pointing a shining index finger at Palestinian local men in the supermarket. Dadda she says as she clambers onto other friends' Dads' laps. She cuddles Mikel the father of Rashimi's best friend; and Beni our friend from Kosovo - and doesn't let him go. She is perhaps feeling J's absence more than any of us, and shows this more clearly with no words at all.

But she's standing proud too. She can rise up from the floor, legs wide apart like Petya my Granny's Bulgarian weight lifter home-help used to do. And she can walk three steps, stiffly, as though she has wooden legs.

So both of the dwarfs have fallen asleep mid-poem after our clothes sale. And we've raised all these dollars for doctors in Aleppo which feels so near only 700 km away, yet so unutterably far. And I think of all the seven year olds and four year olds and one year olds learning to walk and talk, and trying to fall asleep with their Mums under this same moon, and I wonder how the world is ever going to get through this.

Active hope needs to go live.
.

Be fruitful, be a raisin

The kindly man at the supermarket checkout in our Eastern Jerusalem district is dressed in a black tie, black shirt and black trousers. As usual he greets me warmly as I hurriedly bundle my wares from trolley to desk as the Lozenge and Rashimi toss me paper bags of sugary morsels which, like magpies, they've collected. 'I'm sorry,' I say. 'Are you mourning someone?'

'La, la' meaning: 'No no' in Arabic. He shrugs. 'Just I'm wearing black today - no one die'.

'Not becuase of Shimon then?' I joke. For a couple of seconds he looks blank and I fear I've overstepped our line of mutual respect. Then suddenly he gurgles into a laugh as he gets what I mean. 'NO. Most certainly NOT because of Shimon!'

Shimon Peres' familiar face with slightly sad brown eyes, is emblazoned over local newspapers this week and though he is mourned by Israelis as being one of the longest living bastions of peace and progress; most Palestinians view him as pugnacious a rotter as any other Israeli leader past or present. After my supermarket joke, I do end up putting my foot in it with a Palestinian friend at a dinner this week. 'So what do you make of Shimon then?' I ask. And he unleashes a furious tirade about all Israeli leaders since Jabotinsky being the reason for the loss of his own homeland. 'They had a plan then, they have a plan now - which is to take the whole place for themselves based on nebulous writings from 3,000 years ago. I honestly can't believe you ask me this question,' he says.

Forgiveness seems an unattainable reach. But just look at what's happening in Colombia and their almost-peace agreement.  So close. And this would not have been the case 20 years ago. There must always be hope.

Because of Shimon's funeral and the visit of world leaders to Jerusalem, the school is closed for the day, and my fabulous Italian friend and I have to postpone our fashion for a cause sale to raise money for Syrians. Ironic.

The dwarfs are delighted to have another day tagged to their Rosh Hashanah - Jewish new year - holiday. The Lozenge begins his Friday with an experiment: putting a raisin in a glass of water and leaving it there for a few days. 'I want to turn it back into a grape,' he explains. I wonder secretly to myself if this would work with humans. I've completed one more year of life this week, and after nearly two months of living without J and working and tending two dwarfs and a pea day in, day out - I am feeling like a raisin myself. It will be unfortunate if J returns from his Baghdad pod-life looking grape-like.

I have a good birthday despite the absence of J. I receive 2 naked card invaders at 6.15 who jump into my bed and cover me in kisses. The Pea joins us in our festivities that evening with friends at our local restaurant. She astonishes everyone with her pizza techniques, eating an entire slice without me having to cut it up; then grinning at us all with greasy chops and a black olive stuck to her chin.

We are happy and healthy but I'm ready for some man-power. The morning ritual of waking, feeding, dressing dwarves and a robust Pea, and skooshing dwarfs out of the door to get on the school bus can mean I sometimes rush things. Maybe I rush everything, in fact. 'Mummy this morning you must have put my PANTH on inside out,' says Rashimi. 'Because all day I had an inside bottom.' The Rashimi explanation for a wedgie.

But he and particularly the Lozenge have been reliable and generally unflappable this first stint of J's absence. 'We all rely on the Lozenge,' says J. J relies on him to support me. I rely on him to support me. Rashimi relies on him as an older brother, as does the Pea. He is seven this week. In Jesuit speak: 'Give me a boy before he is seven and I will make him a man.' He is also manning up with some good observational skills. As I pack up for a recent camping expedition, asking myself under my breath if I'm mad to be doing this, on my twenty fifth trip to the garage with tents and cold bags and duvets and swimming gear, I say: 'Guys can you just stop talking to me for a few minutes while I try and gather my thoughts.'

'What thoughts?' asks the Lozenge.

Well, exactly. I think I had a thought a few weeks ago. But it's gone again.

But after all the exertion of packing up the car, the smalls and I and our Swedish friends share a stunning sunset which we have to ourselves:

and to fall asleep under a bright, full moon with the sound of lapping waves a few metres from our tent, make me glad as glad to have tried it.

These happy little faces the next morning explain the glee of the adventure after their 11 hours of sleep while I have lain awake all night with my lapping-water surround-sound and moon glow lighting.

A dunk in the water at 6.30am...

Selina the fairy-godmother arrives from Paris, direct to our beach to camp to hang out with us. She appears in the dead of night and the dwarves are ecstatic to see her in the tent beside me in the morning. She spends all day in the sea with one dwarf on her shoulders, and another dangling from her neck and appears to enjoy it. Gold is not more valuable than a visitor like this, when in my situation. We spend merry days with her, and then two more girlfriends breeze in for a long weekend. I may be a raisin but I have some good girls on my vine who have put the energy back and a bit extra for spares.

A new friend, Munther, from the West Bank drops off a tiny snake in a bottle for the boys to inspect. He then disappears. Is he really a friend? He asks if we want to keep it - St Grace is appalled. She's not afraid of much, St Grace - but snakes are her worst thing ever. I guess in Sri Lanka you get some scary ones. I explain to her this one will be 2 metres long when fully grown according to Munther. She hugs the Pea more tightly to her bosom in terror.  So politely, I decline. 'You mean longer than you Mummy. Wow - that will be one big snake,' says Rashimi.

So the Pea's first pet will not be a Palestinian viper it turns out. Her new activity is singing along to the call to prayer, and her first word is: 'Cheers!' as she clinks plastic beaker with her brothers. A promising sign.

One of the obituaries of Shimon Peres says his character epitomises this quote by Nietszche. I read it and it makes me feel a bit better about being a raisin:

'One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions; one remains young only on condition that the soul does not relax, does not long for peace.'

I like the idea of not allowing oneself or ones life to become too peaceful, in order to stay young. So I'll take this vignette onto my vine with me this year, and hope that by being a raisin, life can be fruitful.

Mummies of Jerusalem

We're on the phone with the Glammy as we drive out for dinner on Sunday night. The four of us: two dwarfs, the Pea, and me. We were all ready to go and then the Pea crawled to my bag, whipped out the bottle of white wine and cracked it onto the tiled floor while sitting back on a shard of glass which punctured the gnocchi dough thigh. The dwarfs got to work massaging the wine lake into the rug and crunching more glass around the house. So we're late for dinner but happy to be going out. We FaceTime the Glammy on our way. She's in the US now: found a job and in the process of losing another husband. But it's great to talk and she laughs at me - her face on dashboard as I drive - you are a crazy Mamma taking everyone out at night!' The Lozenge trills: 'But you shouldn't be at work. You're Arab and it's EID!' 'I know habibi (dear) Laurie but they don't have days off for EID in the states.'  And if Trump wins, not any time soon, either.

We have dinner on a balcony with some wonderful friends from Kosovo. It's a balmy evening and we smoke a hubby bubbly pipe, eat lasagna altogether, drink wine, study the Arab tiles on their floor, and ponder if this was originally an Arab house, now consumed by West Jerusalem.

We do the skip through the dark thing again back home and the Lozenge sings: ' I can use up some of my energy from tomorrow, and the bit left over from today.' I almost sleep drive, home. I am weary from physical endurance and I feel like Mummies must feel a lot, everywhere in the world. Particularly when they're on their own a lot. I look back as we draw into the garage. Two sleeping dwarfs, heads propping each other up in a head to head book-end style without the books in-between. The Pea also in dormouse cottage lolling alone in her seat covered in biscuit crumbs. I do four trips to the car and back putting each small creature into bed - though the Lozenge almost feels like I'm carrying one of myself - he is so big and tall. I peel off clothes, forgetting the teeth just for one night, and make one final trip for the bags which fortunately don't need tucking in or undressing. I collapse into bed.

Monday is first day of Eid so no school. I was part of the team at the school campaigning for Muslim pupils to have Eid holiday, as Christian and Jewish children have their holidays, so here we have it. 2 days off when I've just started work and really quite a lot of it to do. But Eid al Adha is the festival of sacrifice afterall: the holier of the two eids muslims celebrate each year - commemorating Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son.

Our area has a lightness in the air. The emphasis is on eating, family, and spending time and money, together.  Teenage girls wander the sticky pavements in squeaky new white Converse trainers; metal shop shutters are pulled tightly down while the community goes to ground for a few days. I stop at a flower shop for a bunch of lillies, a young boy gives the Pea a flower of brightest fuschia and ruffles her hair. 'Kol 'am wa antom bekhayr'  I say - an Arabic greeting for birthdays and festivals alike. Eid has been good this year, the man in the shop tells me.

The Israel museum beckons with a gang of friends - large and small. Picasso drawings for larges and an interactive communications exhibit for the smalls - or both for both. We get waylaid with the 'Mummies of Jerusalem' and while Rashimi contests these cannot be real Mummies as they are not covered in bandages, I realise though I'm not covered in bandages either, I fit right into the Mummies of Jerusalem exhibition anyway.  My brain embalmed with constant questions and smalls-talk; my body as stiff as a sarcophagus from the midnight kinder-shifting.

We walk down a wide avenue with a Rodin statue and Rashimi smacks his bottom; wafts of lavender exude from the garden, the dead sea scrolls housed on our right. I've never seen those I think to myself. ''Mummy, what is rock. Mummy, why can you sort of see through the moon in the daytime? Mummy why does water make your hand wet? Mummy...Mummy...Mummy..both dwarfs are at it in my two ears. Their questions come as fast as two mouthfuls taken in without chewing. They start another question before they'e finished the first. 'Mummy I have more bones than you and Laurie but the Pea has more than all of us, right? Mummy, because small people have more bones than big people. And Mummy does Master Kwaigon have the force?'

Yes I am a Mummy of Jerusalem. I create myself an invisible sarcophagus shell around my head and think still, quiet thoughts. We find ourselves back at the Mummies again as Rashimi is fascinated by them more than anything else in the museum apart from the video of the real-life beating heart. 'Mummy, but that's not a real heart because it's not a heart shape.' Khaled our friend says something about these Mummies not being Egyptian ones. He's Egyptian so I expect he'd know, I think. I don't get around to reading the information board. But a while later I manage to inspect the nano bible through half shut eyes for a few seconds. It's the world's smallest bible, on a microchip. (W.H.Y?) I look, briefly at a page of a dead sea scroll and try and work out if it's Hebrew writing.  This Mummy leaves the museum not altogether wiser about anything than before she entered. But at least I have literally 'seen' the scrolls.

I watch the boys eating a large slice of Israeli cheese cake I've paid for. It costs about £6, and wonder if that can count as dinner or if they'll be hungry again when we get back.

The following day we decide to go the beach for the final Eid-off. We're all four in the kitchen making hummus which we've agreed will be our contribution to a group picnic. The Lozenge is balanced on a chair operating the whizzer, slopping olive oil over the work surface; Rashimi is ripping open razor sharp lids of chick pea cans; the Pea rams me with her walker in my shins - the boys are safely un-safely teetering on their stools, so free from ramming incidents at least.  She runs over a splodge of hummus and a plastic pretzel dragged from the playroom, now lodged under her wheel makes a scraping sound as she walks. Radio four is unintelligible for the decibels of our kitchen so I turn it off leaving a hummous finger print on the ipad, as Rashimi inadverently spatula splats some hummus onto my top.

St Grace is here, and then has gone - 15 Sri Lankans are on a pilgrimage here from Jordan and are coming around for a cup of tea so she whips off to get them from the Garden Tomb, where some, but not all, Christians believe Jesus was buried and the rock moved. I'm now half naked - the hummus top in the washing pile - and I wonder if Sri Lankans have a problem with semi-nudity in adults. The dwarfs are still completely naked. We laugh when we remember the last time she had a visiting pastor from Sri Lanka and the Lozenge came waddling out of the loo with his pants round his ankles asking me to wipe his bottom when the pastor was half way through a group prayer. I half miss her smooth presence, as smooth as the way she handles a mop or a brush or a baby.  And I want to wait to see her Sri Lankan pilgrims on their trip from Jordan but it's 9.30 and the hummus is made, carrot batons chopped, cold beer added for midday attitude ajustments and the Pea is looking sleepy in her walker.

I heave everybody, and myself, into the car and I receive a text from St Grace saying: 'sorry madam there still hear in tombs.'

Not such a bad plan, I think. Next week I might be wandering about the tomb too. A nice cool and quiet place for a Mummy of Jerusalem.

Taking Sides

While I have moments of missing J so keenly, I sit in a trance or pace the house, not knowng where to put myself. My Grandmother used to eat her dinner off newspaper when Grandpa was away, to save the drag of washing up one plate. And though I have to watch out not to eat a few Tuc biscuits followed by a Twirl for dinner; on the whole we're okay. Each street around us houses a friend. 'Keyf Jowzek?' (How's your husband?) asks my friend Marwan in the 'everything' shop, piled up to the ceiling with wares. 'Baghdad. Haraam.' (Baghdad, What a shame), people lament. The Armenian hairdresser pops out of his shop, his mouth full of hair pins. 'Anything you need. Really - you know where to come,' as I wheel past with the Pea.

In our world this week - in our uncomplicated bubble hovering over much a more complex reality - the main worry is that the star wars costumes and light sabres may have been forwarded to Baghdad by the diplomatic postal service. Though perhaps a light sabre is the very thing for J: for the force. With a thick Iraqi dialect to contend with in his work, and a life empty of distraction.

But all is not okay around us. Shaded by the superior hell of  Aleppo or Yemen, the State of Israel can continue to build illegal settlements on land that is officially Palestinian and bully the Palestinian people into submission unhindered. A greater regional conflict is just what the more sinister side of the State of Israel (becuase there are many, many Israelis who do not support this) needs to get on with what they came for - a whole country of their own, without the Palestinians getting in the way.

It's so easy to become inured to the situation here when you've lived here for a while. It's important to get out and see it as often as you can. And as internationals we can mercurially move around the way that locals from either side, cannot so easily, or safely.

This week I head up to Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank with Mark - the sculptor I've been filming with - to visit an eye clinic with St John Eye Hospital. Mark is visibly moved by what he sees. While we drive up the winding road, one of the doctors shows Mark a map of the West Bank showing the settlements. 'They're almost like a brown cancer stain in a scan of the human body,' says Mark. 'Yes, and they're growing, un-treated, even encouraged,' the doctor replies. 'There are maybe over half a million settlers in the Palestinian territories now,' he continues. 'They all have one IDF soldier guarding them to keep safe, and they are taking all the water, and using the roads, that we are often not allowed to use ourselves.'

Map from PeaceNow.org

The Palestinian populations scattered between these hilltop land grabbers are suffering from diabetes, depression, each compounded by the limited movement. It's difficult to get a permit to reach Jerusalem - though one way is a medical permit. The doctors refer 10 patients in the outreach clinic the day we visit.

But it's easy to ignore it when you're cut off from 'the other'. So easy. And also for internationals such as me: busy with jobs and juniors and just getting on with things. You can forget to put your head up and realise what is being eroded: a civilisation and a nation of people being slowly and assuredly squeezed. The life out of, the air out of, the houses out of, the land out of, the water out of...them and their country.

A young Palestinian man is shot dead by Israeli police while bringing home food, baby clothes, a grieving mother recounts. 27-year-old Mustafa Nimir, was killed early one morning this week, when Israeli forces showered the vehicle in which he was travelling with live fire. The Israeli police claim he and his cousin were attempting a car ramming. But eye witnesses deny this.

This is one story of many, many others.

Many locals here are calling this an ongoing 'Nakba' - referring to the 'catastrophe' when the Palestinian people were forced out of their land in 1948 when the State of Israel was created. The inhabitants of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are regularly subject to house demolitions, eviction orders, search operations. 83 Palestinian young people have been shot since the beginning of the year in the Bethlehem district. The same is happening all over the West Bank.

This is what an IDF commander, known as 'Captain Nidal' recently said to the young men of a refugee camp of Palestinians near Bethlehem: ' 'I will make the youth of the camp disabled. I'll make half of you disabled and let the other half push the wheelchairs.'

BADIL, the resource centre for Palestinian residency and refugee rights explains: 'These threats indicate that these actions are not accidental or isolated incidents, but rather result from a systematic Israeli military policy aimed at suppressing resistance, terrorizing Palestinian youth, and permanently injuring them and/or causing significant damage to their physical and mental well-being. The explicit threats by the Israeli army leadership show the willingness to commit criminal actsand raise significant concerns about the adherence of the Israeli forces to the tenets of international law.'

'We must always take sides,' said Ellie Weisel, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and holocaust survivor. 'Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.'

'An injustice somewhere, is an injustice everywhere.'

I often ask myself which kind of Israeli would I be? The one who puts her head above the parapet and says what she will not stand for? Or the one who just gets on with things and would rather not think too hard about it?

And as internationals we should be asking ourselves the same question.

Saja and Yazan

https://vimeo.com/181801625

The important and wonderful work of St John Eye Hospital for Palestinian children.

Daddy diet - week one

The dwarfs, at the end of the day, after I've concocted them three meals, sometimes four, have a habit of asking for warm milk (in a beaker which takes me at least ten minutes to clean and put together) and a bowl of dried banana or a platelet of fruit. Tonight was a bad night as I was threadbare from the day, and the day before that. And the Lozenge must have sensed it somehow as he followed me into the kitchen, naked, on his scooter and said sheepishly, 'Mummy, no rush with the fruit.' Then as he scooted out he turned to me and said a little more quietly, his head down,'Mummy. Do you miss Daddy? Because I do.' And scooted out again.

The Daddy diet has begun, as J begins his first seven week stretch away from us.  The first of a year's worth of these. He's in Baghdad; we are in Jerusalem. We're used to random-combination-destinations but this one is a wierd one. His lack is my overload, his silence is my noise, his solitude is my endless companionship. Mostly of dwarfs. But as Tom Hanks said recently: 'There is big difference between loneliness and solitude'. In my mind the two are as different as starvation and hunger. One is a deeper need that can't be answered with simple company or food; the other is a knowledge that everything is alright and a little pang of a reminder to enjoy the feeling and use it well, before the situation changes. ie. your husband returns, your friend comes to visit, or you have food on your plate.

As J works on one big mission, my missions are multitudinous. The dwarfs, the pea and I all have our routines, but I've noticed that through our intense togetherness, we've also begun to leak into each other's lives more than ever. Since J is not here, my life takes on more of a dwarf-friendly theme: they stay up later with me, as we're invited by friends to eat and drink on weekend evenings. I'm flanked in the darkness by two dwarfs on scooters, a pea in a pram as we wheel through the darkness back home, the call to prayer sounding under the starlight. And I can find myself of a Sunday morning eating nutella on toast roaring with laughter with them, watching Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip; or trying to stifle a sob on E.T. when he leaves forever, pointing to the little boy's head and saying: 'I'll be right here.'

Our lives and our flesh are interlinked in our small oasis in the middle of one of the more troubled cities in the world. The physicality of dwarf and Pea presence, both trips me up and supports me. J has none of this, and the seven weeks of absence must be in this sense harder for him.

The dwarfs are most of the time my allies - their conversation sometimes deep ('Mummy, God is the guard of the world' or 'Mummy if all the people in the whole wide world, died, would that be the end of the world. And if so, would God begin making it all over again?' from Rashimi) between naked wrestling or Pea wrangling. 'She is the most loved, and cuddled and stroked and pummeled and sucked and occasionally kicked or dropped-by-mistake, baby sister. You guys are going to be so fine you know - you'll swim the river, you'll wrestle the crocodile and it'll all be good,' J says as he leaves us.

And I also have my other allies - so many friends around, and Marwan in the local shop on the corner, whose shelves are stacked so high in his tiny store he has to flick the cereal down with a long stick so you have to duck to avoid flying Cheerios. Marwan is my friend. He sells cereal, salami and Leffe Blonde.

We have our moments, also. When I signed up for this year of separation, the Pea wasn't moving. Now we have a constant refrain. 'Hang on, where's Petra?'

It's as though the Pea is on wheels, and she doesn't answer when we call. Now we need Pea patrol as well as everything else.

'Mummy - she's crawling down the path to the gate!'
'She's got a mouth full of fir cones Mummy'!' as Rashimi shoves a grimy hand into her mouth to pull out the dribbly brown bits.
'She's chewing the loo brush!

Or worst of all, tears of fury as 12kg of human shaped gnocchi crushes a Lego masterpiece.

Before he left, J gave us a beautiful chess/backgammon set made in Syria, so we'd have something other than Alvin and his merry 'munks to focus on while he's away.  The Lozenge and I play chess (we're teaching ourselves on youtube which is time consuming and intense) so Rashimi gets bored and rearranges the pieces or drops them on the floor. 'Look - I've knocked off some of your prawns and your ponies,' says Rashimi, cackling with laughter, looking for a rise. Normally he gets one from a Lozenge and I look down as the Pea squashes a bishop into one cheek, the other side already packed with draughts pieces. More tears. I study the mother of pearl on the chess board and wonder where the Syrian hands are now that set the tiny pieces into it.

When we're in the house together, there is constant, constant conversation, and I sometimes have to pinch myself to make sure I listen to every single bit - becuase it's all important, though all incessant. I almost switched off this morning while slicing into a newly baked fruity loaf, re-heating porridge, packing snacks for school and feeding a Pea a sticky spoon of mango in-between.

But luckily this morning I switched back on in time to hear the Lozenge's vignette on Gene Wilder's death. 'Willy Wonka, Mummy?' 'You mean he's dead?'  I said: 'Well - the actor who played Willy Wonka died. Because he was very old and he was ill.' A small silence. 'But you know what, that is really clever because what they do is they make the film with the Willy Wonka man in it, the one who's just died, and then they put it in a DVD, so then, so then he will stay there forever! Even when he dies, then he doesn't go away.' A six year old's way of explaining being preserved in Celluloid. Gene - you're with us. In our cupboard under the telly. And it's really nice to know you haven't gone away.

If only we could keep Daddy under the telly too.