J and I are training for a 10km slice of the Bethlehem marathon which happens in April. I'd forgotten how good it is to run. Sleet is splattering Jerusalem's stone walls and feet-polished streets and I felt that familiar burn in my chest that I haven't had since primary school. The slight tingle and tang on the front of my legs from the cold air, hot-cold cheeks and burning ears. When the body runs the mind stills. I'd been sitting at the computer trying to work out my year and feeling daunted by things. My brain was sunny side down. So out I went into the grey - East Jerusalemites slumped under mackintoshes and mangled umbrellas; Haredim (ultra orthodox Jews) with rain drops on side locks and plastic bags over their precious hats. And my brain flipped to sunny side up almost immediately.
How could I have forgotten about all those free endorphins up for grabs?
Everything is out there for you to witness from a solitary world with a soundtrack of your choice. I started out to the smell of the dry cleaners on our street corner, mixed with the now familiar scent of deep frying falafel. I ran past the man selling the sesame seed ca'ek, shaped like a bread lasso - his black and white keffiyeh tied under his chin against the cold, as he reached for a paper twirl of za'atar and a boiled egg for a hungry passer by. 'Sabbagh al khayr' he raised a gnarled hand, the za'atar twirl still between his thumb and forefinger. On I went, past the body building gym with the picture of a man with racehorse veins and glistening muscles; then the barber shop - about four men inside, forefingers to smartphone screens, receiving the common racoon cut and a shave. They glanced up as I ran by.
Over the seam road dividing the East of the city from West, along the platform of the light rail train and up the hill beside the wall of the Old City towards the New Gate. I aimed for the white car and ran to it without stopping, allowing myself a walk at the top to look over a misty view towards Jaffa gate.
J left us Sunday morning for a work trip. He kissed the four of us as we lay in our bed, legs entangled. The Lozenge and Rashimi leaning against some big pillows with chocolate breath from their milk drink; next to me and the Pea - she leaning against me as her big pillow, and she with plain, not chocolate, milk breath. I was sad to see him go, and was glad of the three human forms clustered around me in the bed. We're going to have to get used to this when our routine changes a bit. And in the back of my mind I'm wondering how I will get used to J not being with us all the time. We treat each moment together as a bead of gold now. In that way it's probably a good exercise.
We remaining four tumbled out of the bed and headed to the kitchen for some breakfast. One of our friends gave the boys a big box of rice krispies which Rashimi calls 'The Kyle Krisp' in his honour. I showed them how to best listen to them crackling. It involves silence and a shaggy morning head to be dipped gently to one side over the bowl - like listening to the sound of the sea from a shell. 'Yes I can hear it,' whispered Rashimi. You can either feel outnumbered as a big person with three dwarfs, or you can become a dwarf yourself. As Rashimi pointed out the other day: 'You're a big person on the outside Mummy, but in yer heart you're still a girl.' And as the Lozenge explained to someone: 'What Mummy does isn't really work because her office is a nice place and she always looks happy when she's in there. And she has cool things in her top drawer.'
I really want him to keep believing that it's possible for work not to feel like work. We need to keep that ball in the air for as long as possible. May the dwarfs never have to wear suits and ties! Unless they work in fashion and they've designed it themselves.
So soon, the Kyle Krisps finished, and the flat bread and honey underway, I found myself turning into a ventriloquist pretending that the Pea herself was talking. The dwarfs found it very funny, particularly because the pea (via me) was talking about 'teef'. Because hers are as yet as scarce as a hen's. And the Lozenge has reached that important little pearly milestone in life, where his first bunch start leaving him, and the new jaggedy fangs break through the gum and cauthe a little more of a lithp.
She's a busy lady the tooth fairy, and only just remembered in time to leave a 20 shekel note (about £4) under the pillow in return for the two tiny pegs that hopped out of the Lozenge's mouth over the weekend.
We were just going about our Monday morning, and I was helping the Lozenge effectively brush the two new jaggedy ones, when I felt a sudden wave of responsibility. I realised that these new slabs of shining bone were going to be with him for life - inshallah - unlike those last little disposable gnashers. And inshallah again, they will probably outlive me. On looking at the baby tooth lying on the envelope addressed to the tooth fairy, I couldn't believe that the tiny thing, together with its row of comrades, could have been responsible for taking on a Granny Smith. It gives you courage really - when you look at something so small, and what it is capable of. A tiny tool without which six years of prandial experience and the odd bit of self defence and pulling apart stubborn pieces of Lego, would not have happened. I will keep the little pearl for ever tucked in with the first curl in a small silver box with a mother of pearl lid the size of my thumb nail. I now know what it feels to be that mother of the pearl.
And the bemused thinking got me over a niggling little wave of nostalgia about 6 years passed and that chapter of earliest childhood coming to an end, with the added responsibility over that too.
So Monday morning and the job of nudging the boys into their week. How happy I was to see Yakoub the bus driver, with his wooly hat pulled down over his ears, opening the electric door to the school bus thereby letting some air into the fug. That morning he was playing Fairuz - the Arab icon diva which reminds me where we are, so I pinch myself and feel lucky we're here. I hopped up the steps of the bus, fastened belts around the boys and he glided off - with both of them looking through the fringes of their fluffy parka hoods out of the steamy window.
The week had begun.
After my run I was a bit more effective at my desk, but I also remembered that getting out there is important even when not going for a run. The local and global news feed is so negative, that being a freelancer sat inside your house, you can start to believe that's all there is: Da'esh; local stabbers; and hatred. So I went back out into the rain to get my party heels fixed . They're bright red and suede. Bilal is the cobbler - his Dad died 25 years ago so he's ben working in the shop since he finished school. He's jolly and has a beard (not a funny one, just normal). He offered me a coffee and spoke only in Arabic, apologising for his English which isn't good because he left school early to take over his Dad's business after his death.
I sipped the cardamom coffee from a paper cup not much bigger than a thimble. He asked what I did. I told him I made videos and he switched his little TV to the Nat Geo channel and we watched a mongoose kill a snake with Arabic dubbing. I looked on my phone and said the name in Arabic for mongoose. From the look on Bilal's face as he waved his hand in front of his nose, this must also be the same word for skunk. 2 little boys came in to get the zip on their Mum's handbag fixed. Omar and Aboud they were called. 'Aboud, m'al abu lil ayoun soud' a little rhyme meaning: Aboud whose dad has black eyes. They were off school because of the weather these beautiful boys of 10 and 8, just a bit older than ours, with their black hair and coats fastened up to their chins. Bilal charged them a quid for fixing the zip and the Mum came in with a big hair do and thick makeup, thanked Bilal, scooped up the boys and rushed off. Then a road cleaner came in with his all in one duvet ski suit kind of thing, and said he needed some clips for the suit as the trouser bottoms were soaking up all the rain water. He went outside to smoke a cigarette and I joked with Bilal that if the road cleaner wore my red heels instead, his trousers bottoms would no longer get wet. Now that, Bilal said with a giggle, is a little bit moskelgia: (naughty). You don't really make jokes about men wearing women's shoes round here. We compared pictures of our daughters: his is called Maria and she's two. She has eyes the same colour as yours, he said. So are you a Christian? No, a Muslim. Nefseshi. The same, he laughed.
Then I walked back via the dry cleaners and the man who always calls: 'Umm Petra' to me, who lamented the fact he had five sons and no daughter. 'No family is complete without a girl,' he said. 'You're lucky!'
Everyday life needs to be like that mongoose: eating the bad news snake for breakfast.
'Leave evil, and it will leave you,' the Arabic proverb goes.
How could I have forgotten about all those free endorphins up for grabs?
Everything is out there for you to witness from a solitary world with a soundtrack of your choice. I started out to the smell of the dry cleaners on our street corner, mixed with the now familiar scent of deep frying falafel. I ran past the man selling the sesame seed ca'ek, shaped like a bread lasso - his black and white keffiyeh tied under his chin against the cold, as he reached for a paper twirl of za'atar and a boiled egg for a hungry passer by. 'Sabbagh al khayr' he raised a gnarled hand, the za'atar twirl still between his thumb and forefinger. On I went, past the body building gym with the picture of a man with racehorse veins and glistening muscles; then the barber shop - about four men inside, forefingers to smartphone screens, receiving the common racoon cut and a shave. They glanced up as I ran by.
Over the seam road dividing the East of the city from West, along the platform of the light rail train and up the hill beside the wall of the Old City towards the New Gate. I aimed for the white car and ran to it without stopping, allowing myself a walk at the top to look over a misty view towards Jaffa gate.
J left us Sunday morning for a work trip. He kissed the four of us as we lay in our bed, legs entangled. The Lozenge and Rashimi leaning against some big pillows with chocolate breath from their milk drink; next to me and the Pea - she leaning against me as her big pillow, and she with plain, not chocolate, milk breath. I was sad to see him go, and was glad of the three human forms clustered around me in the bed. We're going to have to get used to this when our routine changes a bit. And in the back of my mind I'm wondering how I will get used to J not being with us all the time. We treat each moment together as a bead of gold now. In that way it's probably a good exercise.
We remaining four tumbled out of the bed and headed to the kitchen for some breakfast. One of our friends gave the boys a big box of rice krispies which Rashimi calls 'The Kyle Krisp' in his honour. I showed them how to best listen to them crackling. It involves silence and a shaggy morning head to be dipped gently to one side over the bowl - like listening to the sound of the sea from a shell. 'Yes I can hear it,' whispered Rashimi. You can either feel outnumbered as a big person with three dwarfs, or you can become a dwarf yourself. As Rashimi pointed out the other day: 'You're a big person on the outside Mummy, but in yer heart you're still a girl.' And as the Lozenge explained to someone: 'What Mummy does isn't really work because her office is a nice place and she always looks happy when she's in there. And she has cool things in her top drawer.'
I really want him to keep believing that it's possible for work not to feel like work. We need to keep that ball in the air for as long as possible. May the dwarfs never have to wear suits and ties! Unless they work in fashion and they've designed it themselves.
So soon, the Kyle Krisps finished, and the flat bread and honey underway, I found myself turning into a ventriloquist pretending that the Pea herself was talking. The dwarfs found it very funny, particularly because the pea (via me) was talking about 'teef'. Because hers are as yet as scarce as a hen's. And the Lozenge has reached that important little pearly milestone in life, where his first bunch start leaving him, and the new jaggedy fangs break through the gum and cauthe a little more of a lithp.
She's a busy lady the tooth fairy, and only just remembered in time to leave a 20 shekel note (about £4) under the pillow in return for the two tiny pegs that hopped out of the Lozenge's mouth over the weekend.
We were just going about our Monday morning, and I was helping the Lozenge effectively brush the two new jaggedy ones, when I felt a sudden wave of responsibility. I realised that these new slabs of shining bone were going to be with him for life - inshallah - unlike those last little disposable gnashers. And inshallah again, they will probably outlive me. On looking at the baby tooth lying on the envelope addressed to the tooth fairy, I couldn't believe that the tiny thing, together with its row of comrades, could have been responsible for taking on a Granny Smith. It gives you courage really - when you look at something so small, and what it is capable of. A tiny tool without which six years of prandial experience and the odd bit of self defence and pulling apart stubborn pieces of Lego, would not have happened. I will keep the little pearl for ever tucked in with the first curl in a small silver box with a mother of pearl lid the size of my thumb nail. I now know what it feels to be that mother of the pearl.
And the bemused thinking got me over a niggling little wave of nostalgia about 6 years passed and that chapter of earliest childhood coming to an end, with the added responsibility over that too.
So Monday morning and the job of nudging the boys into their week. How happy I was to see Yakoub the bus driver, with his wooly hat pulled down over his ears, opening the electric door to the school bus thereby letting some air into the fug. That morning he was playing Fairuz - the Arab icon diva which reminds me where we are, so I pinch myself and feel lucky we're here. I hopped up the steps of the bus, fastened belts around the boys and he glided off - with both of them looking through the fringes of their fluffy parka hoods out of the steamy window.
The week had begun.
After my run I was a bit more effective at my desk, but I also remembered that getting out there is important even when not going for a run. The local and global news feed is so negative, that being a freelancer sat inside your house, you can start to believe that's all there is: Da'esh; local stabbers; and hatred. So I went back out into the rain to get my party heels fixed . They're bright red and suede. Bilal is the cobbler - his Dad died 25 years ago so he's ben working in the shop since he finished school. He's jolly and has a beard (not a funny one, just normal). He offered me a coffee and spoke only in Arabic, apologising for his English which isn't good because he left school early to take over his Dad's business after his death.
I sipped the cardamom coffee from a paper cup not much bigger than a thimble. He asked what I did. I told him I made videos and he switched his little TV to the Nat Geo channel and we watched a mongoose kill a snake with Arabic dubbing. I looked on my phone and said the name in Arabic for mongoose. From the look on Bilal's face as he waved his hand in front of his nose, this must also be the same word for skunk. 2 little boys came in to get the zip on their Mum's handbag fixed. Omar and Aboud they were called. 'Aboud, m'al abu lil ayoun soud' a little rhyme meaning: Aboud whose dad has black eyes. They were off school because of the weather these beautiful boys of 10 and 8, just a bit older than ours, with their black hair and coats fastened up to their chins. Bilal charged them a quid for fixing the zip and the Mum came in with a big hair do and thick makeup, thanked Bilal, scooped up the boys and rushed off. Then a road cleaner came in with his all in one duvet ski suit kind of thing, and said he needed some clips for the suit as the trouser bottoms were soaking up all the rain water. He went outside to smoke a cigarette and I joked with Bilal that if the road cleaner wore my red heels instead, his trousers bottoms would no longer get wet. Now that, Bilal said with a giggle, is a little bit moskelgia: (naughty). You don't really make jokes about men wearing women's shoes round here. We compared pictures of our daughters: his is called Maria and she's two. She has eyes the same colour as yours, he said. So are you a Christian? No, a Muslim. Nefseshi. The same, he laughed.
Then I walked back via the dry cleaners and the man who always calls: 'Umm Petra' to me, who lamented the fact he had five sons and no daughter. 'No family is complete without a girl,' he said. 'You're lucky!'
Everyday life needs to be like that mongoose: eating the bad news snake for breakfast.
'Leave evil, and it will leave you,' the Arabic proverb goes.
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