Children with children

Mum always used to get me talking in the car when I was a teenager. It was always a good place for a chat, like a walk, but driving. So many difficult topics would be addressed whirling down the A9. It's maybe something to do with the fact that you're not facing each other and so you can be more open and honest. Like a motorway confessional or something.

This filming trip to Jordan I had to work with a different translator/fixer as M, my lovely Egyptian friend is moving away.

I will miss her spirit, the brilliant insights in perfect English into Arab culture, and her one liners. 'My husband has been going to work every day for the last 4 years looking like he's off to a funeral. Of a very close friend.' And: 'She was just sitting there like a sack of potatoes. Bad enough to be a sack of potatoes, but a sack of potatoes with a headscarf? Much worse.'

I'd be half way through a pack of chocolate coated dates at her table, the ones she brought over specially from Cairo, and she'd push the box your way. 'Take them, habibti. Take them.' Or whipping up a quiche for me to take home before I left.

Our bent double laughter over her Sudanese driver Juma'a - which means Friday - though he's actually a Christian. And the healthy minded shouting about things when they weren't right. Nothing is ever bottled up in her world. And of course, she's a woman, so we could have deeper conversations with young Syrian girls we were filming with, than if she'd been a man.

So I was uneasy about working with someone else, and a man, at that. And I'd had a bad nights sleep because of a twanged muscle under my shoulder blade after carrying my camera kit around Jerusalem's Old City interviewing patriarchs. So it was only the beginning of the day and I already felt tired, and uneasy. Abdallah was also rather over qualified for the job having spent the past 35 years working as a cameraman for CNN and other news agencies in the region. He's spent months in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Israel, and is originally from Bethlehem. He arrived at my hotel ten minutes early on the first day in a shining Range Rover and we set off on the road up North to the Jordanian border towns of Mafraq, Ramtha, Irbid. Most Syrian refugees are outside the camps. The job was to film and photograph 6 children, to make 12 films to commemorate 5 years since the war began in Syria.

We had lots of driving to do in the car, so before we began filming, my conversational journey had already begun. Abdallah was a sensitive guy - full to the brim with stories of the Arab region where he'd spent his career filming foreigners from all corners, there to report from the dust on the oil intrigue, and the bloodshed. I asked questions and he talked, starting with Bethlehem where he was born, and I had recently given birth. So that was the obvious place to begin. After he'd been talking about his life and the region for half an hour, he sighed and muttered a word ending in 'allah, sucked his teeth and ran his fingers through his thick crop of grey, black hair. 'Ah, I bore myself talking. Whenever I'm working with a journalist I tell the same story, over and over again. I want a new story!' he laughed, driving his car up the winding road to the North - the land green from recent rain, the pine forests resplendent against a pale blue sky and corpulent clouds.

Over the four days we visited 6 young people of 18 and under, each with a different story to tell. Whenever I switch on the camera, I'm always amazed they're happy for me to film, they're open and talkative, and respond naturally to my questions. It's the time I feel most alive and most grateful for being in this place. Not least for the complementary Arabic listening comprehension this experience also offers.

First, there was the boy with one remaining leg who cried and wiped his eyes and told me there was still hope: 'God willing'. 'And God willed it,' the rocket that fell onto the group of children while they were out buying bread in their village in Syria -  killing his friend, and maiming his own leg. The faulty operation that ensued in the local hospital, leaving shrapnel in his thigh, forcing his family to run to Jordan for surgery. The gangrenous leg was taken off in the French hospital in Za'atari refugee camp. Also God's will. But God willing, there was still hope.

Sometimes, when I hear all that talk I nod and smile, but inside I'm thinking: 'Bloody God. He doesn't seem too willing at the moment, does he?' But they still keep a faith. 'Imaan', 'Imaan.' It's all about Imaan, Abdallah the fixer kept telling me as he muttered more words ending in 'allah under his breath as he drove. 'Mashallah, Bakrallah, Insha'allah. Bismillah and Shukrallah.'

Is it bullshit all this?

Who can judge when you're sitting on that carpet talking to a 16 year old who can't play football properly anymore, even though he tries. And in his own words: 'A boy like me will never get a job.' But he smiles and wipes his eyes and says, ''God's will' and Abdallah beside me stretches his hands upwards and says,'Mashallah! This faith is so strong. He's a good boy.' We have to believe everything will be okay.

Mohammad's Mum grapsed my hands and asked for my help. Her dark circles under her eyes betrayed sleepless nights. 'If there's anything you can do for Mohammad,' she said. Then she went on to explain that she hadn't heard from Mohammad's sister who's still in Syria with her husband, for 2 weeks. 'She had a baby 20 days ago, and I haven't heard anything since a few days after that. So now I need to concentrate on Mohammad and what we can find for him,' she shook her head and looked down at the ground, shaking her head and still holding my hands, as we said our goodbyes.

Back in the car Abdallah and I resumed our conversation. He continued to talk about faith. Abdallah's wife wears a headscarf, which he respects. 'Look', he said, 'I would never tell my wife to cover her head but if she wants, she wants, and that's fine. My girls - they can also decide themself.' He wound down the window to talk to a little guy selling chewing gum. He stretched his long arm out the car window and ruffled the boy's hair, asking his name. He bought some chewing gum from him and passed me a bit. We both grimaced and spat it out - it tasted like Deep Heat. I needed it on my twangy shoulder muscle not my tongue really.

'Everywhere you go, you need to be polite to people and to see, really see them. I hate people when they're rude and they don't treat people well on the street. What has this little guy done wrong? Nothing - he just wants to sell some gum and make a living.' Then Abdallah grumbled about the egotistical presenters he'd worked with in the past who were rude, or didn't remember him when they came back to report on another Arab skirmish. 'To them I was just a cameraman, but I'm still a person. That bugs me.'

Because I was with a male translator, Gamar put her hijab on for the camera interview so all we could see was her eyes. It was a shame, but I discovered that on a really close angle perhaps the eyes say it all anyway - accompanying the words. I, 40 and she, 14, sitting on a carpet in a town in Northern Jordan, talking about our baby girls.

And when Abdallah went off to chat with the men, Gamar and her girl and me were alone, and the hijab came off.

My baby was with her Daddy in Jerusalem, and her baby was clambering over her and sliding down her Mum's leg in her socks. Impatiently, Gamar lifted her up to cuddle her, but the toddler broke free again and Gamar released a small sigh. I watched this 14 year old with her baby and I realised this is where my thread begins, and where it ends. The ravelling up of my understanding and the unravelling of my own memories. I was a bit chubby like her, at her age, with faintly freckled skin and smooth line-free cheeks. And there she sat with a baby she'd had when she was 13, by caesarian section in a Jordanian hospital, after marrying when she was 12. It's understood that Syrian fathers in Jordan are marrying off their daughters earlier than they would back home. They say it's for their protection. Or maybe it's because as a refugee father of many children it's frighteningly expensive feeding and housing a large family and to let some of the girls go is an economic release.

'I'm afraid,' she said as she said goodbye to me. I dreaded what she was going to say - thinking maybe her mother in law or husbands aunts were being unkind, or the husband himself.

'Of what?' I said.

'Of the spiders in the bathroom', she whispered. 'I worry they might bite my baby.'

The fears of a fourteen year old in a foreign land.

As we drove back to Amman after the first day's filming, Abdallah sighed and did the clicky tongue thing again. 'I'm tired of these sad stories,' he said. 'One day I just want to film the ocean or something.' He suffers from high blood pressure. The life of a cameraman with 5 children back home is a life full of stress and high demands. He can no longer hop in the car and go and have lunch with his friend in Damascus. He can't go back to where he came from - Bethlehem - where his sister still lives and runs what remains of their patch of land. Lebanon you now can't reach by car. The rubble of Baghdad and its civilisation is no longer an inviting place to visit. So in many ways, though Jordan is safe, you can feel stuck there.

It's also expensive and society unforgiving.

We stopped to fill up the car with petrol. 'I love this smell of gas,' he said, laughing.

'Me too,' I said, 'It reminds me of my Dad.'

'It reminds me of Iraq,' said Abdallah. I spent many months there before the first Gulf War and you'd go into a gas station and they'd be pouring it over the ground when they filled up. Like water. It was so cheap. It should still be this cheap now, but we have to pay so much for it, and I don't know why.'

While Abdallah and I were covering the countryside, the dwarfs had been making merry with the Glammy. Faced with another evening in a hotel room alone, I decided I'd give them a call and see what they were up to. I went over to the apartment and the Glammy's Mum opened the door, rollers in, cigarette in one hand. She kissed me once, twice, then three times on the same cheek. We've all become firm friends over the past 3 years. The boys leapt into my arms. The Lozenge had a bouffant hairstyle which he explained was thanks to a blow dry from 'Big Bad Bader' - the Glammy's husband of a year.

'He takes way longer over his hair than I do,' laughed the Glammy.

We went to the cinema to watch an animation about a polar bear called: Norm of the North. The Lozenge worked his way through a bucket of caramel popcorn. Rashimi doused himself in sticky juice from a cardboard cup than his own head.

The Glammy gave them a shower back home. 'He's almost taller than me now,' laughed the Glammy as she washed the Lozenge's bottom with a sponge in the shape of a yellow duck that she keeps specially for them. I put them to bed later and returned to my hotel room where I slept for 9 hours.


I hadn't seen Fatima since she was 10.

Now she's 13 - beautiful and serene in her blue plaid headscarf. I almost felt like I'd seen her before in Afghanistan, before I'd seen her before in Mafraq that hot day in May 2013 when I drove up there on my own a couple of months after we arrived in Jordan, to interview her on the roof where she lived with her parents who are deaf and mute, and got out of the red car the same colour as it, because of the faulty air conditioning. 'Red like a bandoora! (arabic for tomato)' the Lozenge used to say.















Maybe living as an only child in a village with 2 mute parents makes you serene. At least your Dad can't shout at you if he doesn't speak. But her Dad has a kindly face and really she's caring for him, rather than the other way around. She can't read and write, and hasn't been to school for 6 years. Her childhood dream of becoming a doctor is fading. 'My main dream is to go back to Syria. My second dream is that my parents begin to speak. My third dream is to become a doctor. But I don't think that any of these dreams will come true.'

There's always warmth and friendliness when I charge in and film and photograph these families. I will always be grateful for this open-ness. At Gamar's house they were asking where my children were, and why I lived in Jerusalem - the third most holy place in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

The thing is, Abdallah explained: 'They think you're…'

'Crazy?' I proffered.

'Yeah. Really. Because you know, you're a woman and you're there with all these cameras and without your children and your husband and for them that's not normal.'

'But it's good for them to see that,' he added. 'So you know, shwei shwei (slowly, slowly), they can see there are other ways to be.'

I'd given Fatima 100 quid to spend only on her education. I'd said to Gamar never to give up on going back to school. That even when you have children it's possible to get an education (what's an in -house mother in law for, afterall, we in the West might think?).

On the final day driving back to Amman, all the interviews and general views and photos and filming done; my back and my head aching from the weight of the kit and the Arabic words and the stuff we listened to, we continued to talk. This time about how we raise our girls. 'Would you ever let one of your daughters marry a Christian?' I asked Abdallah - his eyes looking worryingly sleepy behind the wheel as we drove. 'La! (No!) Never. No way.'

'Look, how do I explain? I have had my time of being a bad boy'. Abdallah had already told me about his days as a scuba instructor in Aqaba and the Norwegian and Danish beauties he'd dated at the time. And how he found it difficult that they had this freedom and he couldn't cope with it as an Arab Muslim guy - even though you might say that as a Muslim guy he shouldn't have been up to all that anyway.

'So I've mended my ways now. My wife - she's amazing. And now I really concentrate on being a good Muslim, and so how could I turn around and let my daughter marry a Christian. It's just never going to happen.'

As we approached the outskirts of Amman. Having moved off Allah, we ventured towards politics - another deep void, I feared. 'You guys are lucky,' he said, 'In Europe you have ministers and politicians who actually care. They're not corrupt. We don't have good people in our government.'

Half of me agreed, but I added: 'Yes, but more than that we have rule of law which means there's not too much impunity and a media who can hold all these people - politicians and judges, to account. We have judges to judge our judges, guards to guard the guards.'

Abdallah laughed. 'You're right. We don't have any of that here. When the Jordanian media interview a politician here, it's like this: 'Merry Christmas, happy new year, have a nice day, bye bye.'

The dwarfs and I rolled home after our adventures - the car stacked with kit: cameras, tripods, hard drives, computers and wires; 'rolling suitcases', warmed up water in plastic bottles, half eaten apples and lolly sticks on the carpeted car floor.

We were reunited with J and the Pea and for all of us, the time was just how we'd dreamed it could be. Wholesome experiences, in the middle of all this mess.

Iom al asal, iom al basal: 'A day for honey, and a day for onion'

Iom al asal, iom al basal: 'A day for honey, and a day for onion.'

An arabic expression about the inevitability of the sweet and the bitter in life.

****

At around 4.30 every morning a multitude of noises creep into the silence, slowly filling the air. The first voice is the local muezzin calling muslims out of their beds and to prayer; then there's a spring cocktail mix of birdsong, followed shortly by the Pea who seems to be a light sleeper like me. I lie there listening. It's probably coming from my own head but in the muezzin's tones I can almost hear the anger, the despair, the indignation and determination. Again maybe I'm imagining it, but the anxiety is palpable beneath the peace: like he's pushing something forward in our increasingly complicated region and world.

I'm thankful for the soft pillow under my head, the fact I have an hour until the alarm goes, and for the birdsong flittering around the prayer call, a reminder that they, the birds, got here before all of us. Avians b4 Allah. And nature and spring, which has already begun in the holy land, brings you back to the optimistic cycle of things. The blossom curling out of brown branches beside grey cement blocks supposedly protecting people; the white and pink papery flowers the same colour as the plastic bags littered around, but also a similar hue to the Pea's mushroom-soft cheeks. Lifecycle, nature and humanity: a constant in this era of chaos.

On a trip to Jordan yesterday I stood at customs hearing the midday prayer call emanating from a large screened TV by the departures kiosk. For once I was dwarf free, so had hands free, eyes free and ears free. I noticed that ironically, the accompaniment to the prayer call on the flat screen TV happened to be an advert in Arabic for female physical enhancement, showing images of women's shining, taut, botox-ed lips and not so taut tanned bottoms with measuring tapes wrapped around them: the coincidental juxtaposition of the sacred and the very L.A. profane. That's it, I thought. That's the conundrum this region is suffering. Immutable ancient faith and social mores which lack the flexibility to incorporate modernisation in an increasingly globalised world, where some of the more worthless values travel the quickest and are creeping into the dusty cracks. To be human in the Arab region today is surely a quest to try and scratch an individual path somewhere between the two.

The past few weeks, J has been in and out away. When he's back, we grab moments together and laugh about how, just beginning our forties, we're in some kind of an energetic swing. Both of us realising that probably half of our time on earth has already been sucked up into that big life-hoover, and so we're fitfully making the most of the half that's left. He over a masters (better than a mistress, I say when he apologises for another evening spent at his books) and me, ramming and jamming in as much of baby and of boys, mulching and whizzing and footie and reading, crafting and constant wiping and re-tidying, with filming and interviewing and photographing and editing. And the occasional jog or bath to set my hands and my mind loose on the extraordinary nature of things, and ourselves within it all.

I've had quite a big job on the past few weeks, making 12 short films for UNICEF with Syrian children to commemorate the 5 long years since the conflict began there. It involved a couple of trips to Jordan leaving children distributed between Amman and Al Quds (Arabic for Jerusalem); the boys with the Glammy and the Pea with her Daddy during which time she sampled bananas and learned to roll. And when at home, the Pea either with St Grace, or lounging on the bed in my office while I edit, waving a rattle with a still out of control arm, and chewing on my laptop cable.

Why you should never do yoga beside your 6 month old

Bananaaaaa!

Most of the time I feel fairly together in my early 40's frenzy of happy activity but the other day the dwarfs saw me cry for the first time. And it struck me it's amazing they've never seen Mummy tears before.

I'm not sure exactly what it was. Whether it was hours spent crafting video stories about the 6 children I filmed: a fourteen year old mother - in her own words, a child with a child; a boy with a prosthetic leg; a girl whose dreams of becoming a doctor are fading; a poet who writes out his anguish in Arabic verse; a little boy who supported his family on his tiny sweet shop salary and finally made it back to school;

Or maybe it was the fact that J was away for a while and I had no one to absorb my nightly downloads;

Or maybe it was turning on the radio to hear an Arab citizen journalist talk in fluent and evocative English about Aleppo - where he explains that mums and dads have stopped holding their children's hands because they've already let them go in their heads - protecting their hearts and their souls from the highly likely: their child being taken from them before their own life is up. Every parent's darkest fear.

We hold hands with our dwarfs all the time, often for no particular reason. Sometimes in the car; sometimes watching TV, a soft boy hand uncurls my fingers and creeps inside, like a shell fish returning to its mother of pearl interior. And the Pea's sticky digit clasps around a finger - forcing me to pull off each clasped one to break free; and just as I unclasp it snaps back again.

So for all these things, a well spring of emotion lurked somewhere inside, and decided to overflow while I was settled on the sofa, flanked by boys and a Pea on my knee, reading Mr Topsy Turvy, of all things. Half way through, as I read: 'Morning Good' said Mr Topsy Turvy who does everything back to front, including talking, the weeping began and I couldn't stop - I just sobbed and sobbed and had to stop reading.

Rashimi looked at me and said: 'Are those rrrreal tears Mummy?' The Lozenge looked shifty and asked: 'Mummy why are you crying?'

I explained I missed Daddy and there was a great sense of understanding from either side. 'So do we,' they agreed. And Rashimi gave me one of his kisses where he holds each side of your face with his pale brown hands. And I reckoned perhaps it's not a bad thing they see us cry from time to time. While they will very soon realise I'm not invincible, it's probably good to get a few hints early on.

But the problem is that everywhere you look, there's broken-ness and even the big believers who are normally the hopeful ones, are wringing their hands in despair.

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewing some church leaders for another film project. The head of the Franciscans was a humble and quietly spoken man wearing a brown robe, the colour of the blossom-free branch. The following week he was headed to Aleppo himself to visit his communities there, travelling by road from Beirut to Damascus, then up through Homs, Hama and to Aleppo.

'What's there now?' I ask.
'A broken community,' he replied.
'And hope?' I suggest. I'm always holding out that these kind of people will give me an answer I want to hear.
'No, not now. There is irreparable damage and there is no way to fix it.'

The Christian, as much as the Muslim situation here, is in a mess.

Another church head came with a lot more pomp and ceremony - which I always automatically mistrust - especially surrounded by rumours of corruption and abuse of power. His beard was so long that it was tickling the radio microphone and causing a rustling sound in my ear. I'd never had this particular technical problem before. And had to start my interruption with: 'I'm terribly sorry your Beatitude, but...'

And then there's Ian, the Icon painter in Bethlehem - also in situ in a trouble spot for his own reason with Christianity at its basis. 'This place is so broken that people can no longer trust each other, which makes everything break down.' And he's there because of his belief that his icon school could be a tiny gold leafed branch towards a rebuild of a society. It's a small place his Icon school, like a tiny peaceful oasis where people can go and learn to paint icons. 'But only, if you believe in Jesus,' said Ian. 'Otherwise it won't work. It's your faith that enables you to paint your own image of Christ'. Everywhere there are beautiful golden icons that his students have painted since he opened the school a couple of years ago. 'Everyone here is depressed,' said Ian. 'I offer them a place of peace to come and paint.'

It's got some good backing and I'm making them a film to help raise money.

Everyone needs an oasis somewhere. I still find mine in family life with J and the beans, and was reminded of how lucky I am to have this when I recently had lunch with S, a Palestinian friend from Ramallah. She's a single Mum all of the time, and her two children are in their late teens. Her home, definitely no longer an oasis, since her son, an electrical engineering student, doesn't really talk to her anymore. He just demands money and eats her food.

She worries about him, and admitted she's even a little afraid of him - her own son. She's the same age as me. We were talking about giving our children roots and wings and she explained what happened to her.

She had applied and won, a place at a well-known American University and the day before she was about to leave, her passport disappeared. So she couldn't take the university place - hard to come by for a Palestinian at the best of times - and stayed in Nablus in the West Bank where she was raised. She didn't realise until months later, when she was studying at An Najah university in Nablus, that it was her own mother who had taken the passport. It mysteriously reappeared and finally her Mum explained her fear of losing her daughter.

S is now a well established part of the Palestinian political scene and I argued that perhaps she had been more useful to her homeland and therefore her children, by staying at home. But the pain involved in that incarceration imposed by her own mother, must be indescribable. S placed her hand on the top of her abdomen. 'I still feel a…something here.. when I think about it,' she said. 'Bitterness?' I proferred. 'Yes it's like a poison that will always be with me,' she admitted.

'I feel so lonely sometimes,' S explained. Being alone is so difficult in relation to ones children. 'I've raised them on my own, and it's so hard.' And now she's alone, with her children, who at times make her feel the loneliness even more.

At breakfast this morning - J and I had our precious hour together after the school bus has scooped up the dwarfs and I said to J: 'Can you imagine what it would be like if Israeli soldiers came storming into our house, searching the place, searching us, pointing guns and asking us questions. Can you imagine what effect that would have on our boys?'

'It's like nothing you do as a parent is within your control. That the one thing you can sculpt - bringing up your children - is taken away from you too. It's no wonder the incitement for violence happens to young Palestinians. People say it's online videos that incite them. But it's not even that. It's their reality. They don't even need to get near a computer,' he agreed.

When the separation wall was being built, S's daughter asked her: 'Is that a graveyard being built?' And her son asked if the soldiers guarding the checkpoints were humans or monsters. No wonder, you might say that he's become a taciturn teenager studying electronic engineering.

Our boys are still grappling with the lower branches of all this. And I love being part of that - whatever they become later.  On our way to Jordan on my filming trip, The Lozenge and Rashimi twisted my arm enough so we found ourselves in the Duty Free shop looking at the giant packs of Mentos and Haribo, and watched them both trying to make a decision in the cacophony of colour screaming 'buy me!' Luckily I'm really still a kid myself, so I still understand the agony of having to go for only one.

'Mummy,' trilled the Lozenge, 'My teacher told me we're supposed to give up something for Lent, and I said I would give up sweets...'
'But...err....I think I've cancelled that one,' said the Lozenge - waving a bag of lollies in a bag shaped like a monkey at me by the till.
'Maybe I'll give up TV instead...Actually, no I don't think I can do that for 40 days Mummy. No. Definitely not.'

I suggested maybe he could give up picking his nose instead and he thought that was a good idea.