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.
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.
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.
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