Re-wilding

The night before we left home we embarked on the fridge finishing system we employ before a holiday which involves concocting something edible out of what's in there so nothing goes to waste. The Lozenge swallowed a mouthful of Parma ham (imported for us by Gran Gran) a little too soon without chewing enough and choked on it. As he pulled a long piece of ham from out of his throat, he said shaking his head looking worried: 'But Mummy I don't want to choke before the holiday.'

'The holiday' had been the topic conversation for many weeks - it being our first foray as a family of five on a plane and out of the country. The Lozenge had painted a picture in his own mind of snowy Alpine slopes dotted with pine trees; a hut on the hill, where we would all stay, and huskies and polar bears roaming while he learnt to snowboard.

At Tel Aviv airport a young security officer asked us some questions: 'I see you go a lot to Jordan. What do you do there? Do you have friends there? Would any of your friends have given you something to take? I ask you this for your security.'

Then he asked: 'So what is the origin of the name 'Hamish'? J and I stifled a giggle - wondering if he thought Rashimi's name sounded too much like Hamas, Israel's bete noir. 'The Scottish name for James,' I answered. 'And Petra?' he continued.
'Well...in Greek it means rock...'
While people do extremely stupid things in the name of terrorism, people ask rather daft things for security too. And while it's comforting when you're boarding a plane with your whole family that someone is taking your security seriously, I also hope that Europe doesn't suffer too much Israelification in the security sense over the next decades.

Thanks to the 're-wilding' and planting of unusual animals over Europe, there were huskies, and wolves in our ski resort - just no polar bears. And the 'hut' that the Lozenge had dreamt about in fact fitted all five of us, plus Grandparents and auntie Rosie and uncle Duncle's families. The Lozenge's dreams made real, and the absence of polar bears was soon forgotten a couple of croissants down the first morning. And I wondered if 're-wilding' would also apply to putting three young humans in an Northern European open space for the first time in a while.  It was a holiday to remember when three pairs of young male legs tried their luck on the planks for the first time, and learned to ski down hill and crucially, to stop. We laughed and skied and ate and drank and laughed and skied a bit more. An on it went. No surprise that on the aeroplane on the way back home, as the Lozenge played hangman with Grandma, his word was: 'Doyouhavetogo'.

From there to the boundless skies of Norfolk. I stood by the pond as the dwarfs collected pond weed with rakes and sticks - trying to avoid the dollops of frog spawn and large toads. 'I just saw a double toad!' shrieked Rashimi. More on that in a couple of years, perhaps...The Pea sat in GranGran's Silver Cross pram chewing on a rice cake in a cashmere bonnet, squinting into the sun as her brothers worked.

Soon you couldn't see the wheelbarrow for weed. Green on green, and daffodils trembling in the cold wind, while GranGran stooped to inspect the contents of the pond with the Lozenge and Rashimi.

To me this photograph says: Grandmothers. Those remarkable ladies that have the time to gaze into a murky pond on a cold day, and be just as interested as the small people.

Then they ran off to do something else, leaving a small, blue rake discarded by the pond, like a precious thought, forgotten, beside a tiny barrow dripping with pond weed. 'I'm going to sell it,' the Lozenge said. 'Who to?' asked Grandfather. 'To someone to make pond weed sculpture,' the Lozenge answered. 'Or to a wig maker to make green hair wigs,' he continued, looking at Grandfather as though he had asked something rather silly.

That morning J and me had been lying in bed, the Pea in between us, da da da-ing to herself, and patting her hand on the duvet. The Lozenge and Rashimi chatting in their room next door. 'Because when you hit someone, and then they hit you back...That's karma,' explained Rashimi.

The news of the bombs in Belgium hit the news and J and I chatted about it in low tones.

After the weed session, the boys and I had run across a wide open field towards a solitary tree, its leafless branches silhouetted against the sky; our ankles braced over the stubble and clay which clodded our trainers. Rashimi's soft brown hand crept into mine, and we slightly tugged on each other as we ran, our breath interlacing into a knitted fabric of air. The tree reminded me of the Dexter Dalwood painting: David Kelly, of a solitary tree silhouetted against a pale moon. The Lozenge ran ahead and sat down at the base, panting. 'Look. Sheep. This is like the Giving Tree, Mummy,' a favourite book of theirs.  The children where we live in Jerusalem don't have big fields like this where they can run. We stayed for a while after stretching our arms out and grabbing each others hands so we just managed to encircle the trunk, and then we ran back. 'Can we shout loud here Mummy?' the Lozenge asked. 'Yes! You can shout as loud as you possibly can - look no people anywhere,' I said running in a 360 degree movement. And we all hollered and yelled and yodelled and screamed at the tops of our voices.

Back at the house we could smell the lunch cooking and an aeroplane droned in the sky decorated with cotton wool ball clouds. And I wondered what happens to people who've never been able to shout and run and feel small, but know that small is okay even if it's a bit scary. To feel: 'As big as alone', as I read somewhere, once.

Al 'omr kol o, iomain: All of life is but two days. (Life's too short.)

Dancing in Ramallah

'Your baby is over weight, and her head is veeeery big,' said the Palestinian health worker squinting at her computer. My arm supported the Pea's belly as she sat upright on my knee, my other hand on her generous thigh. I didn't need to be told. Both dwarfs were the same at her age; and as my auntie once told me: 'I always remember you asking what was for lunch when you were half way through your breakfast.' So I have evidently passed the love-food gene on to my offspring. Like her brothers the Pea extends her neck, mouth open in direction of the spoon, and occasionaly cries between spoonfuls if there's too much of a wait.

But as they say in Afghanistan: 'The porcupine says to its baby: 'Oh my child of velvet.' To me, she's a beauty. Albeit a large one. So I tried to stifle a nascent irritation towards the messenger, who was tapping her biro above the top line of the baby size chart.

I studied Manal, which in Arabic means achievement or attainment, as she spoke - her long brown dress, stretched across her extremely generous bosom - and wondered if it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

So I changed the subject and asked her if she had any children herself. Normally you need two hands to count when you ask Palestinians about numbers of children. But she shook her head, put down her biro and turned to face me, her sage headscarf the colour of her eyes, framing a moon shaped face.

'Ah,' she sighed. 'I had many problems having babies. I was pregnant 14 times, but each time, between 24 and 26 weeks - the baby died.'

There were no words available to me.

She continued. Her face breaking into a huge grin.

'So, my husband took a second wife because I could give him no children,'

I wondered why she was smiling.

'And now. I have SIX children!'

'But?'

'So, they are not mine. But they live downstairs in their apartment with their mother, but they come up and spend time with me always and they call me Mamma Manal. And I love them all VERY much. Really I am very lucky.'

'But how about your feelings towards the other wife?'

'Well. Good. I mean. We live in different apartment. But we respect each other and you know I think she's happy to have me upstairs, and I am happy that I have children.'

She roared with laughter and so did the Pea.

After a couple of quick injections, Manal squirted the rotavirus solution into the Pea's mouth saying: 'Bismillah al rahman al rahim' In the name of God, most gracious, most compassionate. And we said our goodbyes.

Back home I explained to St Grace that the health centre had suggested portion control. St Grace shook her head. 'Nooo! Never!' she chuckled tickling the Pea's cheek with her finger. 'Pinki - you are not too fat. You are perfect', she said, head back laughing giving the famous St Grace belly laugh where her tummy starts to shake and then the laugh comes out a few seconds later. The Pea roared with laughter too.

That morning there had been a drive by shooting at the bottom of the main shopping street in our area. 2 Israeli police were badly injured; and in another place, a car ramming attack and a stabbing. Traffic was gridlocked, so I decided to walk for a hair cut on the West Side to a place a friend had recommended.

As I walked I looked at people on the street going about their business while the sirens wailed and police cordonned off roads. A helicopter circled above, but mostly people carried on with what they were doing and let the emergency services get on with their work, while TV cameras whirred and vans full of TV teams waited while the reporters did their pieces to camera. This wave of violence has now become the new norm.

While Moti, an Arab from the old city with blonde hair swept back in a pony tail, whisked around my chair with foils and highlight paste, a dark and friendly girl with a large bosom and very low cut top with golden necklaces asked me if I wanted a pedicure. A few moments later I sat while she bathed my feet. One of her necklaces said 'Tal' her name, which means 'Dew' in Hebrew. We got chatting. Her parents moved from Morocco to Israel - so she's what's known here as a 'Mizrahi'  or Sephardic Jew from the Arabian region, who make up around half of Israel's Jewish population. Tal had been given a job in an office during her military service, but she wanted to join the real fight, she told me, so she absconded and ended up in military prison for a few months.

As she filed and clipped I thought back to my conversation with Manal that morning, and I realised that I was the only link Manal would have with Tal. A tiny strand of connection between two sides in the same city, bubbling with tensions. Though there are still some strands of friendship across the divide, on the whole the East and West side residents don't meet much.

'If you were the prime minister of Israel, how would you deal with this problem?' I asked

'To be honest,' she looked up laying down her file, and spoke to me just like Manal had spoken to me earlier - openly and with no shame. 'I would tell the whole lot (of Palestinians) to leave. Just cut them off. You want to fight - sure let's fight. But don't do it like this. Just cut them off,' she said.

I thought about Manal and wondered if she too deserved to be lopped off with the rest of them. The whole lot treated as terrorists.

Tal clipped a nail simultaneously, and the clipping flew down her front.

'You're going to find a bit of my toenail in your bra when you get undressed tonight,' I said. 'Like bits of popcorn in your bra after the cinema.' She laughed, and I didn't press the political subject further.

Our house or oasis feels like a seclusion from it all I thought as I lay on the trampoline with the Pea - her new favourite place, where she likes to pick up bits of pine cone from the tree overhead with pincer digits and put them in her mouth. We lay back and I stared at the round ring of trampoline net framing the sky, the occasional bird sweeping over. And the Pea stared and stared at the olive tree waving gently in the breeze. We heard the dwarves get back with St Grace and stood up, the sun just ricocheting off the top wall and lighting up the Pea's wisps of hair. Rashimi came sprinting through the double doors of the back of the house, his hands raised in the air singing: 'Oh happy day! When Jesus washed our sins away!' a new number from school. They had a snack and Rashimi asked through a mouthful of biscuit and a milk moustache as he clambered onto the trampoline: 'Will you lie with me Mummy. Not lie like when you're not telling the truth, but lie here on the trampoline and look at the treeth,' patting the warm trampoline fabric beside him.

That evening I went to an event for International Women's Day in Ramallah and listened to a haunting Arab singer from Haifa with bare feet, nose ring and guitar; an ultra marathon runner talking about Palestinians' right to movement; and a female manager of a textiles factory in Bethlehem with a history of female leadership. Then there were the Palestinian dancers who flew about the stage in leotards, flashing legs and crotches in a Flamenco meets River Dance display, while the female governor from Ramallah in headscarf and conservative gown cheered them on, punching the air and cheering with enthusiasm for the female show of skill and bravado. Or should I say bravada.

I wished I could have taken Tal with me to the West Bank. That fighting spirit is yet one more  thing that unites females across the divide.