Chasing Swifts

I've never been much of a twitcher. We used to have this family joke whenever a big bird flew over, and we'd ask: 'What's that Dad?' and he'd say: 'Oh, I dunno, maybe a shitehawk?' Dad was better at flying things with engines, and Mum better at mammals.

The Holy Land is a very enticing place for bird enthusiasts - sandwiched between river and sea - a stopping point for birds on their way to Europe for the summer. And amongst these, the swift: short legs and large span of wing in a kind of sickle shape, with a pointed tail. The legs are short as they're barely on the ground, doing almost everything on the wing inlcuding eating and mating.

But this spring I've been the untrained observer and filmer of swifts for a film I'm making about a highly creative and enthusiastic scultpor, Mark, who's been invited to sculpt a bronze in Mursitan - the crusader hospital complex in the Old City of Jerusalem. The premise is to encapsulate all people of Jerusalem - and the movement of pilgrims and patients. No big deal when you're Mark. The bright idea comes to him: the olive tree, in bronze, will be the symbol of everything that ties Jerusalem together. And the canopy of leaves will be swifts cast in bronze, swooping and soaring above the robust trunk of the tree, suggesting pilgrims and movement and the itinerant nature of people in this place.

I've been on the swift path for days. Climbing the ancient roofs overlooking the Dome of the Rock to get a good view of the swifts - who are only in Jerusalem for a couple of months before heading north. They're nesting in the Wailing Wall, squeaking and swooping above the nodding, black-hatted heads below. The wailing wall is full of little tails and nests and the air is filled with cheeping. eeekeekeeiekeieekieekieeekeeieek it sounds like. Shit - I struggle - camera swerving and diving trying to catch them for part of the film. I can't make a good job of it. I creep out at daybreak and dusk to try and catch them. One day I get the wrong time - there are no swifts - just a Jewish wedding taking place - the bride's shoes catching the golden hue of the Dome

It's a challenge. From the bouncing the Pea and her brothers and their and homework and cooking and editing, man flu and other ailments, being woken up at night by the smaller men of the house and their problems, a few other films.

And now chasing birds.

I'm exhausted and a little disillusioned by the swifts and wonder if they're doing it on purpose. I miss my normal subjects: people - though they of course come with other issues despite their longer legs and more stationary nature. But there is Iona, my 21 year old cousin and week-long wing woman, who comes along with me everywhere. I feel like we are doing everything on the wing, a bit like the swifts. But she helps me with my heavy bags and my heavy children. I decide we should climb the city wall becuase at least from there we'll be nearer the sky where the swifts seem to spend most of their time. She gets some great pictures. I get some less good footage.

At the kitchen table the following day, the Lozenge stretches over a bowl of honeynut cheerios, one of which I have stuck to my foot. 'Stretching is cool Mummy, becuase when you stretch, all the tired comes up out of your arms and into the sky. And then the tired goes up to the moon, which is just about going to sleep while the sun takes over. And all the tired from everyone stretching goes INTO the moon as it goes to sleep. It's just so cool.'

The dwarfs have two days off school to celebrate Israeli independence day.  'Independence from who?' Iona asks. 'Well, us, I guess', I say shaking my head at the duplicitous and indelible British thumbprint in these parts. Before and during the British mandate the British had promised a slice of land to the Jews, promised the Arab people they'd get their rightful Arab lands back if they helped us fight the Ottomans, and then behind everyone's backs had also carved up the land between us and the French in the Sykes Picot agreement. A mess then. And messier now.

That morning I'd been at the money changer talking to an elderly and characterful man, Nabil, on Salahdin Street. 'May 15?' I asked as I wrote the cheque. Of course. Nakba Day (Nakba is the Arabic name for 'catastrophe' marking the day in 1948 when700,000 were forced from their homeland). The same week as Israeli independence day.  As one state was established, another people were forced to leave. 'I feel bad about being British around here.' I said. Nabil laughed, his glasses going a bit crooked on his face as he counted out my notes: 'Well, at LEAST! At LEAST you are sensitive to  that my dear. 'Even if', he belly laughed, 'you can do nothing about it.'

We walk towards the wall with the dwarfs beneath even more flapping Israeli flags. Jets flying overhead to commemorate this independence - the boys whisper: 'WOW'. If only they knew, I think. All this bravado and show of strength. And the flag. These flags - all these flags I think as an Orthodox woman turns towards me: blue headscarf Jewish orthodox style, white tshirt with a huge Star of David, long blue skirt, and reflected in her sunglasses are the mirror image of the blue and white flags flapping proudly above us: 'WOW'. I think. Can they be masking a niggling knowingness that this place isn't really 100 percent theirs? Is this a defensive show of nationalism - trying to paper over some rather unsightly cracks? An right wing defence minister, Lieberman has joined Netanyahu's gang. There is very little sensible or sensitive debate on the political level. Palestinians have never had as little hope - even with their new Palestine Museum just inaugurated near Ramallah. There needs to be a record somewhere of these lands. Even if its in the clouds. A new film: The Settlers, just showed at Cannes - depicting the 'hilltop youth' a pugnatious brand of young Israeli settlers blamed for extreme violence against Arabs, and an equal threat to their own governement.

So there they are: Independence day, and Nakba day. Squished into the same week. One a celebration and one a lament. Do we remember only the story we want to remember? We are self-delusionists, we humans, of the utmost dexterity.

The dwarfs love the Old City wall - they say it's like climbing a castle battlements.

Rashimi insists on taking a backpack so we can put our picnic in it, and also he slips in a Bon Maman jam jar, its plaid lid with tiny holes he's pierced - with the ant and the woodlouse he captured that morning - and a stale piece of bread for them to eat. We can see Jordan from up there, the domes of the Old City, barking dogs and flapping washing on flat rooftops. Then we have a picnic on their favourite grassy slope below the cinematheque, and run underneath the canopy of enormous mulberry trees. By the time we get home the ant and the woodlouse are dead and curled in little balls under the bread. Rashimi shrugs it off. 'But at least we didn't leave them alone at home.'

Then Mark the sculptor arrives, we visit the foundry near Netanya where his bronze tree and swifts will be cast: an Israeli of Russian descent called Yossi wearing pink glasses matching his cheeks looks at Mark and me. I'm sure he thinks we're crazy, but he plays along with it. Then I film Mark racing about the Old City, and it rekindles my love for this place. I chase him around as he had his idea; as he finds his prototype olive tree in a beautiful grove which once would have looked out over Bethlehem but now runs up against the unsightly grey slabs of the separation wall cutting people off from each other, and with it understanding and commonality.