I have been both of these: the mother celebrating her 40th birthday; and the girl waiting for her fiancé in a restaurant.
These women were shot dead with two others when a couple of Palestinians opened fire on crowds in a popular Tel Aviv district. A tragedy in itself: the trashing of vibrant lives in a land whose history is riddled with events like these.
And now, for the Palestinians it's going to get harder. Events like this only tighten the noosehold on a population suffering collectively for every individual crime - whether it's a young girl running at a soldier with a pair of scissors, or two young men with guns killing civilians in a restaurant. Three days into the holy month of ramadan, and already Palestinians from all over the country have been refused permits to Jerusalem. And it won't end here.
The Mayor of Tel Aviv admits: "Only if there is a terrorist attack here bigger than one we have ever known, then our leaders and the Israeli (people) will understand that we need to end the occupation and turn to peace."
But events like these reflect only a small truth when you look at the interlacing of cultures in our lives as temporary residents here.
I've always thought that the book-stops of community are children and the elderly. In this pop-up life, where you have to find your own community, so your life in a place can actually be called a life, before you have to pack it up and move on somewhere else, old people are the crucial book-stop that make everything more real.
I’d been feeling the strain of this pop-up life. Since J is going to be popping out of it quite a bit over the next year, and popping back for not very long stints. So I go to see my friend Zuli, who's a member of my temporary community, one of my finest, and in her late 70’s. She greets me warmly, dressed immaculately as always: long purple tunic, leggings and some wedge sandals. ‘Hello, it’s so good to see you, come in!’ she grins a huge grin, accepting my flowers saying: ‘Why? Really come on.’ Av her husband, in his 80s comes out of his study to say hi, glasses perched on his nose. ‘And tell me, how are your parents, we really have forged a strong friendship since their visits.’
Some of Zuli’s newly crafted pots sit in a neat stack on the kitchen sideboard: duck egg blues washed over a stony background. Every time she visits she brings me at least one, sometimes a stack and I have them all on a shelf. My shrine to Zuli.
We begin to talk properly. Av has a couple of questions. Though extremely informed about the monotheistic religions, he asks me modestly: ‘So tell me, does one give a gift to a Muslim at the beginning of Ramadan? What is the custom?'
Another question: ’I saw in the church when we came for your daughter's christening they have long white candles – do you know where they get them? I need them for our candlelight suppers on Shabbat. Zuli didn’t used to like to do these on Saturdays, but now she does.’
Then he laughs: ‘Don’t tell my Jewish friends I get the candles from the church.’
‘Better than the mosque?’ I laugh.
‘Well actually from the mosque they would also be kosher. Islam and Judaism have proximity to each other going a long way back. More so than with Christianity, historically.’
Zuli joins in, reminiscing about the Pea's christening which we held in East Jerusalem. She and Av came from the West, and the taxi dropped them a little short of the church because the driver didn't want to come all the way into the East side as he said it was dangerous. So Zee and Av got out and walked. A little lost they stopped and asked directions: 'We asked directions in English to an Arab guy. He replied to us in Hebrew. He knew immediately we were Israeli!’ Zuli is in stiches. 'So funny,' she says beginning to cut an avocado for lunch.
Av goes off to work at his computer. Zuli and I talk about belonging, or not belonging; this itinerant life, and the wonders of it. How you can belong without belonging. ‘I mean I don’t belong here,’ I say, ‘ And sometimes that can feel a bit strange. This life you know, which isn’t really our life.’
'I don’t feel I belong here either', says Zuli. 'I mean after traveling to Malawi and Rhodesia with Av's work, and then living in London for 43 years, then coming back here. Everything is different. My friends are mostly dead – so many of the good ones have died. And even the language I don’t feel I understand any more. I read Hebrew but it’s literred with words I don’t understand, like I was saying in my pottery place to my friends: ‘I read the word ‘d-o-u-c-h-e-b-a-g’ written phonetically in Hebrew, and I think: What is this? ‘ But the young girl in there says they use this word all the time.
Zuli and Av have just been on a trip to Galilee which she says they loved. ‘Israel is still a beautiful country. We had a lovely time, but there was such a fascist in the group. All this talk about the land being promised to us. It’s not right. Mrs Netanyahu using the excuse that she’s a child of the holocaust and that’s why she’s penny pinching. What has this become?'
I’d mistakenly arrived at lunchtime, and Zuli and I eat together. She’s a wonderful cook – always something interesting on the table – some slaw with delicate dressing, avocado, home made pesto. Some bread Av had made.
Zuli carves the bread. I notice she's left handed. ‘The only time I’ve found it hard is when I was in the Israeli army and I had to shoot a rifle – load and pull trigger with my right hand. It was very difficult. Then I got a medal! For sharp shooting. I was nicknamed Captain Ricochet,' she's in stitches again.
I look at the stack of handcrafted pots. From military training to creative essence. Something the Palestinians are not offered either of by their state and perhaps if the Palestinian Authority were more insightful it would fund more of the arts and creative pursuits.
I hear about Zuli's parents from Lithuania/Poland who arrived in the 1930s. 'What was your mother like?' I ask ‘A practical, hard working woman.’ Her socialist parents made their living together - a printer and a bookbinder and built their lives from scratch 13 years before the state of Israel was established.
'They would be turning in their graves if they saw what the country they began building, has become. It’s better they didn’t live to see this', she says. ‘Though now we’re seeing it. And it's really not easy.'
Last Sunday was Jerusalem Day or Flag Day, commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and Israel gaining control over the Old City. So as Muslim populations in the city prepared themselves for the first day of Ramadan – bunches of Israeli settlers waving flags ran about through the city cheering and inciting rage – though this year, there was no violence reported.
It is illegal by Israeli law to fly a Palestinian flag in Jerusalem - so you can imagine how blue and white it becomes around here on flag day in a city which is already flapping with blue and white flags.
Some Palestinians fear Jerusalem's old city may become like Hebron: the only Palestinian city where settlers have populated the centre. The heart has been sucked out of it, leaving a ghost town with shuttered up shops, and deserted housing, patrolled by Israeli soldiers protecting the settlers there.
Ramadan has begun again - our fourth since we left London – and the night time turns into day as people celebrate the breaking of the daily fast at Iftar. The canon goes every day at dusk and the Ramadan lights twinkle around shops, and people are out and about with their children after Iftar.
St Grace has gone back to Sri Lanka for a wedding and to see her only son who is now 14. The Jordanian ministry of interior wouldn't allow her a visiting visa for Jordan from where she was supposed to fly. St Grace, who has scrubbed Jordanian floors, and cleaned off layers of desert dust in Amman's houses for 15 years of her life, is now no longer welcome. ‘If I was born in Europe, they let me in,’ she said shaking her head. ‘I feel angry and I feel sad.’
In the end we also felt a bit sad having to part with £400 for her to fly the 100 miles from Tel Aviv to Amman so she's in transit and can zip through visa-free. But she’s St Grace, she is our loyalest supporter and helper, and she had to go on this trip.
So the Glammy is with us for what is probably her last stay for a while. She’s heading to the USA again where she and her new husband are to re-begin their life. I see her outside Duty Free looking immaculate in a be-jewelled tshirt and designer shades. She kisses her Mum goodbye, grabs the Pea: 'Petra, habibti, anti HELWEH!' (dear you are SWEET) and jumps into my car. We have our car searched on the Jordanian side. Security has tightened because the Palestinian driver of the Norwegian consul general was found smuggling antiquities – coins and other things – in the bottom of the diplomatic vehicle. The customs officials rifle around a bit, squidging the Pea’s cheeks as they look about. No coins in our car – just trails of biscuit crumbs, empty juice bottles and other detritus from sticky travelling dwarfs, at this point safely at school.
On the Israeli side the gang of customs women were rude and sour faced. The Glammy and I had been friendly and polite. (After a few years I've learned my lesson as J wisely pointed out that being rude and getting angry only makes things taste more bitter). They whisper and talk about us in Hebrew thinking we don't understand. ‘Lo Lo.’ No no. 'As if she’s really American they were saying, pointing to the Glammy’s American passport), picking the split ends of each other’s ponytails. The Glammy and I get on with feeding the Pea her lentil lunch and pretend not to notice. There is strength in being two of us.
We never know how long they’ll keep us waiting. After about an hour they let us go after a man in a Jewish skull cap takes the Glammy off into a private room to ask her questions. They come out of the room, and he lets us go. I say: 'Shabbat shalom' to the guy, the Glammy and I high five each other and head out of the terminal. I notice she is shaking. 'That was by far the worst yet. He was shouting at me and trying to make me say I had Palestinian relations here. He shouted: 'You were deported from the UK - weren't you. You're muslim aren't you. Are you coming to Al Aqsa.' I actually said to him that I was a buddhist.'
I wished I could retract my greeting of a peaceful Sabbath to the man. I had a mental picture of him sitting calmly, guilt free with his family around the table with a glass of wine. Not caring about how much hurt he caused.
The Glammy and I swing by the school on our way back from horrible border experience to pick up the dwarfs. They drop their backpacks, waterbottles splooshing water, and run into her arms almost knocking her over. The Lozenge is almost her height now. I see Lulu, an Arab child psychologist whose son is in the Lozenge's class. I tell her I'd met the wonderful Israeli psychotherapist last week at Hadassah hospital and how surprised I was she was learning Arabic. Lulu just smiles: 'You need to meet more of the good Israelis! Most of the Israeli doctors and psychiatrists I work with – they are just phenomenal'.
With the Glammy in the house, it's as though I'm invisible. The dwarfs skip about after her like the children after the pied piper. She lives in make believe land with them. Over breakfast she says: 'So boys we're going to have one adventure every day for 2 weeks. And we're also going to catch the crow witch by collecting poison shells on the beach tomorrow, and colouring them so the crow-witch thinks they're berries.'
The dwarfs are transfixed, staring at her eyes and mouths wide. Rashimi with a Honey Nut Cheerio attached to his bottom lip. Then after breakfast she turns into Mary Poppins. The boys fold their clothes, make their beds. The toys fly into the boxes, as they talk about dragons and Egyptian kings who made a rock carving in a valley where the sun shines only twice a year. The Lozenge rushes off to get 'Henry the Tastic' hoover and all kinds of large ojects are sucked up making that vaccum 'sthhoop!' noise. Oh well, Henry the Tastic's been fixed once before on Salahdin st. I'm sure he'll be back there again with another acute burst of hoover-appendicitis.
The Pea sits and claps and squeaks at everything and before long the Glammy has taught her to high five, and say 'se se se!' 'me me me!'. She's only 9.5 months old.
The dwarfs are calling her Chicken Little because of her crazy hair do.
I wonder how I'm going to explain to J that I think I'm actually in LOVE with the Glammy.
J and I had a tearful (mostly me, admittedly) separation because all I could see was a long tube of being apart, with no chinks of light getting in. But thanks to St Grace's fortitude, we were able to leave her with the three small people for a weekend and escape to Jaffa - the Old Arab port, now home to a fabulous flea market. We bought some 1950s and 1970s furniture to cheer ourselves up. Amron, the guy who sold it to us heard we had a place in Camden and said: 'Oh there is a market! Yes, and you know it's owned by an Israeli'. We never knew that. But he's right.
Amron is half Syrian, half Russian married to a woman half Turkish, half Tunisian. 'So what do you think about Leiberman?' we ask referring to Netanyahu's appointment of a heavy duty bull-dog defence minister recently. 'Well, no I don't like,' Amron replies 'But they (Palestinians) will be quiet. They will have a little bit. Fear. You know. This what we need.'.
J and I get home and do a bit of feng shui about the house with our new furniture and it feels good. It improves our moods and in a brighter frame of mind I convince myself that next year without J around is going to be comparable to a diet: not particularly pleasant at times, but maybe some favourable results will come from it.
The Glammy and I have long conversations into the night. Although she was raised a Muslim she believes more in the messages of Buddhism at the moment. 'Well I knew a JewBu once,' I say, 'So maybe you could be a MuBu?'
We do some yoga following a DVD perched on the new 1970s formica table. It's so hot we leave the front doors open and we get the giggles when we do the position where you have to sit holding your feet with your legs apart and in the air. The ramadan cannon sounds: 'BOOOF!' We both jump, wobble and fall onto our sides. 'I hope it doesn't look like us saying: Welcome! Happy Iftar (breaking the fast). Come on in boys.' Perhaps better close the door.
Then she teaches me to medidate imagining we're sitting on a beach with the sun's rays coming down on our heads and spreading to every limb and expanse of skin.
I spend the rest of the evening killing low flying blue bottles which have been droning about my head. The Glammy won't help me out of respect for the life of insects. And afterwards she suggests she might like to get baptised into the Christian church as well. (Kid in a sweet shop of monotheistic religions? I ask myself). She suspects, but doesn't know, that her dad might have been a closet Christian. She read the bible he had on his shelf which she found after he died when she was 15, and watched his videos in a hidden drawer which were all about Jesus. 'He would never have told anyone, not even my Mum,' the Glammy explains, 'because you could be killed for that in Jordan.'
The following morning the Lozenge has a bad ear infection and is dodging breakfast - a sure sign of Lozenge ill health as normally not much comes between him and a slice of toast with honey. He looks up from under his fringe at the Glammy eating Cheerios. 'But, it's ramadan so that means you shouldn't be eating Batooli!'
The Glammy looks sheepish. Hard to shake Muslim guilt. Even as a buddhist.
I take the Lozenge to the doctor. She's a young Arab in a blue headscarf and is surprised I speak Arabic. 'Not enough,' I wail, 'Your language is just so so difficult.'
Her English is quite good. She explains, 'I've worked a lot in the West Side, and I've had a lot of teaching from British doctors from Oxford,' she says putting the torch into the Lozenge's painful ear. 'Ow,' he wails.
She takes it out, and takes his hand instead - her fast just beginning which is always the hardest week for Muslims in ramadan - or so I'm told.
'What's your name?' I ask.
'Shorooq' she says, smiling at the Lozenge and stroking his hand.
‘So you know what my name means?’ she asks him.
'No,' says the Lozenge.
'It means Sunrise,' she says. 'Sharq is the word for East and my name comes from that because every morning, the sun rises in the East. One morning you should get up early, and watch it.'
He doesn't reply but I can tell he's thinking that is really quite a cool name.
And now it's Chicken Little with the chicken pox.
These women were shot dead with two others when a couple of Palestinians opened fire on crowds in a popular Tel Aviv district. A tragedy in itself: the trashing of vibrant lives in a land whose history is riddled with events like these.
And now, for the Palestinians it's going to get harder. Events like this only tighten the noosehold on a population suffering collectively for every individual crime - whether it's a young girl running at a soldier with a pair of scissors, or two young men with guns killing civilians in a restaurant. Three days into the holy month of ramadan, and already Palestinians from all over the country have been refused permits to Jerusalem. And it won't end here.
The Mayor of Tel Aviv admits: "Only if there is a terrorist attack here bigger than one we have ever known, then our leaders and the Israeli (people) will understand that we need to end the occupation and turn to peace."
But events like these reflect only a small truth when you look at the interlacing of cultures in our lives as temporary residents here.
I've always thought that the book-stops of community are children and the elderly. In this pop-up life, where you have to find your own community, so your life in a place can actually be called a life, before you have to pack it up and move on somewhere else, old people are the crucial book-stop that make everything more real.
I’d been feeling the strain of this pop-up life. Since J is going to be popping out of it quite a bit over the next year, and popping back for not very long stints. So I go to see my friend Zuli, who's a member of my temporary community, one of my finest, and in her late 70’s. She greets me warmly, dressed immaculately as always: long purple tunic, leggings and some wedge sandals. ‘Hello, it’s so good to see you, come in!’ she grins a huge grin, accepting my flowers saying: ‘Why? Really come on.’ Av her husband, in his 80s comes out of his study to say hi, glasses perched on his nose. ‘And tell me, how are your parents, we really have forged a strong friendship since their visits.’
Some of Zuli’s newly crafted pots sit in a neat stack on the kitchen sideboard: duck egg blues washed over a stony background. Every time she visits she brings me at least one, sometimes a stack and I have them all on a shelf. My shrine to Zuli.
We begin to talk properly. Av has a couple of questions. Though extremely informed about the monotheistic religions, he asks me modestly: ‘So tell me, does one give a gift to a Muslim at the beginning of Ramadan? What is the custom?'
Another question: ’I saw in the church when we came for your daughter's christening they have long white candles – do you know where they get them? I need them for our candlelight suppers on Shabbat. Zuli didn’t used to like to do these on Saturdays, but now she does.’
Then he laughs: ‘Don’t tell my Jewish friends I get the candles from the church.’
‘Better than the mosque?’ I laugh.
‘Well actually from the mosque they would also be kosher. Islam and Judaism have proximity to each other going a long way back. More so than with Christianity, historically.’
Zuli joins in, reminiscing about the Pea's christening which we held in East Jerusalem. She and Av came from the West, and the taxi dropped them a little short of the church because the driver didn't want to come all the way into the East side as he said it was dangerous. So Zee and Av got out and walked. A little lost they stopped and asked directions: 'We asked directions in English to an Arab guy. He replied to us in Hebrew. He knew immediately we were Israeli!’ Zuli is in stiches. 'So funny,' she says beginning to cut an avocado for lunch.
Av goes off to work at his computer. Zuli and I talk about belonging, or not belonging; this itinerant life, and the wonders of it. How you can belong without belonging. ‘I mean I don’t belong here,’ I say, ‘ And sometimes that can feel a bit strange. This life you know, which isn’t really our life.’
'I don’t feel I belong here either', says Zuli. 'I mean after traveling to Malawi and Rhodesia with Av's work, and then living in London for 43 years, then coming back here. Everything is different. My friends are mostly dead – so many of the good ones have died. And even the language I don’t feel I understand any more. I read Hebrew but it’s literred with words I don’t understand, like I was saying in my pottery place to my friends: ‘I read the word ‘d-o-u-c-h-e-b-a-g’ written phonetically in Hebrew, and I think: What is this? ‘ But the young girl in there says they use this word all the time.
Zuli and Av have just been on a trip to Galilee which she says they loved. ‘Israel is still a beautiful country. We had a lovely time, but there was such a fascist in the group. All this talk about the land being promised to us. It’s not right. Mrs Netanyahu using the excuse that she’s a child of the holocaust and that’s why she’s penny pinching. What has this become?'
I’d mistakenly arrived at lunchtime, and Zuli and I eat together. She’s a wonderful cook – always something interesting on the table – some slaw with delicate dressing, avocado, home made pesto. Some bread Av had made.
Zuli carves the bread. I notice she's left handed. ‘The only time I’ve found it hard is when I was in the Israeli army and I had to shoot a rifle – load and pull trigger with my right hand. It was very difficult. Then I got a medal! For sharp shooting. I was nicknamed Captain Ricochet,' she's in stitches again.
I look at the stack of handcrafted pots. From military training to creative essence. Something the Palestinians are not offered either of by their state and perhaps if the Palestinian Authority were more insightful it would fund more of the arts and creative pursuits.
I hear about Zuli's parents from Lithuania/Poland who arrived in the 1930s. 'What was your mother like?' I ask ‘A practical, hard working woman.’ Her socialist parents made their living together - a printer and a bookbinder and built their lives from scratch 13 years before the state of Israel was established.
'They would be turning in their graves if they saw what the country they began building, has become. It’s better they didn’t live to see this', she says. ‘Though now we’re seeing it. And it's really not easy.'
Last Sunday was Jerusalem Day or Flag Day, commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and Israel gaining control over the Old City. So as Muslim populations in the city prepared themselves for the first day of Ramadan – bunches of Israeli settlers waving flags ran about through the city cheering and inciting rage – though this year, there was no violence reported.
It is illegal by Israeli law to fly a Palestinian flag in Jerusalem - so you can imagine how blue and white it becomes around here on flag day in a city which is already flapping with blue and white flags.
Some Palestinians fear Jerusalem's old city may become like Hebron: the only Palestinian city where settlers have populated the centre. The heart has been sucked out of it, leaving a ghost town with shuttered up shops, and deserted housing, patrolled by Israeli soldiers protecting the settlers there.
Ramadan has begun again - our fourth since we left London – and the night time turns into day as people celebrate the breaking of the daily fast at Iftar. The canon goes every day at dusk and the Ramadan lights twinkle around shops, and people are out and about with their children after Iftar.
St Grace has gone back to Sri Lanka for a wedding and to see her only son who is now 14. The Jordanian ministry of interior wouldn't allow her a visiting visa for Jordan from where she was supposed to fly. St Grace, who has scrubbed Jordanian floors, and cleaned off layers of desert dust in Amman's houses for 15 years of her life, is now no longer welcome. ‘If I was born in Europe, they let me in,’ she said shaking her head. ‘I feel angry and I feel sad.’
In the end we also felt a bit sad having to part with £400 for her to fly the 100 miles from Tel Aviv to Amman so she's in transit and can zip through visa-free. But she’s St Grace, she is our loyalest supporter and helper, and she had to go on this trip.
So the Glammy is with us for what is probably her last stay for a while. She’s heading to the USA again where she and her new husband are to re-begin their life. I see her outside Duty Free looking immaculate in a be-jewelled tshirt and designer shades. She kisses her Mum goodbye, grabs the Pea: 'Petra, habibti, anti HELWEH!' (dear you are SWEET) and jumps into my car. We have our car searched on the Jordanian side. Security has tightened because the Palestinian driver of the Norwegian consul general was found smuggling antiquities – coins and other things – in the bottom of the diplomatic vehicle. The customs officials rifle around a bit, squidging the Pea’s cheeks as they look about. No coins in our car – just trails of biscuit crumbs, empty juice bottles and other detritus from sticky travelling dwarfs, at this point safely at school.
On the Israeli side the gang of customs women were rude and sour faced. The Glammy and I had been friendly and polite. (After a few years I've learned my lesson as J wisely pointed out that being rude and getting angry only makes things taste more bitter). They whisper and talk about us in Hebrew thinking we don't understand. ‘Lo Lo.’ No no. 'As if she’s really American they were saying, pointing to the Glammy’s American passport), picking the split ends of each other’s ponytails. The Glammy and I get on with feeding the Pea her lentil lunch and pretend not to notice. There is strength in being two of us.
We never know how long they’ll keep us waiting. After about an hour they let us go after a man in a Jewish skull cap takes the Glammy off into a private room to ask her questions. They come out of the room, and he lets us go. I say: 'Shabbat shalom' to the guy, the Glammy and I high five each other and head out of the terminal. I notice she is shaking. 'That was by far the worst yet. He was shouting at me and trying to make me say I had Palestinian relations here. He shouted: 'You were deported from the UK - weren't you. You're muslim aren't you. Are you coming to Al Aqsa.' I actually said to him that I was a buddhist.'
I wished I could retract my greeting of a peaceful Sabbath to the man. I had a mental picture of him sitting calmly, guilt free with his family around the table with a glass of wine. Not caring about how much hurt he caused.
The Glammy and I swing by the school on our way back from horrible border experience to pick up the dwarfs. They drop their backpacks, waterbottles splooshing water, and run into her arms almost knocking her over. The Lozenge is almost her height now. I see Lulu, an Arab child psychologist whose son is in the Lozenge's class. I tell her I'd met the wonderful Israeli psychotherapist last week at Hadassah hospital and how surprised I was she was learning Arabic. Lulu just smiles: 'You need to meet more of the good Israelis! Most of the Israeli doctors and psychiatrists I work with – they are just phenomenal'.
With the Glammy in the house, it's as though I'm invisible. The dwarfs skip about after her like the children after the pied piper. She lives in make believe land with them. Over breakfast she says: 'So boys we're going to have one adventure every day for 2 weeks. And we're also going to catch the crow witch by collecting poison shells on the beach tomorrow, and colouring them so the crow-witch thinks they're berries.'
The dwarfs are transfixed, staring at her eyes and mouths wide. Rashimi with a Honey Nut Cheerio attached to his bottom lip. Then after breakfast she turns into Mary Poppins. The boys fold their clothes, make their beds. The toys fly into the boxes, as they talk about dragons and Egyptian kings who made a rock carving in a valley where the sun shines only twice a year. The Lozenge rushes off to get 'Henry the Tastic' hoover and all kinds of large ojects are sucked up making that vaccum 'sthhoop!' noise. Oh well, Henry the Tastic's been fixed once before on Salahdin st. I'm sure he'll be back there again with another acute burst of hoover-appendicitis.
The Pea sits and claps and squeaks at everything and before long the Glammy has taught her to high five, and say 'se se se!' 'me me me!'. She's only 9.5 months old.
The dwarfs are calling her Chicken Little because of her crazy hair do.
I wonder how I'm going to explain to J that I think I'm actually in LOVE with the Glammy.
J and I had a tearful (mostly me, admittedly) separation because all I could see was a long tube of being apart, with no chinks of light getting in. But thanks to St Grace's fortitude, we were able to leave her with the three small people for a weekend and escape to Jaffa - the Old Arab port, now home to a fabulous flea market. We bought some 1950s and 1970s furniture to cheer ourselves up. Amron, the guy who sold it to us heard we had a place in Camden and said: 'Oh there is a market! Yes, and you know it's owned by an Israeli'. We never knew that. But he's right.
Amron is half Syrian, half Russian married to a woman half Turkish, half Tunisian. 'So what do you think about Leiberman?' we ask referring to Netanyahu's appointment of a heavy duty bull-dog defence minister recently. 'Well, no I don't like,' Amron replies 'But they (Palestinians) will be quiet. They will have a little bit. Fear. You know. This what we need.'.
J and I get home and do a bit of feng shui about the house with our new furniture and it feels good. It improves our moods and in a brighter frame of mind I convince myself that next year without J around is going to be comparable to a diet: not particularly pleasant at times, but maybe some favourable results will come from it.
The Glammy and I have long conversations into the night. Although she was raised a Muslim she believes more in the messages of Buddhism at the moment. 'Well I knew a JewBu once,' I say, 'So maybe you could be a MuBu?'
We do some yoga following a DVD perched on the new 1970s formica table. It's so hot we leave the front doors open and we get the giggles when we do the position where you have to sit holding your feet with your legs apart and in the air. The ramadan cannon sounds: 'BOOOF!' We both jump, wobble and fall onto our sides. 'I hope it doesn't look like us saying: Welcome! Happy Iftar (breaking the fast). Come on in boys.' Perhaps better close the door.
Then she teaches me to medidate imagining we're sitting on a beach with the sun's rays coming down on our heads and spreading to every limb and expanse of skin.
I spend the rest of the evening killing low flying blue bottles which have been droning about my head. The Glammy won't help me out of respect for the life of insects. And afterwards she suggests she might like to get baptised into the Christian church as well. (Kid in a sweet shop of monotheistic religions? I ask myself). She suspects, but doesn't know, that her dad might have been a closet Christian. She read the bible he had on his shelf which she found after he died when she was 15, and watched his videos in a hidden drawer which were all about Jesus. 'He would never have told anyone, not even my Mum,' the Glammy explains, 'because you could be killed for that in Jordan.'
The following morning the Lozenge has a bad ear infection and is dodging breakfast - a sure sign of Lozenge ill health as normally not much comes between him and a slice of toast with honey. He looks up from under his fringe at the Glammy eating Cheerios. 'But, it's ramadan so that means you shouldn't be eating Batooli!'
The Glammy looks sheepish. Hard to shake Muslim guilt. Even as a buddhist.
I take the Lozenge to the doctor. She's a young Arab in a blue headscarf and is surprised I speak Arabic. 'Not enough,' I wail, 'Your language is just so so difficult.'
Her English is quite good. She explains, 'I've worked a lot in the West Side, and I've had a lot of teaching from British doctors from Oxford,' she says putting the torch into the Lozenge's painful ear. 'Ow,' he wails.
She takes it out, and takes his hand instead - her fast just beginning which is always the hardest week for Muslims in ramadan - or so I'm told.
'What's your name?' I ask.
'Shorooq' she says, smiling at the Lozenge and stroking his hand.
‘So you know what my name means?’ she asks him.
'No,' says the Lozenge.
'It means Sunrise,' she says. 'Sharq is the word for East and my name comes from that because every morning, the sun rises in the East. One morning you should get up early, and watch it.'
He doesn't reply but I can tell he's thinking that is really quite a cool name.
And now it's Chicken Little with the chicken pox.
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