We're on the phone with the Glammy as we drive out for dinner on Sunday night. The four of us: two dwarfs, the Pea, and me. We were all ready to go and then the Pea crawled to my bag, whipped out the bottle of white wine and cracked it onto the tiled floor while sitting back on a shard of glass which punctured the gnocchi dough thigh. The dwarfs got to work massaging the wine lake into the rug and crunching more glass around the house. So we're late for dinner but happy to be going out. We FaceTime the Glammy on our way. She's in the US now: found a job and in the process of losing another husband. But it's great to talk and she laughs at me - her face on dashboard as I drive - you are a crazy Mamma taking everyone out at night!' The Lozenge trills: 'But you shouldn't be at work. You're Arab and it's EID!' 'I know habibi (dear) Laurie but they don't have days off for EID in the states.' And if Trump wins, not any time soon, either.
We have dinner on a balcony with some wonderful friends from Kosovo. It's a balmy evening and we smoke a hubby bubbly pipe, eat lasagna altogether, drink wine, study the Arab tiles on their floor, and ponder if this was originally an Arab house, now consumed by West Jerusalem.
We do the skip through the dark thing again back home and the Lozenge sings: ' I can use up some of my energy from tomorrow, and the bit left over from today.' I almost sleep drive, home. I am weary from physical endurance and I feel like Mummies must feel a lot, everywhere in the world. Particularly when they're on their own a lot. I look back as we draw into the garage. Two sleeping dwarfs, heads propping each other up in a head to head book-end style without the books in-between. The Pea also in dormouse cottage lolling alone in her seat covered in biscuit crumbs. I do four trips to the car and back putting each small creature into bed - though the Lozenge almost feels like I'm carrying one of myself - he is so big and tall. I peel off clothes, forgetting the teeth just for one night, and make one final trip for the bags which fortunately don't need tucking in or undressing. I collapse into bed.
Monday is first day of Eid so no school. I was part of the team at the school campaigning for Muslim pupils to have Eid holiday, as Christian and Jewish children have their holidays, so here we have it. 2 days off when I've just started work and really quite a lot of it to do. But Eid al Adha is the festival of sacrifice afterall: the holier of the two eids muslims celebrate each year - commemorating Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son.
Our area has a lightness in the air. The emphasis is on eating, family, and spending time and money, together. Teenage girls wander the sticky pavements in squeaky new white Converse trainers; metal shop shutters are pulled tightly down while the community goes to ground for a few days. I stop at a flower shop for a bunch of lillies, a young boy gives the Pea a flower of brightest fuschia and ruffles her hair. 'Kol 'am wa antom bekhayr' I say - an Arabic greeting for birthdays and festivals alike. Eid has been good this year, the man in the shop tells me.
The Israel museum beckons with a gang of friends - large and small. Picasso drawings for larges and an interactive communications exhibit for the smalls - or both for both. We get waylaid with the 'Mummies of Jerusalem' and while Rashimi contests these cannot be real Mummies as they are not covered in bandages, I realise though I'm not covered in bandages either, I fit right into the Mummies of Jerusalem exhibition anyway. My brain embalmed with constant questions and smalls-talk; my body as stiff as a sarcophagus from the midnight kinder-shifting.
We walk down a wide avenue with a Rodin statue and Rashimi smacks his bottom; wafts of lavender exude from the garden, the dead sea scrolls housed on our right. I've never seen those I think to myself. ''Mummy, what is rock. Mummy, why can you sort of see through the moon in the daytime? Mummy why does water make your hand wet? Mummy...Mummy...Mummy..both dwarfs are at it in my two ears. Their questions come as fast as two mouthfuls taken in without chewing. They start another question before they'e finished the first. 'Mummy I have more bones than you and Laurie but the Pea has more than all of us, right? Mummy, because small people have more bones than big people. And Mummy does Master Kwaigon have the force?'
Yes I am a Mummy of Jerusalem. I create myself an invisible sarcophagus shell around my head and think still, quiet thoughts. We find ourselves back at the Mummies again as Rashimi is fascinated by them more than anything else in the museum apart from the video of the real-life beating heart. 'Mummy, but that's not a real heart because it's not a heart shape.' Khaled our friend says something about these Mummies not being Egyptian ones. He's Egyptian so I expect he'd know, I think. I don't get around to reading the information board. But a while later I manage to inspect the nano bible through half shut eyes for a few seconds. It's the world's smallest bible, on a microchip. (W.H.Y?) I look, briefly at a page of a dead sea scroll and try and work out if it's Hebrew writing. This Mummy leaves the museum not altogether wiser about anything than before she entered. But at least I have literally 'seen' the scrolls.
I watch the boys eating a large slice of Israeli cheese cake I've paid for. It costs about £6, and wonder if that can count as dinner or if they'll be hungry again when we get back.
The following day we decide to go the beach for the final Eid-off. We're all four in the kitchen making hummus which we've agreed will be our contribution to a group picnic. The Lozenge is balanced on a chair operating the whizzer, slopping olive oil over the work surface; Rashimi is ripping open razor sharp lids of chick pea cans; the Pea rams me with her walker in my shins - the boys are safely un-safely teetering on their stools, so free from ramming incidents at least. She runs over a splodge of hummus and a plastic pretzel dragged from the playroom, now lodged under her wheel makes a scraping sound as she walks. Radio four is unintelligible for the decibels of our kitchen so I turn it off leaving a hummous finger print on the ipad, as Rashimi inadverently spatula splats some hummus onto my top.
St Grace is here, and then has gone - 15 Sri Lankans are on a pilgrimage here from Jordan and are coming around for a cup of tea so she whips off to get them from the Garden Tomb, where some, but not all, Christians believe Jesus was buried and the rock moved. I'm now half naked - the hummus top in the washing pile - and I wonder if Sri Lankans have a problem with semi-nudity in adults. The dwarfs are still completely naked. We laugh when we remember the last time she had a visiting pastor from Sri Lanka and the Lozenge came waddling out of the loo with his pants round his ankles asking me to wipe his bottom when the pastor was half way through a group prayer. I half miss her smooth presence, as smooth as the way she handles a mop or a brush or a baby. And I want to wait to see her Sri Lankan pilgrims on their trip from Jordan but it's 9.30 and the hummus is made, carrot batons chopped, cold beer added for midday attitude ajustments and the Pea is looking sleepy in her walker.
I heave everybody, and myself, into the car and I receive a text from St Grace saying: 'sorry madam there still hear in tombs.'
Not such a bad plan, I think. Next week I might be wandering about the tomb too. A nice cool and quiet place for a Mummy of Jerusalem.
We have dinner on a balcony with some wonderful friends from Kosovo. It's a balmy evening and we smoke a hubby bubbly pipe, eat lasagna altogether, drink wine, study the Arab tiles on their floor, and ponder if this was originally an Arab house, now consumed by West Jerusalem.
We do the skip through the dark thing again back home and the Lozenge sings: ' I can use up some of my energy from tomorrow, and the bit left over from today.' I almost sleep drive, home. I am weary from physical endurance and I feel like Mummies must feel a lot, everywhere in the world. Particularly when they're on their own a lot. I look back as we draw into the garage. Two sleeping dwarfs, heads propping each other up in a head to head book-end style without the books in-between. The Pea also in dormouse cottage lolling alone in her seat covered in biscuit crumbs. I do four trips to the car and back putting each small creature into bed - though the Lozenge almost feels like I'm carrying one of myself - he is so big and tall. I peel off clothes, forgetting the teeth just for one night, and make one final trip for the bags which fortunately don't need tucking in or undressing. I collapse into bed.
Monday is first day of Eid so no school. I was part of the team at the school campaigning for Muslim pupils to have Eid holiday, as Christian and Jewish children have their holidays, so here we have it. 2 days off when I've just started work and really quite a lot of it to do. But Eid al Adha is the festival of sacrifice afterall: the holier of the two eids muslims celebrate each year - commemorating Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son.
Our area has a lightness in the air. The emphasis is on eating, family, and spending time and money, together. Teenage girls wander the sticky pavements in squeaky new white Converse trainers; metal shop shutters are pulled tightly down while the community goes to ground for a few days. I stop at a flower shop for a bunch of lillies, a young boy gives the Pea a flower of brightest fuschia and ruffles her hair. 'Kol 'am wa antom bekhayr' I say - an Arabic greeting for birthdays and festivals alike. Eid has been good this year, the man in the shop tells me.
The Israel museum beckons with a gang of friends - large and small. Picasso drawings for larges and an interactive communications exhibit for the smalls - or both for both. We get waylaid with the 'Mummies of Jerusalem' and while Rashimi contests these cannot be real Mummies as they are not covered in bandages, I realise though I'm not covered in bandages either, I fit right into the Mummies of Jerusalem exhibition anyway. My brain embalmed with constant questions and smalls-talk; my body as stiff as a sarcophagus from the midnight kinder-shifting.
We walk down a wide avenue with a Rodin statue and Rashimi smacks his bottom; wafts of lavender exude from the garden, the dead sea scrolls housed on our right. I've never seen those I think to myself. ''Mummy, what is rock. Mummy, why can you sort of see through the moon in the daytime? Mummy why does water make your hand wet? Mummy...Mummy...Mummy..both dwarfs are at it in my two ears. Their questions come as fast as two mouthfuls taken in without chewing. They start another question before they'e finished the first. 'Mummy I have more bones than you and Laurie but the Pea has more than all of us, right? Mummy, because small people have more bones than big people. And Mummy does Master Kwaigon have the force?'
Yes I am a Mummy of Jerusalem. I create myself an invisible sarcophagus shell around my head and think still, quiet thoughts. We find ourselves back at the Mummies again as Rashimi is fascinated by them more than anything else in the museum apart from the video of the real-life beating heart. 'Mummy, but that's not a real heart because it's not a heart shape.' Khaled our friend says something about these Mummies not being Egyptian ones. He's Egyptian so I expect he'd know, I think. I don't get around to reading the information board. But a while later I manage to inspect the nano bible through half shut eyes for a few seconds. It's the world's smallest bible, on a microchip. (W.H.Y?) I look, briefly at a page of a dead sea scroll and try and work out if it's Hebrew writing. This Mummy leaves the museum not altogether wiser about anything than before she entered. But at least I have literally 'seen' the scrolls.
I watch the boys eating a large slice of Israeli cheese cake I've paid for. It costs about £6, and wonder if that can count as dinner or if they'll be hungry again when we get back.
The following day we decide to go the beach for the final Eid-off. We're all four in the kitchen making hummus which we've agreed will be our contribution to a group picnic. The Lozenge is balanced on a chair operating the whizzer, slopping olive oil over the work surface; Rashimi is ripping open razor sharp lids of chick pea cans; the Pea rams me with her walker in my shins - the boys are safely un-safely teetering on their stools, so free from ramming incidents at least. She runs over a splodge of hummus and a plastic pretzel dragged from the playroom, now lodged under her wheel makes a scraping sound as she walks. Radio four is unintelligible for the decibels of our kitchen so I turn it off leaving a hummous finger print on the ipad, as Rashimi inadverently spatula splats some hummus onto my top.
St Grace is here, and then has gone - 15 Sri Lankans are on a pilgrimage here from Jordan and are coming around for a cup of tea so she whips off to get them from the Garden Tomb, where some, but not all, Christians believe Jesus was buried and the rock moved. I'm now half naked - the hummus top in the washing pile - and I wonder if Sri Lankans have a problem with semi-nudity in adults. The dwarfs are still completely naked. We laugh when we remember the last time she had a visiting pastor from Sri Lanka and the Lozenge came waddling out of the loo with his pants round his ankles asking me to wipe his bottom when the pastor was half way through a group prayer. I half miss her smooth presence, as smooth as the way she handles a mop or a brush or a baby. And I want to wait to see her Sri Lankan pilgrims on their trip from Jordan but it's 9.30 and the hummus is made, carrot batons chopped, cold beer added for midday attitude ajustments and the Pea is looking sleepy in her walker.
I heave everybody, and myself, into the car and I receive a text from St Grace saying: 'sorry madam there still hear in tombs.'
Not such a bad plan, I think. Next week I might be wandering about the tomb too. A nice cool and quiet place for a Mummy of Jerusalem.
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