A brown week

The Gaza Garden. Maybe we can boil the whole world down into cacti and succulents?

The Daddy diet is becoming a little more intense as Christmas approaches. Dwarfs get fatigued, and Mummy can turn into a monster. The Pea is extremely mobile so I put a little bell in her pocket these days so I know where she is in the house. Like a hair-less pet goat, she tinkles about getting up to mischief. St Grace is playing: 'See how many hair clips you can squeeze onto a square inch of head' with her. Otherwise known as 'continued excitement over her first girl'.

The dwarf returns from school are accompanied by intermittent exhausted sobbing and wailing from the three of them - like wail relays. Then they scoff an awful lot of food, having at first complained about it not being what they feel like, and then leave me with a pile of washing up having not said thank you. And then they go WILD and won't go to bed. Day in. Day out. And they wonder why occasionally..I...shout.

What with all that and the political sitch: it's easy to be in a brown study. Twerps on central stage, and the rise of the right. Legalisation of settlements here in the West Bank. Honestly? A possible ban to the call to prayer? Can they be serious? Right wing activists marching in Zion square here in Jerusalem as I type. Aleppo. And the brown fields from no rain. Three drops today - our total in three weeks. Climate change and chaos every which way.

But, said author Toni Morrison: 'This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear...I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.'

But, says Isabel Wilkerson, author of the Warmth of Other Suns, and award winning journalist. 'Our country is like a really old house. I love old houses, but old houses need a lot of work. And the work is never done. Just when you think you've finished one renovation it's time to do something else. And something else has gone wrong. And that's what our country is like. You may not want to go into that basement, but if you really don't go into that basement it's at your own peril. And I think that whatever you are ignoring is not going to go away, and is only going to get worse. And whatever you're ignoring will be there to be reckoned with, until you reckon with it. And that's what we're called upon to do. Where we are right now.'

So last week I went to Gaza with Mark, the sculptor I made the film about, to pin three bronze swifts on the front of the hospital there. 'Little prayers on wings', he says. Messages of hope spreading further each day, from the olive tree roots in central Jerusalem. We arrived without the bolts by mistake, but since we were in Gaza - where they have to make the impossible, possible, every day - a man was magicked from nowhere with his young son, who was wielding a welding and a drilling machine. Mark nipped up the ladder, and within under an hour, the three little swifts were pinned there, soaring up to more hopeful skies.

A sad reminder of the state of the country, below us:

The manager of the hospital, a charming Gazan, announced on email: 'The seagulls are now on the front of our building!' No. 'Swift'. Mark replied. 'Sununu.' In Arabic. After 8 months of searching for the Arabic word, I find it. Sununu. It has such a lovely ring to it.

Maged, ex-mayor of Gaza city and about as zen a man I have ever met, took us to his paradise - or 'jannah' as they say in Arabic. I wondered as we sat amongst greenery - lush grass, citrus trees, jacaranda and aquatic plants; prickles of cacti interspersing the succulents - does a jannah or paradise, seem even more like such when it's surrounded by 'nar': hell or fire? The house is a mandate-era house like our one - meaning it was built when the Brits were in charge, circa 1920-30. He doesn't live in it but the feel is homely and loved - a big hall with doors coming off it, leading to a garden full of birds, cockatoos, quails, diamond doves, goldfinches. He arranged for us a huge pile of pastries and cans of coke. An occular surgeon, peaceful man: generous, kind, considerate, patient. Everything that Gaza needs. Mark and I asked ourselves: 'Which came first? The peaceful man or the garden?'

Then Mark and Paul were kept sitting for 1.5 hours in the Israeli jail-like border crossing. They were given no explanation. Just wait, we were all told. Becuase the Israelis can. And the world has bigger problems at the moment which the Israeli State knows well. It makes you wonder if the problem in this small land isn't at least part of the cause of the bigger one we're witnessing now.

Mark is now planning how we can make this swift idea bigger and bigger. A subliminal message of the swift, of hope: a feather whisper of their arrival. That little screech. It's spring. We're here. It could have wings.

Then to Nazareth with a car-full of small people and St Grace, who Graced me with her large company in amongst the smalls in the back. It was Laurie's friend Hadi's birthday. Hadi hails from Nazareth and is from a magnanimous and charming Arab family who laid it on in a big way. The Pea's eyes were pea soup plates all day. From the  church of the annunciation and a dazzle of stained glass, and a mother and child from almost every nation in the world.

A japanese mother and child.

A Venezuelan mother and child.

Followed by an enormous and delicious lunch followed by a chocoate patissier session for 8 little people - in white chefs bonnets. After they'd rolled and squidged and sprinkled their own box of chocolates to take home, it rained chocolate. Can you imagine? I thought Lozenge would laugh up both kidneys with ecstasy.

Who needs an annunciation when you have chocolate rain.

****

'Mummy, my toooooooof' was the call from the Lozenge as the little peg-let fell out on the way to Rashimi's birthday dinner. I stored it in one of the little boxes in the car dashboard. Then we experienced the madness of six 5 year olds. And in my haste to put them all to bed, and then myself, I only just remembered to bring the little peggy from the car. And then passed out cold after only one bottle of beer, only to FORGET to be that tooth fairy. I woke up to a wailing Lozenge who had found the tooth and no money, and I had to pull a stunt by scrabbling for a coin, dropping it by the bed and blaming it on him, whilst explaining sometimes toothfairies forgot to take the tooth.

The following night I left a note: 'sorry i forgot' in the tiniest writing, with a trademark wand sign-off. And confessed to Mum on text who wrote back: 'I was also a flawed tooth fairy and used to hide money in funny places while lambie (Auntie Rosie) searched and I could then remove the tooth from under the pilow. Or once I told her the tooth fairy's sack was so clackingly full of teeth, not one more peggie would fit....'

Rashimi is less concerned about toothie pegs since he still has all of his. 'Mummy, he asks, can we talk about Donald Trump. Over breakfast?'

'I want to know why he is he a idiot? And why does he not want people who are not from America, to go to America?' Does that mean we can't go and see Tooli (the Glammy - who's now living there).

My main respite from dwarf-ville at the moment is my work. And though with tripod and stack of cameras and lenses, respite isn't always the word that springs from my flexed biceps as I trot down the garden path at day break. It gets me out, out, and away. This week I've had the enormous fortune to hang out with these guys at Alrowwad in Aida refugee camp, near Bethlehem, under a kilometre from the birthplace of the Pea.

https://vimeo.com/193707767

It's astonishing what certain people all round the world do, with practically nothing. And this is a case in point. I was mesmerised by the Dabke - Palestinian national dancing. Learned a few steps myself. Chatted to all the young people dancing there, who toured Europe last summer, including Edinburgh festival. Someone carved me a little wooden key - the abiding symbol of the Palestinian right to return to their homes one day; and another boy carved a wooden shard painted with Palestinian colours which he handed me.

I filmed Motasem (focus of the film) in his house in the 'camp'. Though it feels part of the city - these people are still refugees. I was welcomed into his Granny's front room. 'God Bless our Home' hung from a rafter with a Palestinian black and white scarf surrounding it. She, a Muslim, was ill so stayed seated, while her best friend, a Christian, whistled around her kitchen making me an Arabic coffee. 'We are all mixed here in this camp - sometimes we forget who is who. It's very sad what's happening in other places where Muslims and Christians can't live together.' We lamented that Jews were also living amongst them in these villages before Israel was created in '48, and communities were split asunder. Motasem's step Mum cooked us lunch - chicken and rice, with children roughly the Pea's age. So I had all the moves and grooves, but none of the responsibility.

Motasem has two family members in prison; and one has been killed. The Israeli occupation knows no limits, yet Motasem shuns violence. Beautiful resistance - they call it. And boy can he dance. 'Bring your husband! Bring your children next time!' they called after me as I left with all my camera equipment, tummy full of rice and chicken, memory cards full of footage, and heart full of love.

To end the week of the brown study, which actually turned out to be anything but, the Pea had a mishap. Having been carried away with the Lozenge's chocolate brownie mixture in the kitchen, she transfered her small form, tummy first, with the wooden spoon she was licking into the bathroom where Rashimi was doing a poo. While my back was turned she must have plunged her little paw into the loo and tucked into more of what she thought was brownie mixture. Rashimi's face said it all, as the poor little poo eater wretched and gagged, a tell-tale ragged piece of loo-roll stuck to her shoe.

Understandably she threw up all night. Her brown study turned out to be far worse than mine. And please may we forget this story before her 21st birthday party...

Crosses in the ball park

I open my eyes at 6am to see the silhouettes of 2 shaggy heads peeping meercat-like around the doorway. Then they run and dive on top of me - a dwarf burrowing under each arm. 'We missed you Mummy. So much. We are so happy you're home'. The Lozenge gives me a card with a tiny chocolate brownie wrapped in silver paper on which he's written: 'Mumy.' There's one with 'Dady' on it in the fridge. The note reads: 'I rily mist you when you had gon'. J and I had left each other at Amman airport for another 6 weeks. I wanted to write J a similar note - it seemed all wrong not to be coming back home together.

Now I'm looking at my small handful of stones I collected on the beach in Oman: a pink one for the Pea - the colour of the rose red city itself; a perfectly rounded one with a small stone lodged in the middle for the Lozenge; and a beautiful piece of blanched coral like a miniature body with two outstreched arms, for Rashimi. But now I'm back in the thick of it, my own arms have an overstretched feeling from carrying our beloved human gnocchi yesterday. All around the crafts fair we went. The Pea kept pulling off all the necklaces and scarves from the table. So I hoisted her often onto one hip - saving the precious Palestinian produce from being dragged to the dust.  We got chatting to a Palestinian man selling painted stools made by blind people. As he helped me walk home with some I'd bought, we got onto politics. I almost sobbed as we discussed the many woes. But the Palestinians are used to all that, and being let down time and time again by their leaders. So he was much more sanguine than I: 'As long as the sun comes up each morning, everything will be alright my dear.'

The sun did come up this weekend morning, and I spent it in and out of the bed between spelling help for the Lozenge's homework, who was finding dictionary explanations of words: 'excellent, explode, face, fact, fair,' and having to put them in order. I could use many of these words in a sentence about the state of the world right now, I think to myself. Rashimi prancing around singing: 'I wanna live in Ameeericaaaaa! I wanna live in Ameeericaaaa!' Though I'm really not sure I would wanna at the moment. His singing clashes with the Trump news; and a podcast on Leonard Cohen. The timing of great forboding: the departure of a wise man and the political ascent of a douchebag in the same week. But then the Pea pulls me out of my melancholy by performing a baby body-slam onto her brothers under the duvet.

A day with children. Our small boat dipping and rising on the crest of wave before dipping again, then some storm clouds. The weather never stays the same for long in dwarf land.

I've been having many moments of melancholy for instance when the boys look at the front page of a magazine and ask: 'Who is that nasty looking man with the angry eyes?' And we end up talking about Putin over breakfast. How do you explain a man who kills children, to children? And all night the Pea has been coughing, and all day she's been sobbing and holding her arms high, like that little piece of coral, wanting me to lift her up again and again. I put her in her high chair, I dance the hokey cokey to her while I wash up, suds flying. A quick little samba around her chair with the mop. It works for a while. Then we four leap into the car and drive up to the Mount of Olives. 'Louder!' shout the dwarfs from the back - now nearly 2 feet tall and hardly dwarfs, I can barely lift them without over-stretching my arms either. They're enjoying listening to The Obvious Child by Paul Simon. Rashimi loves the drum beat which stirs us all as we stream, hands clapping, up, up, past the golden Dome of the Rock below us.

Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost its bite
I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don't expect to sleep through the night
Some people say a lie's a lie's a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?

And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark


This time - this life, speeding by.

The foreboding gloom of world politics.

This is the age of miracle and wonder. Really?

It has got the better of me today. Along with scenes of two dwarves fighting over gold and silver spray paint with which we are decorating fir cones as it's really really going to be Christmas soon, this time; the Pea plucks the paint water jar from Rashimi's hand and quaffs the ochre liquid. Then she totters off and slips on a line of coloured pencils smashing the paint water jar. Wailing. Then more wailing, all day, over a new tooth or a cold, or who knows what. Maybe it is my punishment for escaping to the beautiful silence of the mountains in Oman with J. So I take it out on a pomegranate, and spank it until the seeds pop out. Then I feed my ruby spoils to the three critters, who gobble it jewel by jewel. Then they look deeply into my cross face, realise I mean business, and help me tidy the chaotic house to the Peatbog Faeries on LOUD. Even louder than earlier in the car. It is loud. And very Scottish. And I do a pseudo angry jig. 'Are you still cross?' asks Rashimi.

We do our nightly ritual of a few poems read by torchlight while they lie in the darkness.

Who's that tickling my back, asks the wall?
It's me says the caterpillar, I'm learning to crawl.

And by the time they are asleep in bed and the house is quiet once more, I love them again.  Almost as much and also as much as I love their Daddy far away.

O Man - what a place

Watching a green turtle, flippering a slow walk back to the sea having laid and covered her eggs, as green turtles have done for the past 200 million years brought 10 years of married life into focus as a microscopic drop in this ocean of time. We'd watched the female at night with an Omani guide on a beach at the south eastern most tip of the Arabian peninsula. She deftly flicked sand over her heap of eggs, creating a dip for herself in the warm sand of the unpopulated beach: illuminated by a bright moon in a black sky, pin pricked with stars - the only visitors that night, our small group of curious onlookers, and the turtles themselves. While the mothers buried eggs, newly hatched turtles scurried to the waves. 'Only 2 in 1000 will reach maturity' explained the guide, and the females that survive will find their way back to this very same beach to lay their eggs, in 25 years time.

It was the end to a beautiful week in a place that felt so far from our daily existences in Jerusalem and Baghdad. Eternities away from the topsy turvy life with small people or Iraqi politics. Mum and Dad generously moved in for 10 days so J and I were liberated to explore without travel cot or sticker books. And Oman seemed so far from the Arab World we've grown accustomed to: our Jerusalem neighbourhood with its trash-filled skips and piles of rubble; unexplained building sites and noise and trouble; police cars angrily honking and helicopters hovering at night.

We were transported to another kind of Arabian land of cleaner streets and architected lines;  pastel low-rise houses below soaring brown stone mountains; juniper and rose strewn plateaus above misty ravines; dark ochre fortresses made of mud 'al dhob' from where we get 'adobe' and flowing cool water in ancient irrigation systems called: 'felaj'; date palm oases and smooth tarmac roads leading through the desert.

This pinkish land was a magical place for a holiday, and time to take stock of ten years past, and also the future, in golden silence in the mountains; and beside lapping turquoise water of the Persian Gulf.

The effects were immediate and lovely. Like the dwarfs' current favourite book: 'The Sound of Silence' where a little Japanese boy goes in search of silence, and finds it between the noises, and underneath everything; we didn't even have to look for it. A mountain view like no other I have seen, and at times, not even a bird call or a whisper of wind. All the thought bubbles we had in our minds, had time to bob to the surface, popping effortlessly and having time to spread into the air and into our conversation. It was almost like every minute of this peace got better and better until we reached a point of meditation almost - in our uninterruptedness together. We got back to the package that we all carry around with our other halves, which is made of gold and truth, but the quotidian demands can mean we sometimes forget to pay daily homage or respect to it.

The essential room for any fort

Jars for storing date juice

So the turtles were our last adventure after mountain hikes and 6 days of conversations. While America was electing its next leader, we saw the arrow quivering towards that devastating result, and with sinking hearts pulled ourselves out of bed to go and look at the turtles once again before the sun rose over the Persian gulf.

The World Wildlife Fund were there already, gently gluing a GPS to the shell of the female turtle. They explained the turtles are under threat so they're trying to find out more about their habits - where they swim, and why numbers are dwindling. The main threats are built up beaches which confuse the baby turtles who automatically walk towards lights, and away from, rather than towards, the sea. And also the amount of plastics in the ocean.

Again, we watched the mother turtle bury herself into a sandy dip in the beach, covering her eggs with a deft flick of each flipper, until the little pile of eggs was safely protected 1 metre under the sand. Still in the darkness a tiny newly hatched turtle scurried towards to waves, trying to avoid crabs and other predators lying in wait.  As it began to grow light, the adult female dragged herself out of the trench and slowly and painstakingly flippered her way back to the water.

As the week to ourselves drew to a close - this precious nugget of time crammed into hard-working chunks of absence from each other, J reassured me as we drove towards the airport: 'We have so many excitements to look forward to not least of which is life.' We'd stopped at the souq, buying some Omani hats from a Kashmiri man with an islamic whispy beard. But he looked me in the eye, had no problems with shaking my hand, and explained to us as the election results came through: 'Trump. He danger man. He has head like child. Not mature.' Then we were kept waiting in the bus while a VIP sheikh was driven to the door of our plane and as J put it: 'pressed puffy cheek to puffy perfumed cheek and squeezed mallows hands together in farewell.' Us in the bus, waited while they took their time, unapologetically.

I trained my anxious mind back to the ancient green turtle and its 200 million year stretch on the planet. The perfection of nature, and the imperfection of everything mankind seems to be capable of in return. We soared out of Muscat, over its low rise white buildings and straight roads throughout the desert; and I looked out of the window and remembered the sight of the female turtle staggering her steady way into the rising sun, and back into the waves to carry her who knows where next.

A break in the daddy diet

'Back home in 10 mins xx' would be a normal communication most days between husband and wife, but this year it's been distilled into something more concentrated. After 7 weeks this little text ping sent our household into delirium. As J walked in, I felt we had too few arms between us, as we five became immediately entwined around each other, small arms around longer legs, and longer arms around smaller necks; the dwarfs emitting little cries of: 'Daddeeeeee.' Then the Pea took her position suckered tight to her Daddy's leg or torso where she remained for the following fortnight. 'Daddaddaddadda' she muttered as she stumbled, newly a biped as if with two wooden legs. A shining index finger pointing his way. And for me, tears of joy followed by a lightness of heart and a featheryness of foot. For J's presence around the house; but also for another brain on every decision from what to eat for dinner, which way to drive into the West Bank, and what to do for a children's party.

The dwarf party. Oh my - I overestimated our organisational skills once again - though would that I had taken J's raised eyebrow seriously as I suggested what I thought might work for this year: A Star Wars theme for 24 small people. The dwarfs had reluctantly agreed to share a party, so in trooped all their friends, dressed in Star Wars costumes and ready for fun - at least 15 nationalities under one roof.

This was where we could have come against the rocks. I realised too late whilst J and I tried to herd 24 children between 7 and 5 years old into groups to begin the treasure hunt around our local district in East Jerusalem. I'd roped in the friendly man in the dry cleaner to hold some clues: 'Darth Vader has spilled egg down his cloak, where would he go to get his cloak cleaned?' And also our friends in the pizza restaurant: 'Yoda needs a pizza recipe for his special green pizza - where will he find it?' This is not normally the way of birthday parties in East Jerusalem, and there were some surprised looks.

I realised why, after the children broke out of the gate, like terriers out of the traps - and I found myself racing down our crowded high street with the sticky black pavement, with six under 7's running around searching for clues dressed as Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, Yoda and a belly dancer: weaving amongst all the hijab-ed ladies and men speeding by in their cars. I harked back to J's raised eyebrow and wondered when I'd ever learn to take it seriously.

But we made it around. And back for a Star Wars cake which Sashimi pointed out: 'does not look like at all like the death star Mummy. But it is very tasty.'

We held a Syrian dinner for 24 big people to raise money for Aleppo. The kitchen hummed with fun-laced perfectionism thanks to J's uncle Frankie and aunt Odile who were staying. Though we did a massive over catering job, Arab style, and were eating pomegranate tabouleh for a week afterwards.

Two weeks passed all too fast, and all of a sudden J and I found ourselves driving out of the garage and past our gate: the boys standing half way up in nothing but their pants, the Pea tottering on the middle railing with St Grace supporting her. They were all waving and smiling: 'Bye Dadddeeeee,' the Pea pressing her palm to her small flat nose and blowing a kiss our way, not to see him again for another 8 weeks. J struggled to hold back his tears. It is definitely the hardest for him, this bizarre existence.

We crossed the border. We've become so used to all this over 4 years. The gun-toting Israeli teenager at the checkpoint who would look more at home in a Mediterranean night club; the warm Jordanian welcome amid the dust and Dead Sea flies, some of whom always manage to hitch a ride in the car with us to Amman. I'm on swatting duty if J is at the wheel. The driving as if everyone is out to kill you; the winding road up the hill to Amman leaving a silver sliver of the Dead Sea below, past the minarets and the muddle of houses with no apparent planning.

We had lunch with the Duke in Jordan before J got his flight, and sat on his terrace surrounded by artefacts and home made installations, eating wild boar and fatteh salad, with a Pakistani from Rawalpindi who works for the US Federal Bank, and a Jordanian keen on teaching us idioms. We hadn't seen the Duke and his wife for a long while and he sighed and laughed: 'Ah, ia Lucy. Alan Wasahlan' then laughed again: ' Whenever an Arab doesn't know what to say he says: Ahlan Wasahlan.' (welcome) The Duke chuckled.

I drove back home again that night - the dwarfs and a Pea all clean and combed after bath time with St Grace. Then the first rains of the autumn began and the boys ran outside shrieking in excitement, naked but for a raincoat each, a little smaller on  them than last year - bare bottoms peeking out. They ran back inside and giggling hysterically, tied the Pea's ankles together with a dressing gown cord. She kept standing up, then falling on her face, legs folded like a frog, and looking quizically at her ankles wondering how her new found feet were failing her.

J has less to take his mind off the separation. He explained how he looked at himself in the mirror and asked himself quite what, exactly, he was doing in a small cubicle, inside an enormous cement wall, separating himself from greater Baghdad. Separating himself from everyone he knows and loves. These are extraordinary days.