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...