Anniversaries

This morning I'm loving the mundanity of a Monday.

It's raining and I'm sitting in a surround sound of perfect silence. Often on a Monday I wake up feeling like I've been stretched on a rack after spending the weekend with two small/big people and a boddler - the Pea currently in the mid-stage between baby and toddler. Saturday morning, I'd said Fuck three times before 10am, and lobbed a plastic stool in fury over general obnoxiousness. The air was cleared as I don't lose it very often at all. Rashimi came in with a tearful apology. Sunday morning I attempted to have a bath but found myself being pelted with plastic toys by the furious boddler who then tried to join me in there, fully clothed, slipping and falling in, soaking her new trainers. Sunday evening I unscrewed the top of a bottle of red wine and set about cleaning up dwarf detritus in every single room.

There is nothing restful about my days of rest. So I welcome Monday morning like a long-lost Puritan friend. A little stiff and plain, but a peaceful predictable presence. It's that moment where I get to sit down my own and mumble: 'Now where was I?' without being interrupted.

'I am Martin Luther King' was the book of choice last night, and over a bowl of porridge this morning, the Lozenge linked MLK's story to the tale of the Good Samaritan he'd heard at school. 'Because everyone said that the Samaritans were different but this man showed they could also be very kind. Like Martin Luther King was black, and everyone thought he was different.'

Then he pensively swallowed a mouthful of porridge. 'But hang on. Rashimi is brown.'

'But we have to treat him the same as you, the white one,' I added.

Rashimi looked relieved.

Before the weekend, St Grace skipped out the door in a brightly coloured sari, en route to the Sri Lankan embassy in Tel Aviv. '69 years since independence, Madam! So there will be lots of Sri Lankan food and it's always fun.'  'Independence...' I muse. 'From us.' St Grace roared with laughter.

2017 is the year of anniversaries. Nostalgia reigns. I listened to Vera Lynn, now 100 years old, talking on the radio, with a snippet of one of her famous songs: 'we'll meet again.' I've been thinking a lot about how things used to be and whether we're any better now, since editing interviews of my grandparents. I filmed all 4 of them before they died. Each one of them in their own way, said the most important lessons life taught them was the importance of kindness to other people, and not being judgemental.

It's four years since we left London and I think back to the first few weeks after we arrived in Amman. 2013. Rashimi was 1. The Lozenge 3. And we ragged about the city being thrown about in the back of taxis - no seatbelts, no car seats. Unprepared but minds open, looking forwards to whatever life in this region would bring.

It has brought so, so much. Happy times and friendships. Understanding, but perhaps just as many questions as when we arrived. Only, different ones. This year - 2017 -  is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration which was in Palestinian terms, the malignant seed which began the rot in which they're now living up to their necks. This year also marks 50 years since the occupation proper began: after the 6 day war in 1967 when Israel took control of East Jerusalem and swathes of Palestinian land. We are often reminded of Balfour when we say we're British around here. Local people are still so very aware of it and what it has meant for their lives. I went into the pharmacy this week and met a man dressed in tweed. He spoke English like a gent, and described the impact it had had on his life, referring to Trump as a 'nitwit.' I emerged 40 minutes later.

I met another Palestinian gent, a doctor in his mid 60's, this week to talk about a film I've been asked to make. Medicine is often considered to be one of the last remaining bridges between two communities: Israel and Palestine. But the doctor, who was minister of health for the Palestinians at one point, burst the bubble. Whereas there used to be possibilities for Palestinian medical students to find training in well-funded and well-equipped Israel hospitals,  the Palestinian Authority has recently forbidden any involvement with any Israeli institution.

'It's in response to the deteriorating political situation on the ground here' the doctor told me. 'This is a tinder box. We're sitting on a powder keg. We can't control our own destiny and the Israelis are suffocating us from every angle.'

'Take East Jerusalem, where 5,500 settlement units have been planned between here and the West Bank, for instance. I'm a permanent resident, but not a citizen. What use is that? 50 per cent of our population is under the age of 20. They have no hope. It's not Islam that is telling these people to kill themselves. It's the despair they feel. We don't have good advocates of our cause.'

I read that the settler population has grown by 100,000 people in the past 8 years - that's the timescale of Obama's presidency.  The well-publicised evacuation of Amona settlement 2 weeks ago, is commonly understood to be a smoke screen by the Israeli government to make them look like they're doing something. 'They're just moving the settlers to another chunk of Palestinian land nearby' a local told me this week.'

The entrance to Aida Camp, now a suburb of Bethlehem crammed in against the separation wall, which houses Palestinian refugees who've been without a homeland since 1948 and the creation of Israeli state, has a huge key straddling its entrance. The key symbolises the door keys that many Palestinian families still have, to the doors of their homes from which they were evicted almost 70 years ago. The 'right to return' is still talked about in these terms - that people should one day be able to return to their houses, farms and villages, some of them no distance from where the subsequent generations now live in the camps.

Aida camp - like most camps around the Palestinian territories - receives constant beatings. Young boys are taken in the night by Israeli soldiers and thrown in jail, young people are shot dead for protesting in the street, or for throwing stones. There is a general loss of hope. 'What am I supposed to do when I hear a 9 or a 10 year old boy telling me they have no hope for their life, and they'd rather be dead?' explained Abdelfattah, the founder of Al Rowwad cultural centre and the man who first came up with the term 'beautiful resistance'. The Israelis have just taken away the permit he uses to enter Jerusalem, where his home is, where his wife teaches and lives with their 5 children. He is swiftly becoming a version of Martin Luther King here on Palestinian soil.

With Trump's Presidency, people expect the situation to escalate further - with new settlements planned, and the establishment of a US embassy a possibility in Jerusalem. Though many Palestinians are sanguine about it, and say they've been through worse, there is much talk of this being the beginning of the end of any form of just solution. As I look at the Dakota pipeline footage, I ask myself if Palestinians will be those unrepresented indigenous faces in 50 years time: their social and political narrative a distant reality.

Here are some of the wonderful women of the camp, some of whom cooked up some Palestinian delicacies for my friend and I on our latest visit.

Manners maketh small men, and also Mummies

We're back on track. And it's cooler in winter so I can jog again which has transformed my state of mind. My little i-watch tells me I haven't run anywhere since April 16th, 2016, so it's about time. And this is a backdrop canvas like none other. Down the hill, the Garden of Gethsemane on the left with its ancient olive trees - squat, gnarled and girthy, bathed in winter sunlight. Up around the Old City Wall opposite the Jewish cemetery which has converted one side of the Mount of Olives into a chalky white cubic morass. Up around the back of Al Aqsa Mosque where Ultra Orthodox black-hatted Jews are clambering out of minibuses: unfolding baby buggies and flooding in the gate of the Old City nearest to the Western Wall. The swifts will soon be back I think as I search the streaky blue-pink sky for the now familiar black silhouette of little winged sprites.

St Grace is back home giving the brood their dinner while I run free for 40 minutes. Nothing in my hands. Nothing pulling on my arms. No weight on my back or my shoulders. And sights and scenes gliding by to a soundtrack of my choice.

The lights begin to ping on all around, and the dusk call to prayer begins to echo. As I pass the New Gate, the Christmas tree is almost entirely undressed - just a bare frame and a star now visible above the wall. And as I run down the slope the other side, gasping with relief to have finished all the uphill bits, young East Jerusalemites do somersaults in the air from a standstill on the grass outside Damascus gate. I clap. So do they. Sirens sound. I pass the police hut now a permanent fixture in this temporamental political climate. I count on two hands the number of people that have jumped, nervy, looking behind them as I approach. This is a city very much on edge.

Earlier in the day the dwarfs and I have been discussing manners. Rashimi has his grumpy little grumps at the moment, and I try and explain that it only makes the day more painful for all of us, particularly him, if he's rude. So the Lozenge suggests a manners chart and then expands: 'actually Mummy, it's not all the time that YOU are polite to US either. Like sometimes you don't alwayth say PLEATHE when you want us to get dressed or brush teeth, and you did shout two times this morning.'

Manners maketh small men. And also Mummies. So it turns out. 'And Mummy,' adds Rashimi. 'If you get five gold stars in a row on your manners chart, then I'll give you a bottle of wine. All to yerself. Which you can drink with a straw and you don't have to share it.'

The next morning, as I eat my toast behind the cereal packet so the Pea doesn't see, otherwise she eats all of my breakfast as well as her own, I see the manners charts are stuck up on the door.

And I think I'd really like to put one in the White House for its next (P)resident. But I don't think he'd be getting his personal bottle.

I read Maureen Lipman's piece 'If I ruled the World' (I think it was her) a while ago in a magazine. She said the thing she would concentrate on if she was in charge of everyone would be manners. Her point was that manners are the top of all essential human virtues, and linked to every other important one. Empathy. Tolerance. Kindness. Generosity. Patience. All the things we often feel are so lacking in a city, or the world stage, where push and shove are a shoddy replacement for please and thank you.

I was also reading in the New York Times about Obama's letters - how during his double term as President he had a huge team of people working 'underground' sorting through every letter that came in. They would separate them into appropriate bunches: hundreds and hundreds of them each day; until by the end of each working day they'd have ten left, which the President himself would reply to. Because his point that every letter was important, because each one was from a person; an individual. Now that's manners. How his legacy will be missed.

And like Meryl Streep said in her speech about Trump's rudeness towards the disabled journalist. 'Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence'.  It all goes back to manners.

I like how the shop floor is also keeping check on the duty officer in our household situation. We should be doing the same on a global level.

And I will be saying a big thank you to my small housemates when I get my bottle of wine with the straw.

Out with the News and in with the Olds

The Lozenge climbs into bed and I fumble for my phone. 5.55am. He gives me a strong armed hug, and an eskimo kiss. His nose is still quite rubbery and un-boned so it's a very mallowy experience having him in the bed. I think of J, who's in his Baghdad pod without the physical presence of all of us, and I feel grateful for a warm boy who wants to be near me this morning.

'So let's see what'th on the news Mummy. Can I turn it up a bit?' A slight lisp has returned since the 'loth of another thmall tooth'. This departure, and the arrival of the Pea's latest molar - four white prongs glinting through a pink gum - matches the state of our calendar and much else besides. Out with the old. And in with the new: New fangs; new year; and a new President of the USA.

The pips sound. It's 4am in the UK and 6am with us. 'This is the BBC Worldservice'. I wait for the torrent of questions I cannot or do not want to answer. 'What is a HARD Brexthit? Will it be hard, like difficult, or hard like a hard landing?' Donald Trump Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Why ith he always on the news? Why did someone drive into Israeli soldiers and kill them? Was it on purpose? Why would you drive into someone on purpose?'

The cusps of change-over I find are the most difficult. J has just left us after a cosy 2 week Christmas holiday. A fortnight is enough time to sink into the comfortable bulge of being together. And then it becomes stringy and stingy again and J goes back to Baghdad. He is alone, and we have to re-learn how to function just the 4 of us again. I'm sure it must be deep down good for us somewhere. But there's a crunching feeling as our little cable car meets the metal runners on the base frame. One out. Clunk. Clunk. Before soaring up into the sky free and independent again. And then up, up and away we go on one more cycle.

We listen to a strangely cheery voice reading un-cheery news items. I feel flat. And powerless. How do we ensure that the owners of these small warm bodies such as the one in my bed have a planet to be proud of? Any wild animals left to watch? Any destinations in which to backpack when they are 19? I think of the comment from a lovely Kosovar friend: 'We're bringing up these children to be thoughtful and generous and compassionate. And the world is full of hatred and violence. They're going to be eaten alive!' she said to me when we last met.

Where are the beacons of hope in this new year? I ask myself. Not within the News, perhaps. So maybe within the Olds, instead? Helped by our map of the world table cloth over breakfast, the dwarfs and I discuss Olds without even knowing it. 'Wow Mummy - but look at Baghdad. It's right next to Syria. And to Turkey. And there's a wobbly line, and there's a straight one.'

I also have some company over the cusp. Goldilocks, as in me, (a few grey hairs at the front) and the three au pairs: Woodren, Honor and Antonia - visitors here - in their early twenties, full of beans rather than porridge, and ready for adventures on our own, and with the small people. And for two days we immerse ourselves in more Olds.

Between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea you don't have to use much imagination to picture John the Baptist's sandalled feet trudging the rocky sand-scape. We start out at Nebi Musa - the Arabic for the Prophet Moses -  the mosque's white domes creating a textbook oriental atmosphere for the beginning of our hike. On our first cliff top, the view is breathtaking. We chew on dates and take it all in, feeling like microscopic dots in the landscape and within history - looking out over the landmass that reared the people who felt compelled to write a code for living or the word of God on papyrus. The Dead Sea scrolls. We look down towards the silvery snip of that sea at the very lowest point of the earth's surface.

Simon, our Palestinian guide, who has to walk each day or his legs feel itchy, strides on, leading us past ancient irrigation channels, still used by Bedouin, who are hanging onto as much of their ancient lifestyle as current politics allows. The Bedouin's temporary housing structures are vulnerable to Israel's hunger for yet more home-land and this way of life is at great risk of disappearing.

Into a rocky crevasse we walk, the river bed now dry. Huge boulders wedged into gaps punctuate the ravine like giant full stops. A Bedouin boy on the cliff top enjoys a rare audience and plays his pipe while his herd of sheep and goats negotiate the rough ground. Their bells tinkle and his brother sings and dances to us. Up another face we climb, this time studded with metal handles after a walker fell to his death a couple of years ago.

I was as glad of these handles as an older lady might feel glad of a handle on the inside of the bath. The area is dotted with signs of ancient monastic building from the 5th Century. The monks, such as St Saba, came from places like Cappadocia to get away from the material world and grow closer to God; and these caves and crannies and tumble-down rubble shacks, seem just as far from the material world today. We marvel at the idea of living in this way.

Equipped with 3 au pairs, it's a good weekend to go on a dwarf-friendly adventure. So the following day we set off to St Saba's foundation stone: the Greek Orthodox monastery Mar Saba - chiselled into and built onto the rock face of the Kidron Valley.  Despite the river gushing with sewage thanks to an Israeli and Palestinian dead-lock in decision making over this river polution, the landscape is magnificent. It happens to be the day of Orthodox Christmas itself and pilgrims dressed from top to toe in black - the women with flat topped veils on their heads - are gathering outside. The monastery is open only to men but we scramble down the slope below, the Pea lodged in a pack on my back and squeaking with excitement at the rocking, rolling motion of the descent. I am her own little ship of the desert. The camel mother. Then we clamber up the other side where we have a picnic on a flat bit of rocky ground facing the extraordinary sight of this higgledy piggledy monk-mansion. We are the noisy technicolour against the sandy surface which in contrast to us, is dotted with dark-clothed, silent worshippers. But no one seems bothered by our presence.

What really makes me wonder at it, is the reason St Saba came here at all. I read that after Constantine the Roman Emperor converts to Christianity in 312 AD, 300 years worth of Christian persecution comes to an end. So the faith becomes safe and comfortable and respected. 'Where is the sacrifice and martyrdom now then?' thinks St Saba. And so he decides to find a physical and spiritual challenge in this landscape of the Holy Land. Basically, life gets too easy, and he has to look for a more challenging way to live. Historians think that there were as many as 150 monasteries dotted around here from this time. Monks must have been flocking here in search of pain, and loneliness and horrible conditions. Who ever would go in search of that? And apart from a major blip when in 614, the Persians killed all the monks in the monastery (after which it was un-inhabited for only a few weeks); the place has been almost continuously lived and prayed in, for over 1500 years.

I feel comforted by John Steinbeck's reflection at the beginning of 1941. 'Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy.' And when you look back, 1941 didn't go so well, nor the years immediately after. There was a supreme evil at play in the world, and it's hard not to feel that we might be heading the same way again, not even a century later.

But his reflection on evil is also heartening: 'Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man.'

The au pairs are worth their weight in gold for Goldilocks, particularly with her three small people on a rock face climb. But after a joyful weekend, they leave back to January in the UK. And I embark on a richter scaled feng shui session. Avalanches and tsunamis of stuff: Out. And order and space: In. It's more zen in the house. And my state of mind is more peaceful as I've tuned out of News and into Olds.

As I sweep and scrub and tie up bags of stuff, I think that for anyone, even those who don't believe in God or Saints, it's still interesting to imagine what might St Saba be doing now? Where would be the rock face of pain to escape to today?

Maybe he would still be here in the Arab World. But instead of stretching himself with the silence and hermit-like withdrawal from it all; he'd be searching for his agony in the heart of the persecution and chaos.

A hermit with a helmet.

I must discuss all this with the Lozenge over the next early morning eskimo kissing session, when tuning into the News makes us go looking for the Olds.