Spiderman and a Nordic midwife

There's nothing like threading a naked body into an acrylic spiderman suit in 40 degrees. But for the last few days, Rashimi has insisted. He comes padding along, holding it out for me to help him get his two sweaty legs into the suit, ripping open the scratchy velcro tabs to fasten at his back. But like a diva squeezing two hot feet into five inch stilettos - style comes before comfort. And he runs happily off to spin some webs, with a slight wedgie at the back. The suit's a bit small so he's more like Spiderman the orphan these days.

In order to prevent the spontaneous combustion of Rashimi, I've ensured we visit at least one swimming pool per day.

After a morning of fly catching with St Grace, where the Lozenge collected at least 30 black corpses in a jam jar ('I'm going to keep the lid on so they don't start breathing again' he whispered); and a lime and spoon race where Spiderman was caught indulging in some foul play by applying glue to the spoon; we set out. Me and the 2 neon lilos - the 3 of us very inflated, 2 float-aid noodles and 2 boys, goggles already on, in swimming trunks and a Spiderman suit. No risk of being run over with this kind of a caravan.

The closest pool is at the American Colony Hotel - with beautiful gardens and creeping vines already heavy with purple bunches of grapes. We settled on a couple of loungers around the manicured poolside beside a tall woman with short blonde hair.

Rashimi started stroking my tummy. 'The baby will come out of your tummy naked!' said the Lozenge. 'After this one you could have more and more babieth and then it would be BABY world. Can we have 2 more babieth after this one. Please!' said Rashimi. 'And I'd like some pistachio ice cream, pleathe,' said the Lozenge.

The call to prayer sounded from the minaret over-looking our semi-clad activity. 'There'th the church.' 'No, that's a mosque - you can tell by the crescent moon on the top. A church has a cross.' 'And Jesuth was nailed to the cross,' said the Lozenge in a reverent tone.

I noticed the blonde lady was smirking and as we jumped in the pool I got chatting to her. It turned out she was a Norwegian midwife, living in Ramallah with her husband, training Palestinian midwives in the West Bank. A better poolside position we could not have hoped for - particularly 3 days before BFE's due date.

By this point we were in the water, and as I leant onto the side to chat to the lady, the Lozenge was swinging from the back of my bikini top, trying to undo it, and Rashimi clasped around the front - his nut brown dimpled hands gripping my bosoms, shouting 'I wish I had BOOBIES!'

Her face lit up when I told her we hoped to have our baby in the Holy Family Hospital. 'It's a lovely place and the midwives there are fabulous.'

The conditions in the government hospitals, she lamented, were very far from this standard - which was part of the purpose of her projects here. To improve facilities in government maternity wards, and to train up midwives for more home births to be possible. We discussed the fundamental issue of freedom of movement for Palestinians, which causes enormous problems for women in labour reaching any hospital in time. Checkpoints, flying checkpoints, the Separation wall, road blocks and roads within the West Bank for the use of Israeli settlers only, all hamper travel for any Palestinian. But for a Palestinian woman in labour the combination is a disaster. It would be interesting to see how long it would take Mary and Joseph to reach Bethlehem from Nazareth in the modern day West Bank. Perhaps it was quicker back then, on a donkey?

The organisation, Visualising Palestine, as ever, puts it as clearly as could be:

Between 2000 and 2006 at least 68 women gave birth at checkpoints of whom 35 miscarried and five died in childbirth. According to BBC report in 2008 an Israeli soldier in command of a checkpoint outside Nablus was relieved from duty and imprisoned for 2 weeks after he refused to allow a Palestinian woman in labour to pass through. The woman was forced to give birth at the check point and the baby was still born.

2 weeks. Shucks.

But it reflects the same parallel reality for Israelis and Palestinians we see every day.

If the perpetrator of the stabbings at the gay pride march last week had been a Palestinian, the chances are he would have been shot, and his family's property demolished.

But both this crime and the arson attack by Israeli settlers last week - killing the 18 month old baby, Ali Saad Dawabsha in Doma near Nablus - is the result of longstanding impunity towards settler violence, and the facilitation of the settlements themselves.

If Palestinian terrorism is the equivalent of Frankenstein's monster for Israel, then Israeli terrorism is Dr Frankinstein's natural-born child. Like a spoilt adolescent who has enjoyed conditions of impunity for a lifetime within the family - at some point he/she may turn on his own family. So now it's not only the Palestinians who are targets for Jewish extremists - but any Israeli, particularly any who lean to the centre or left as we saw in the Gay Pride march.

I read a statistic yesterday in the local press, that 91.5% of investigations into settler attacks on Palestinians were closed without indictments, despite Israeli authorities' claims of being committed to cracking down on nationalistically motivated crimes.

We'll be seeing news like this for a while, until the statistic changes.

Modern day Bethlehem and the shrine at the Holy Family Hospital

Rainbow bridge eternal

'Here. Please. For the baby,' said a man, handing me a huge bunch of purple and yellow grapes, their skins as taught as my pregnant stomach. Recently washed and glistening with drops of water.

I didn't know the man, but I thanked him from my seated position by a shallow pool where the dwarves were playing with their friends. And as he walked off I thought to myself - I don't know whether he was Palestinian or Israeli, or an Arab Israeli. Because in this land the bridges between the cultures, soaring over the violence and the terror are the same. Passion and respect for family, the mother, for babies and children. For food. And loud, loud fun.

The same week that an 18 month old Palestinian baby is burned alive in his house by settlers; the same week that a crazed religious Israeli goes on a stabbing fest at the Gay Pride march, recently released from prison for the same crime ten years ago; both of these crimes accompanied by the murmurs of the likelihood of a new war only one year on from the last;

a stranger hands me a bunch of grapes for my baby.

J and I had dinner at a lively tapas bar near the market here in Jerusalem. The women dark and beautiful, the mood was heating up with the beat. Pulsing. Arab. 'Yalla!' sang the beautiful women, gyrating their hips on their small stools, waving their hands in the air above the little plates of tapas and cocktails. The same word they use, Arabs and Israelis. Yalla! Let's go!

Just another bridge.

Last night we watched: 'The train that divides Jerusalem' the Panorama programme about the only transport artery we use all the time. It highlighted once again the hatreds in this city. And then we watched the Channel 4 Dispatches: 'Escape from ISIS' - an escape from a place where the evil knows no bounds.

And yet.

As 34 men, women and children walked to safety across the plains of spring flowers, rescued by the cunning and courage of a group of men, risking their lives to spare even a handful of the estimated 4 million women imprisoned by Islamic State. After the tearful hugs and the desperate sobs of relief, the camera pans to a tiny figure, turning away, alone, across the plain. The insider responsible for saving these 34, walks back over the lines of ISIS. Risking his life once again.

These things, as Richard Le Gallienne wrote, are: 'The Rainbow bridge eternal that is Hope'.

'These things are real,' said one, and bade me gaze
On black and mighty shapes of iron and stone,
On murder, on madness, on lust, on towns ablaze,
And on a thing made all of rattling bone:
'What,' said he, 'will you bring to match with these?'
'Yea! War is real,' I said, 'and real is Death,
A little while--mortal realities;
But Love and Hope draw an immortal breath.'

Think you the storm that wrecks a summer day,
With funeral blackness and with leaping fire
And boiling roar of rain, more real than they
That, when the warring heavens begin to tire,
With tender fingers on the tumult paint;
Spanning the huddled wrack from base to cope
With soft effulgence, like some haloed saint,--
The rainbow bridge eternal that is Hope.

Deem her no phantom born of desperate dreams:
Ere man yet was, 'twas hope that wrought him man;
The blind earth, climbing skyward by her gleams,
Hoped--and the beauty of the world began.
Prophetic of all loveliness to be,
Though God Himself seem from His station hurled,
Still shall the blackest hell look up and see
Hope's rainbow on the summits of the world. 

Richard Le Gallienne

Travelling without moving

I woke up and looked through a lazy lid towards the window to see Rashimi and J aiming and firing at fat, soporific Ramadan flies with the fly gun. Dooft. Splat! 'Great shot, Daddeee!' One more of the low flying black objects, like a miniature Israeli army helicopter, felled with a simple spring, string and plastic device.

I feel like our family bubble is moving similarly to the flies - cruising slowly about with no particular purpose but getting from A to B. My walk has slowed to a wading pace in the soupy heat, like the slow, swaying movements I used to watch in the street in N'Djamena, Chad in 45 degrees. As people concentrated on moving: unflustered, cool. As cool as they could be.

We're not travelling anywhere this summer. But it feels like we're moving in a different way. Travel: travail. The words are apparently linked in 14th Century French. When travel was work, and work, of course, is labour. And this is the same word they use for giving birth. 'Travail'. For each last month of each pregnancy I've felt like this - that nothingness feeling like when you're in a train, sitting there, being carried from one place to another. There are only a certain amount of things you can do; most plans cannot be begun during this paused period of time. So you have to sit, think, appreciate, plan. Eat, sleep, laugh, read, think some more. You know where you're headed. And something else is carrying you. The feeling has spread to J and the dwarves, who've caught the vibe, and are with me for the ride. Dr Salameh the Bethlehem obstetrician is with us too. 'Shall we weigh you?' (I groan.) 'Ha ha. Okay - no need to weigh you. Your blood pressure's fine. You look fine - I'm sure the baby is too.'

Because of my month of action-free time travel, most decisions and ideas come from a different hierarchy - the new world order where the little people rule. The Lozenge spotted a brown butler's trolley on top of a high cupboard. We need that, Daddy. Will you get it down? And so began the ritual of the outside breakfast, delivered and cleared by some diminutive butlers. All is well when the little people feel they have ownership of their day.

Breakfast now takes an hour, and we sit on our breezy outside terrace making plans, and J leaves later for work.

Our family bubble grew a little to fit in a few more:  Dunc, G, Fergus and Daisy. The dwarves turned into the mannies. The Lozenge was entranced by his 4.5 month old cousin and serenaded:

Rashimi, not long out of dummy dependency himself was the pacifier attendant. I saw him trying to unfurl Daisy's tiny clenched fingers. 'Be careful with Daisy's fingers, Rashimi.'
'But I'm twying to put her thumbth up'.


Eid ul Fitr marked the end of Ramadan. The night air was orchestral with fireworks, all-night chanting from the minarets, music from cars, revving engines, and no less than 8 thunderous explosions of the Ramadan canon - put to bed for another year until the next 40 day fast. Wa'el the dwarves' swimming coach has jumped back into the water, and an olive hue has returned to his cheeks.

'So Mummy, Wa'el ith a Muthlim?'

(We were having some basic conversations about religion after Rashimi said: 'There'th the tram sound Mummy!' when we heard a church bell one Sunday.)

'And Muthlim people do the fast when they don't eat?'

'Ith fasting something that you do weally weally quickly?'

'And Mohammad! Like the Mohammad who took uth snorkelling on the boat to see fish?'

'I'm going to draw Mohammad.'

hmm.

****

The Glammy has been to visit which opened up some very interesting avenues with regards to religion. Raised as a Muslim herself, now in her 31st year on the planet, she has started to see some serious issues with her received faith. When she wasn't hooning about with the dwarves, she was exploring the Old City including its Christian areas: the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden of Gethsemane, Mary's tomb. 'Do you believe in signs?' she giggled, holding up a small chip of marble stone in her French polish-tipped fingers.

'Well, when I was in the Holy Sepulchre I put my head on the stone where Jesus' body was laid, and this little chip embedded itslef on my forehead. Seriously - I think it's a sign.'

Aside from superstition, she's asking some fundamental questions about the validity of Islam. How could Mohammed have been perfect when he advocated men having multiple wives? How can a faith be so weighed in the direction of men - saying they will have 70 virgins when they get to heaven, and a woman will have the choice of her husband and maybe one other man? Who were the men who wrote these extra Hadith in the Koran, claiming they were the word of God? Some of these Hadith are total rubbish...And so on.

Her new husband and her family, are unfortunately not ready to hear too much of this.

But we were. We talked for much of one day about it as the dwarves ate sandwiches, splashed in the pool, and generally zoned out from our animated chat. The fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity, we reckoned is that Christianity doesn't expect you to be perfect. We're all imperfect, that's okay, and we can try to get better with every new day, even after mucking up yesterday. Whereas in Islam, you can and should try to achieve perfection - like Mohammad's example - which is what can make people pious and judgemental, or worse, towards others, when they feel they're nearing perfection themselves. Who decides when he has reached perfection? That's when trouble begins. Taliban. Al Qaeda. ISIS. Boko Haram. The list is endless.

The following day she came back draped with crucifixes on colourfully beaded strings, her IPhone screen splashed with wax from lighting candle after candle, and she prayed with St Grace and the Dwarves at the Holy Sepulchre. 'I prayed for you and Bunny Floppy Ears,' said the Lozenge.

The Lozenge's view of me and BFE

J had taken the boys over the border to Jordan to stay with the Glammy for a couple of days. The border guard leaned in the window and asked the usual questions: 'You have a veapon?' 'No.' replied J. 'It was a good job we didn't bring those fly gunth, Daddy,' whispered the Lozenge.

I collected the dwarves and the Glammy to bring them back to Jerusalem. Some friends looked aghast when I told them. 'You drove to Jordan on your own? Didn't you know that going down to the Dead Sea level (429 metres below sea level) and back up again, is how people here bring on labour?'

Ignorance was bliss. And my concerns were not about that, I realised as we sat waiting for the Israeli border officials to release the Glammy's passport and let us get home to Jerusalem. Nothing changes. We'd had a jolly time on the Jordanian side as the border team pointed and whispered at the Glammy's passport. It turned out she was from their gang - the enormous and well-respected Jordanian Abadi tribe. And they chatted excitedly to her in Bedouin dialect which she didn't understand. Not so friendly the other side. 'How long do we have to wait?' I asked the Israeli woman who'd retained the Glammy's passport. 'We don't know. It could be 1 hour, it could be 3 hours, or 5 hours. Just. Wait.' She looked about 20 years old, and walked off in her typical IDF outfit of Australian Blundstone boots and skinny jeans - hair in a high ponytail and pearly lipstick.

The Glammy has been over the border to stay with us three times now - yet still they're rummaging around checking her files for 'something' dodgy. Because the Glammy is an Arab. They were rude and unfriendly. 'Well, we're not moving,' I said, when they encouraged me to leave the Glammy on her own there and take the boys back to Jerusalem. Just so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. 'You Israelis know about hospitality, don't you? Would you leave a guest of yours here?' I asked.

I went to stock up on tepid sugary drinks for the dwarves from the shop in the suppurating heat. The car thermometer read 42 degrees at the border - the same level as the Dead Sea. The Mars Bar drooped like a raw sausage when I picked it up. I chose some bright orange crisps instead. So after about 2 hours, one guard, who I'd noticed had a tiny chink of a friendly expression, walked past for the fifth time, and looked nervously at my enormous stomach and the wilting dwarves, and they finally let us through.

But it was good to be reminded of all this. We're still here in this apartheid state - but you can become inured, easily, to the injustice as Europeans here. You can forget that Israel's High Court of Justice just ruled to allow the army to demolish the entire Palestinian village of Susiya, near Hebron, and force the 340 men, women and children to move somewhere else within Area A of the occupied territories. (Susiya is in Area C, which covers 60 per cent of the West Bank - what officially remains of Palestine, along with Gaza. Just under half a million Israeli settlers have populated this area, which is illegal in the eyes of International law. Israel retains control of security and land management in Area C, while ignoring Palestinian needs; banning Palestinian construction and development; and issuing demolition orders like this one after pressure from very powerful settler organisations.)

Three Palestinian men have been shot by the Israeli Defence Forces this past week. Only a year ago 551 Gazan children were murdered by the very same guilt-free aggression. (Watch Lyse Doucet's film: The children of Gaza).

But I've felt guilty as I had to turn down an offer this week, to make a 3D film about a child in Gaza, living in the wreckage of a house as they still wait for the building materials in their Mediterranean prison. The filming day was on my due date so it was in some ways an easy decision. But in other ways our happy family bubble has only reminded me more of exactly where we are. We're cruising idly along like those lazy flies, but we must not forget where we are.

This morning I was a little ratty with the dwarves as they were fighting and careered into the breakfast table sending plates and bowls flying.

'Are you happy with us, Mummy?' asked Rashimi.

'Yes - don't worry, I'm still happy with you both', I said, giving them both an awkward hug - the watermelon stomach a bit of a cuddle hurdle at the moment.

'And...are you happy with yoursewf?'

2.9 children

2.9 children

My boys at the bar

But I have my own bar

Gratheland

The dwarf duo are in their swimming class with Wa'el their coach. Waeeeeeeeel!! they shout when they see him, their slightly flat feet slipping and sliding along the swimming pool tiles as they run towards him. He is grey with the strain of ramadan. Only one more week until Eid ul Fitr - when they can break their fast. Fitr - the same word as the one they use for breakfast. But you can feel people creaking their way to the end. The feast can't come quick enough.

Ten days ago we drove to the far south of Israel - through the Negev - Israel's Wild West. Remote service stations, military zones, and those familiar red rocks jutting from the desert. Just a few kilometres to the other side is Jordan - which occupies the opposite coastline to Israel - the other side of the Red Sea -and our destination for our first family holiday; the last one as a foursome.

We reached Eilat - a tacky resort with high rises reminding us of cheap resorts in Mallorca. And found our way to the border crossing. Though there were no signs. Had we known, we'd have followed the signs to the bird sanctuary, which flanks both sides of the border and is better signed than the crossing. Because no one crosses any more. No Israelis could or would. Not many Jordanians can either .With our distinguishable white plates with black letters - Diplomat - mean we can have our cake and eat it, run rough shod around this land to our hearts' content. A silent, empty border like this one does a lot to remind us of our luck.

The Jordanian border officials, also starving and a pale grey hue, on the border were obviously delighted we could speak some Arabic. The only others crossing were a rake thin couple of backpackers from Australia tracing the hippie trail - now all but defunct, between Egypt, Israel Jordan, onto Lebanon. The man was in a pink fury as the Israelis had stamped his passport. You don't want an Israeli stamp in your passport if you're back packing in the Arab world. Or at least, you won't get far. Though fortunately for us, his mistake allowed us not to make it ourselves. At this border you have to specifically ask them not to stamp.

The resort was on the beach on the East side of the Red Sea - overlooking the barren mountain ranges of Egypt. Al Mesr .70 Egyptian soldiers were murdered by ISIS that week. General SISI - an unfortunate anagram of the terrorist group, is in charge of squashing these human devils, but most agree he's just another Mubarak in a slightly different uniform. Though even the most liberal of Egyptians we meet admit there's no one else. And for all his faults at least he might maintain some order. But at what cost to their liberty?

Our family room was just as it sounds. With a precious 30 inches of 'sliding door' between the dwarf domain and ours. The hot desert wind was like a hairdryer outside, so we spent any time in our room under aggressive waves of air conditioning in cool white sheets. The soundtrack for the first few days was: 'Where'th my thword?' from Rashimi. Almost never without it. Until he mislaid it. Which was all the time. The Lozenge is getting better at looking for things - so I tasked him to find it, often.

The Lozenge also showed some incredible buffet skills. I lost count of the number of chocolate donuts on a stick he managed to put away every morning. He struck up daily conversations with his alter ego - his tummy. 'Mummy, my tummy tells me he needs a little something before we have lunch.'  Then swimming it all off in the daisy chain of swimming pools, and zooming time and time again down the slides.

We shared our holiday with a vibrant cross section of people in the hotel: Gangs of Christian Jordanians escaping the confines of Ramadan; Saudi Muslims escaping the heat and stern restrictions of their own land and living out their holiday at night, after breaking their fast at sunset, and eating for all the hours of darkness until the day broke again and they had to give their straining tummies a rest. There were Palestinian families now living in Europe, coming for a holiday as close to their homeland as they could manage. And Palestinians living in Palestine, having a break from Israeli restrictions and getting some coast line for once (Palestinians can't easily get to the sea in Israel, unless they're Gazan). And one Russian family.

There were many Kenyan workers in the hotel. The ladies we spoke to seemed sad. I don't think they have an easy time, despite earning more money than they would back home. 'We go out in Aqaba and the local men shout at us and insult us for being black - or ask us if we're prostitutes,' said Pascaline sadly, her beautiful face over decorated with bright red lips and purple eye lids, with a glossy black bun of dread locks as big as her head.

Her Kenyan friend called to Rashimi as he scuttled past with a lilo and a noodle, his goggles on. 'Hey baby! That's a great tan!' The nut brown Rashimi is so brown that he's being complimented on it by jet black Kenyans. Now that must be a tan.

The Lozenge spent time stone collecting, and practising his swimming strokes. He grabbed a life jacket, put on some flippers and leaped into the deep blue sea with a snorkel and mask - we'd gone almost exactly half the way across the Red Sea to Egypt in a boat with a great guy called Mohammad. The Lozenge was astonished by what he saw - and drew it all at dinner later.

The Lozenge and Mohammad

Rashimi got all dressed up, but perhaps sensibly decided not to go anywhere after all.

We sat looking each evening, at the red mountain range with blue sky in a gradient to pale, with the green foliage in the foreground. Hard to believe we were in the heart of the most troubled region of the world. May there always be escapes in this land. J and I watched an incredible film on iplayer: 'Song for Jenny' about 7/7. too much to bear. The pillow was wet after the hour long film. It's traumatic, but worth watching. How could we have seen what greater trouble the world would be in by now.

It was a wonderful holiday but also a joy to get back home. J has caught the nesting bug. While I had four days on a writing project, he and the boys did a feng shui on the whole house. They fashioned a new bedroom for the dwarfs out of the playroom. Bunny Floppy Ears now has his/her own abode. I got home on Saturday night after 8 hours work and J painted my toe nails in a beautiful scarab beetle blue. I can no longer reach them myself. I don't know why I've ever paid anyone else to paint them. He could be making a killing in expat circles in Jerusalem, I thought, as he meticulously coated each nail in varnish, my foot resting on a towel on his lap, while he also kept one eye on the Ashes on the laptop screen.

We've dug out the Bang and Olufsen stereo complete with LP player - as we discovered a well-stocked record shop in Jaffa recently, and wanted to listen to our dusty vinyl treasures. As we sat with a drink, and I looked outside at the warm night - the leaves in silhouette against the blue and orange sky, a rally of cars outside heading home fast for 'iftar': (same root as 'fitr' breaking the fast). I realised how vinyl makes you go slower. You read the record label, you slowly pull the black disc from its sleeve and watch as the needle swings slowly round, connects and the first note begins. It's slow. So you have to sit down and listen. Take your time. I think I even sipped my drink slower, and read a book from our coffee table I've barely looked at before. You do it properly, perhaps as we used to write better and more thoughtfully after filling a fountain pen with ink, and thinking before shaping the first word. You can't scribble or burble with a fountain pen, the way you can with a Biro, or even a keyboard. We need to preserve these considered actions, even alongside the ipods.

St Grace has given us a  tiny golden cross on a chain for Bunny Floppy Ears. It's smaller than the nail on my little finger and has an even tinier body of Christ upon it. Her eyes filled with tears. 'For the baby,' she said: 'I had it blessed in my church, so it's ready if the baby comes early.'

The boys and I listened to Paul Simon's Graceland on the way to swimming. 'Doeth Grathe come from Gratheland?' Rashimi asked from the back seat.

Almost certainly, she does, I thought to myself. 

Sometimes

This is for you, Mum. After our conversation last night about what can be done about the state of things...


Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives: the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go 
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

by Sheenagh Pugh