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.

Speak Life

It hadn't rained for so many months. The brown earth was gasping, it seemed.

There used to be an ancient Palestinian custom for an autumn drought: to lead a lady sitting backwards on a donkey through the village.

So there must have been a lady doing that somewhere because it's been raining so much them drains have been straining, and flood water has lapped around our ankles for a week. It's beautiful. The dwarfs love it and wear their wellies with nothing else on around the house. In homage to the puddles.

Christmas fever is truly upon us. 'I'm an angel in the nativity play,' Rashimi says to the Lozenge. 'There's only 2 angels you know. In the play. Only two.'  And the Lozenge says: 'Well, you can't have too many angels all going around saving people. Because then you'd forget to save yourself.'

Daddy is now officially a 'bot. The Pea spends much of her day kissing my iphone - because that's where her Daddy's face appears to her most often at the moment. Sometimes on a call, the dwarfs take the Daddy 'bot into the playroom so he can watch their Lego building. Then something happens and they run out - leaving Daddy in there. We need iphones that walk so that Daddy 'bots can follow us about the house rather than being stranded.

The potatoes have all got holes in them from Rashimi's rampant spud-gunning. 'After you die, Mummy', he asks idly refuelling his gun with spud, 'can you still think?'

We light the advent candles from Grandma every night except that the naughty advent candle warden one night let them burn down to number 23 when we're only at 16. She's related to the tooth fairy that one. A little bit scatty. The candles are now hidden so the dwarfs won't see until it's really 23.

Auntie Rosie and Tilly visited. We started out with 'Cook with Rosie' in Jerusalem for the first time. She helped 8 pairs of small hands to pat mince into Syrian meatballs, and afterwards they stuffed dates with apricot and walnuts, then rolled them in coconut. A couple of parties, some funny hung-over days wrangling small people, and finally a trip to the Marwani mosque - underneath the Dome of the Rock compound in the Old City - a 7th century mosque only used today when there's an overflow during Ramadan. The crusaders used it as their stables, and the stone pillars still have holes where they tied the ropes for the horses. Simple, stunning 7th century arches, with metres and metres of carpet and chinks of sunlight diving diagonally across.

And now, all the scaffolding has come down inside the Dome of the Rock revealing a newly painted ceiling.

 I met a friendly Israeli man who works in a local supermarket Super Deal also known to us instead, as Super Rip-Off. He's a 'Mizrahi' meaning a Jew from the Arab world. He was born in Mosul in 1949 before all Jews were evicted after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. We talked for a while about how my husband was in Baghdad, and I asked him if he had any photographs of that time. 'Oh no. Nothing like that. No memories either. Just that stamp of where I was born'. We spoke in Arabic - he wears a Jewish skull cap. This is the place to be to understand we're all entwined. No walls can separate us even if they try.

The father Christmas lists have been written. 'A globe of the world please, a football please, a boomerang please, please. Writes the Lozenge. 'Please Santa,' writes Rashimi, with some help from his brother, 'Flying. I want to fly'. And, 'The Force'. Please. Love Hamish. With a back to front 'h' at the end.

The Lozenge stands on stage in the nativity play in a beautiful crown crafted by St Grace. 'The best crown on the stage,' the Lozenge says proudly. It's tall and golden with plastic gems stuck all over it. And Sashimi is there at the front with an itchy tinsel Halo which he itches the whole way through the nativity play. It's a very sweet play as they always are.

The same day these dreadful snippets of news are coming from Aleppo. And then we go and visit the wonderful Alrowwad centre where the boy I made the short film about works. It's tucked in near to the graffiti-covered wall which locks these people in, through nothing they've done wrong, other than be born. There. We raised a speck of money for them lately, and the founder, Abdelfattah explains how he just wants young people to want to live, not to die. And to live, and love, and be happy. He says: 'To hear a young person of 9 or 10 say they just have no hope and they want to die. Well, I just can't explain it. So we keep going - doing this, whether we have money, or we don't have money.'

Rashimi has a sore tummy (which later we realise is the vomiting bug), so he's in a bit of strop when we go and visit, and won't shake anyone's hand, or say hello. But we watch a wonderful Dabke - Palestinian dance display. The Pea walks into the middle of the dance floor, and sits down and claps her hands.

And the boys watch and don't want to stop watching.  Even Rashimi with his sore tummy. The Lozenge is love-bombed by loads of Palestinian boys after their dance class. If only we were allowed to report more about love bombing than just bombing.

And we drive back from school today - the dwarfs' last day there before we fly off home to see our family, and the Lozenge and his little friend Vera from Sweden are singing along on the back seat of the car to the song they learned in assembly. 'Speak Life' it's called' they say, 'Do you know it Mummy?' I say I don't and I swizzle it up on the iphone, still hot from Daddy 'bot moments and we play it and they sing along. And it's almost as sweet as the nativity play. But none of this they know. And this little gospel-soul-or-something song says it all. Without them even knowing about people their age wanting to die. Or not wanting to die, and having to die anyway. So we drive. And they sing. And the Pea claps. And now I have to write it all down.

'Some days life feels perfect. Other days it just aint workin. The good the bad, the right the wrong.  And everything in between. It's crazy. Amazing. We can turn a heart with the words we say. Mountains crumble with every syllable. Hope can live or die. So speak life. Speak life. To the deadest darkest night. Speak life. Speak life. When the sun won't shine and you don't know why. Look into the eyes of the broken hearted. See them come alive as soon as you speak hope, you speak love, you speak life. You speak life.'

And that is the thought we leave you with, the dwarfs and I, as we prepare to hop in a cab in a few hours, and head to the homeland.We are looking forward to speaking life with you all. Happy Christmas.

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.