A daughter

Poem for a daughter by Anne Stevenson

'I think I'm going to have it,' I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
'Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it.'
A judgement years proved true.
Certainly I've never had you

as you still have me, Petra.**
Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart's needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom's end. Yet nothing's more perfect
than that bleating, razor-shaped cry
that delivers a mother to her baby.
The bloodcord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the mother.

A woman's life is her own
until it is taken away
by a first particular cry.
The she is not alone
but part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
When we belong to the world
we become what we are.

The arrival of The Pea

Perhaps in every couple there's one train fever type, and one who prefers to board the moving train, having made full use of every minute before its metal bulk draws out of the station.

Unfortunately for J, it's the wife with the relaxed approach to timings which in the case of the arrival of a child can be uncomfortable.

The sky was blue, the sun was beating down on the grim, grey graffitti-covered wall separating West Bankers from Jerusalemites - dividing families and tribes; splicing off chunks of valuable land from Palestinian farmers; barricading believers from their holy sites; and often forcing pregnant women to give birth at the barrier, in worst cases causing infant deaths.

But for us, what could go wrong? 9 days beyond the due date and I'd been graced with Palestinian virtues from somewhere: sabr: patience; and sumud: resistance. The charming obstetrician from Beit Sahour in Bethlehem said to me: 'I've never met a woman as patient as you. Really, you know we can give you an induction - there's nothing to fear.' But I had to resist, because twice before my body has managed alone without being pushed into labour - so why not a third time? He rolled his eyes, seemingly a little familiar with female obstinacy as a father to four daughters.

So after our consultation on a sunny Monday afternoon, I was itching to get back home and prepare - tying up those final loose ends before our lives were rearranged once again by a tiny creature. The metaphorical train could wait for me just a bit longer. J asked nervously: 'Are you sure you don't want to stay here? The doctor said it wouldn't be long, and I really don't want to get caught at a checkpoint or in traffic on our way back here.'

But who could argue with a woman this pregnant?!

We cruised back to Jerusalem, popped into Gap where J bought some new trousers - a few funny looks in the shopping centre at my low slung belly. I wondered if we'd get a lifetime's supply of free chinos if the baby popped out in the store.

Then passing Notre Dame, the early 19th C  building opposite the new gate to the Old City, we remembered the restaurant rooftop and decided to have some dinner up there.

Back home around 9.30pm, I advised J to get some sleep because if Bunny Floppy Ears was to make an arrival, he'd be running on empty without the natural adrenalin I was going to get.  I updated my blog, cruised about the house packing the hospital bag, humming to myself when I realised that the lower back pain I'd been feeling in the rooftop resto must have been the beginnings of things afterall. The contraction I felt that minute meant I had to stop and hold on to the door frame.

I woke J, then I waddled into Grace's room to wake her up while J hurried about finding his keys and his bag. Grace had been staring at me thinking I was about to give birth for over a month. Now was the moment and she leapt from her bed shouting: 'YES!' bosoms flying, and suddenly realised J standing behind me, clasped her hands in front of her chest. 'Sorry Sir!' she giggled. She hugged us so tight. I looked at the car dashboard as J started the car.10.45pm.

We hadn't counted the sets of traffic lights from our house to Bethlehem. But all I remember is that each one turned red as we approached. All I could feel was my own clammy hand holding the handle above the car door and the most regular and intense waves of a baby very much wanting to arrive, as J quietly and determinedly DROVE. No trouble at the checkpoint, and barely any traffic. But those red lights gleaming in the darkness…they will be my eternal memory. 'Go through this one if you can, there's nothing coming,' I hissed. (Apart from a baby of course). By 11.15 J was hooting the horn to get the guards to open the electric gate to the hospital car park. 'Come ON.' The gate c r e ak ed open. I moved myself out of the front seat, feeling no different from one of Dad's cows in labour in nocturnal field in central Scotland. I  had to stop every two or three minutes to breathe, gripping J's arm. We'd called  the obstetrician and he was on his way, but his cousin, a midwife was there when we staggered in. 'We don't have long' I giggled between contractions, then having to stop again by a cool stone hospital wall and lean my head against it.

By the time we got to the ward, and Dr Salameh's cousin was hurriedly arranging her things and washing her hands I had to wee, so I sat on the loo. 'Habibti (dear) do NOT sit on the toilet! Don't PUSH! You're pushing!'
'No I'm not I'm doing a wee'.
'Habibti, get off the toilet and onto the bed - the baby is going to come in the toilet!' she shrieked, struggling with some latex gloves.
'But I don't want to wee on the bed,' I said.
I made a move to change my clothes on the way to the bed.
'There's no time!' she shouted. But I insisted and she tossed me a bright pink gown

'Lie on the bed!' she said

'No'. I replied. I couldn't think of anything less comfortable at that point.

And before I'd really had time to argue any more with the well meaning midwife with the brusque bedside manner, I was staring through my own legs at a complete surprise.

I stared, and stared. But where was the willy? I had presumed all along that our baby would be a boy, and there, writhing about on the paper sheet, was quite clearly a purple, mottled baby girl - already crying loudly and taking in gulps of air. Very much alive.

'Binit!' (Girl!) cried the midwives as J cut the cord and they passed her to me to hold.

11.45pm.

I looked at J as he kissed me, remembering what he'd said on our way to the hospital that afternoon. 'You know Luce, that if it's a girl, one day she might have a husband. It's a really scary thought.'

'Now you know what I've felt about our boys and potential women', I laughed.

The obstetrician came screeching in to see us all there on the bed and aplogised for missing it. 'Mabrook! (congratluations) I wish all my clients were like you, ' he laughed as he hugged me, 'I'd have no job!'

'What will you call her?' asked the midwife. We were friends again after the little storm that had produced our baby girl without any intervention.

Petra. We sounded it out for the first time. A name we both loved as much. Meaning rock. The feminine of Peter. And of course that wonderful place.

As J.W. Burgon wrote in 1845
'…match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose-red city half as old as time.'

And we stayed in that little room on the hot summer night, not wanting to burst the bubble, as Petra snuffled and spluttered through her first minutes, staring and marvelling at the perfection of the ordinary miracle. Older than the rose-red city; as old as time itself.

Morning birdsong and the waft of damp jasmine

I open one eye and see the silhouette of the Lozenge beside me in the bed. Petra the pea - now 8 weeks old - lies between us, snuffling and wriggling and pawing her face impatiently with a tiny hand. The Lozenge moves his shaggy head closer to ours as he squints through the half light. 'I can see the bird that is making the funny weaaaa! weeaaa! noise. Look it'th that one there!' I crane my neck sleepily around to see out of the window.  Our surround sound is the morning cacophony of bird song from the tall trees surrounding our cool house, providing us shade in the warm afternoons and uplifting chirrups at 6am. A pigeon roo-coos. 'Mummy the pigeons you get here are not the same as the oneth in London are they?' the Lozenge asks. 'They have an orange rim around their eye and these ones jutht black? ' I mulled over his question with one arm on a cool sheet; the other under two of our three small people as J and Rashimi organise breakfast in the kitchen. I feel as though we are cocooned in a feathered nest. The night before we'd made a map for the Lozenge's homework. 'Your child can draw a map of their journey to school' the teacher had written. So the Lozenge drew our garage, some trees, the tram gliding along on its cable, the golden semicircle of the dome of the rock, St George's cathedral and some horse droppings by the side of the road. We'd scooted through some horse poo the previous day. I enjoyed the detail and the over-scaled dimensions of the horse poo - almost the same size as the cathedral windows.

I look at his map which he clutches in his hand in the bed and I think of all the things he didn't draw on it. The multiple checkpoints that sprung up a couple of days ago: spikes along half of the road, cordons and cones and a groups of Israeli police with enormous automatic weapons. The horse droppings were left by the police horses now patrolling daily. The nocturnal soundscape, before the birdsong begins, is a circling chopper - growing fainter and then louder as it hovers around and around above our troubled little East Jerusalem district. I wonder, when we no longer live here, if the Pea will be able to sleep without the sound of a helicopter and screaming and wailing sirens which pierce our every night.

Our soft bubble of mallowy life with a new baby - focusing on the basic early requirements of sleeping and feeding and shushing and cooing, as we slowly get to know each other through smiles and songs accompanied by the constant patter and regular shriek of the dwarves - is a million miles from the stormy sea on which our bubble rests. It's strange how you can live in a place where you hear and smell and sense the violence underneath, but never really see it or witness it first hand. 7 Israelis have been stabbed in the last few weeks, and many, many Palestinians killed in demonstrations, and shootings since the summer. The fear on both sides hovers like the helicopter at fever pitch - the Israelis for fear of being stabbed or rammed by a car; the Palestinians from being shot by over zealous Israeli police or soldiers. And the Palestine penitentiary -- their very own country which neither truly exists yet from which they have no escape -- becomes an even higher security jail with checks and blocks restricting their movement and increasing their daily struggle. Life is hell for Palestinians right now. Morale is low. And we live in the centre of it all, unable to change a thing. We walk the streets and chat to our local friends, comiserating and reassuring them we feel it for them. 'Umm Petraaaa!' calls the man from the dry cleaning shop near our house. 'Keyf al baby? Keyf bintik?' (how's the baby? how's your girl?) We smile and wave at those we know. But we can't change a thing for them.

Though we don't feel afraid for ourselves. The Lozenge confided in me the other day: 'Mummy, we learned at school that when the alarm goes and the light flahses, it's 'CODE RED' and it means robbers might be trying to get in, so we go into the underground bunker.' While I'm grateful the school take security seriously, I don't feel we are at risk in any way. But if I looked obviously Jewish or obviously Arab, I would not feel like this. And I would be terrified for my children. Particularly teenaged boys who are often the focus of Israeli bullets. Live rounds are used at demonstrations. 3 Palestinian children have been killed like this recently.

A few days ago we had our first rain in months, and I wheeled the Pea around our neighbourhood to get a sense of things. A surveillance balloon hovered, a white  bubble against the unusually grey sky - keeping tabs on our Arab neighbourhood and those in the old city. I smelt a waft of damp Jasmine as I struggled to push the pram over potholes and piles of uncollected trash and up and down from high pavements; meandering around an unearthed tree root in the middle of one. But for us, these really are our only obstacles here. It was October 6th, and the Lozenge's 6th birthday. Also the day of the funeral of the 13 year old boy who was shot by the IDF, still wearing his school uniform as he walked home from school past a demonstration of fellow Palestinians. The IDF were using live rounds of bullets to defend themselves from the stones. Can you imagine if police and soldiers used life bullets to quell demonstrations or uprisings in Europe? 'A mistake' they say. The boy was killed just around the corner from the Holy Family hospital where Petra was safely delievered into my arms.

I met a Palestinian friend and we talked.

She explained she can no longer visit her parents who are in their 70s and need her help, becuase they live in the Old City which that week Palestinians had been blocked from entering. Most Palestinians we meet say they can never remember things being so bad they are forbidden to enter the Old City. 'It is becoming like Hebron now,' she lamented.

It feels like civil war, really. In a recent trip to the market an Israeli shopkeeper spat when I spoke in Arabic, mistaking him for an Arab. 'Yeeeuch. Arabic - Yeeeuch!' He flobbed on the ground and it landed near my feet. I put down the bunch of parsley I was about to buy from his stall, and wheeled the buggy on. Arabs I talked to in Wadi Jowz below our house said things have never felt so bad, and the killing so arbitrary yet so targetted by one for 'the other'.

The damp jasmine leaves are a metaphor for Arab spirits these days.

Yet I lie with the Lozenge and the Pea this morning and listen to the duet rythms of their breathing. The Lozenge begins to hum 'Deck the Halls' under his breath (it's been Christmas here since May). And my mind retraces 8 weeks of the Pea's life from how it began so happily in Bethlehem on that hot summer night of August 17th.

Who needs Shawarma when you got Shamallow?

Bethlehem:

August olive groves,

paint on cold grey slabs of wall;

strong kicks from within.

Sabr

'Mummy, the thing ith. We are ready to meet the baby. But the baby ith just not ready to meet uth.' says Rashimi, looking puzzled.

The waiting game. 9 days late and Bunny Floppy Ears is evidently enjoying the complimentary womb service. I can even feel the impatience in all things dwarf-related. And St Grace is on tenterhooks. She keeps staring at me silently from doorways. So we keep ourselves busy. We wander down our local shopping street, Rashimi as spiderman, and both dwarfs riding scooters where we drop off a stopped clock and 2 dwarf watches for fixing. 'Besalameh' says the watchmaker, wishing us well for the birth of the baby and laughing that he of anyone knows about things being exactly on time, or late, in Palestine: clocks, watches, and also babies. And on we go to the fruit shop for some pineapples - also supposed to encourage labour. We come out with 4 pineapples which Mohammad warns us are gold plated in price these days; a handful of fresh ochre dates still on their branch, which he swears help babies arrive and gives us free, and a little bottle of oil with a mysterious name 'kaf marim.' I trust him that it's all I need to make the baby arrive and google it when I get back. 'Anastatica' or 'The rose of Jericho.' In for a penny...

According to the description I find online, the Virgin Mary blessed this plant during her flight from Nazareth. It represents new beginnings, hope and the resurrection. What more could I need?! And apparently also brings on labour, as a side note. I notice it's related to Castor oil plant and its roots look like a weird spider triffid. I quaff a few teaspoons of it, and hope for some effects soon. And maybe even a resurrection. It's 38 degrees and I'm starting to get some funny looks as I stagger on my long baby-inducing walks around this extraordinary city that you'd think had seen everything.

Somewhere between patience and hurry is a beautiful space called borrowed time. But it can grow in intensity and easily sway from beauty to anxiousness. It's getting later and later, and people are texting and asking more and more regularly, 'has it arrived yet?'  'Where is this elusive stork?' Well - we're the Arab world after all - that harried stork is probably busy delivering many, many, many other babies to other homes. 'Doeth the baby come out of your mouth?' muses Rashimi from the back of the car. 'Noooo, Washimi. It's attached to that string which is joined to Mummy's tummy button and it comes THWINGING out on that!' says the Lozenge.

Every day is an extra day of mooching about - dressing as pirates,

and staring at a ladybird so close the breath from their nostrils must cool her hot black spots.

The dwarves rag around the house interrupting me as I try and actually, maybe just this once, achieve something with this time, other than sitting tight allowing tiny internal hairs and toenails to grow, and more ounces to pad around a pair of tiny frog-like thighs. I don't feel that effort - so I belittle it. And I try and keep going with those other efforts that give you more satisfaction - for some reason. Because in school we weren't taught that having a baby was an achievement, and about the only one who ever says 'well done!' about things like that are your parents.

We traipse to the obstetrician to have a chat about induction. I get the feeling the medical bunch here love to throw drugs at a situation rather than waiting for nature. But I'm holding my nerve. Every time I call Dr Salameh he asks: 'Keyfik?' (How are you?). 'Hamel' (Pregnant) I reply. The joke has lasted for 3 weeks now. Lines of loaded August olive trees cast shadows against the grey slabs of cement wall separating the 'Wild West Bank' from Israel. A large sign explains to Israelis they are not allowed to enter. 'Do not cross to the other side of the wall' they threaten in white bold print. They might as well hang a sign saying: 'Danger of Death' like they do on a pylon. A hot and lazy looking IDF soldier lets us through the barrier and we pass a little green sign which says: 'To Bethlehem' and we weave around the wall which blocks the sun, with some nice graffiti plastered over with less thoughtful spray paint. The doc says he's cool with letting the baby take its time, and he won't fill me up with oxytocin provided the creature is still getting all it needs inside. I reckon it's getting so much - that's why it wants to stay there. Private party for one. Sharing is a total hassle. Maybe it knows that newborn baby-dom for me is about the scariest place there is - where I can never seem convince myself that I will go back to normal, and that I will manage to achieve a balance in life again. I wake at night and have to give a virtually physical push to dark clouds which loom head-wards as I feel around the wall in the darkness to offer milk to a wordless creature entirely dependent on me.

So that's why this borrowed time is so beautiful for me. And J feels it too - and it's like we're in this bubble together. Although this time, it will be all of our baby: Rashimi's and the Lozenge's - not just J's and mine.

Sabr is the Arabic for patience, endurance. The sabra is the prickly pear cactus which the Palestinians use as a symbol for everything they endure both in this land, and as a diaspora. So using a play on words with the notion of patience, and with the cactus' ability to stay alive with little water, it's become a symbol of fortitude and resistance too.

I feel it keenly as we enter the cool cube of the Beit Jala pork butcher. The young butcher, Rafa, greets us with a huge smile, opening up his metal fridge to reveal strings of dangling, shining sausages next to the stacks of ribs and bags of fillets. His customer base is dwindling as Christians leave the Arab world in droves. But pork is half the price of lamb, a third of the price of beef, so it's a hard-to-find bargain in this extortionate land. His family live in Canada now, but he is employing the 'sabr' as he keeps the Beit Jala pork business going. He rears his own pigs. And how we appreciate his fare. The smell of pork in his shop is so familiar, it seems unfamiliar in this faraway land with few porkatarians. The taste of the pork is better for it being hard to find. The mysterious spice he uses in his sausage mix is appreciated even by dwarves, not normally swayed from the well-trodden chipolata route.

In the afternoon we have an offer to accompany a wonderful Israeli academic around some Christian areas in Jerusalem's old city. The Armenian Patriarchate - a vital establishment for this plagued and highly talented community. The Armenians were apparently the first community to introduce printing, ceramics, girls schools and photography to this city. They were so sure of the importance of educating girls, we joked there might be a Matriarchate soon. The monk shows us around - explaining how they still shelter the descendants of Armenian refugees who arrived during the genocide in 1915 - where the Ottomans killed 1.5 million of them. The library looks quasi Art Deco and has some of the only copies of Armenian newspapers and other texts from the time of the genocide.

Cloistered near the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem's Old City, is the Syriac Orthodox church, San Marcos, where 'Abouna' 'our father' is praying in Aramaic for evening Vespers. We sit quietly in the pew while he chants peacefully. It is mesmerising - almost soporific after our hot walk, now sitting on the cool pew, my ankles lightly throbbing.

The tiny church has no statues - only icons. His words and his style of clothing unchanged for centuries, he is part of a tiny community here who are facing deep concerns about their fate. Not just here, where there aren't enough of them to keep procreating effectively; but also in Syria. A Syriac Orthodox bishop was kidnapped in 2013, and there are desperate stories coming out of Homs and Aleppo - two important bases for their community.

After he finishes his prayers he turns to talk to us. His long white beard another seeming relic from the past - our friend asked about Homs about Aleppo. 'I hear bad news.'

'Yes - we can just hope. We just...pray. We just know that our Lord is the saviour of all...We must trust in him'.

He raises hands and eyes heaven-wards.

He shakes his head, his eyes glisten. What must it be like to carry that around - in this enclave - with a dwindling population of Syriac Orthodox unable to help their communities within Syria? The terror. The loneliness.

Sabr. Patience. Sumud. Defiance. In his case I feel it is more defiance in the face of evil than anything else. And absolute trust and patience that one day good will prevail.

My week finishes with a discovery of an Israeli acupuncturist, trained in China, and based in Jerusalem's nature museum. I wander past rooms of stuffed birds, looking as turgid as my equally stuffed-looking pregnant ankles. I won't be missing these two trotters:

The nature museum is the kind of place where you might happen upon a dusty dinosaur egg. Natan Natan's practise occupies 2 small rooms within the building, and after he gently applies some needles to my legs, hands and forehead, I lie there in the dark for 45 minutes: celtic music drifting from some speakers on the plain wall. No noise from the dwarves safely at home dressed as pirates making a catapult from a springy lime tree. A good place to be. Even if it does nothing to bring this baby on. The borrowed time feels so peaceful and so wonderful, that when the baby finally arrives, bringing with it much more, we'll realise how much we had before anyway. Sabr. No hurry. No rush.

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.