The Uninvited

I met my first Syrian last week. Amer (note to self it's pronounced Amir) came to a class for immigrants to learn English at The Link in my home town.  He came with his family: wife, little daughter, mother and brother. Amer is intelligent and eager to understand and contribute to the country that has welcomed them.  I am interested to learn their story, but for now all I know is that they came via Lebanon.

Inspired by the promise of this new friendship I bought Khaled Hosseini's book, Sea Prayer. It is hard to believe that it was three years this month that the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach safety, was splashed in all its raw horror across our newspapers. He would have been six now, the age of my eldest grandchild. Little Alan's limp body, his too short life and his cruel death accosted our hearts and briefly challenged us all to do something about Syria. At least to pray.

Alan Kurdi

Hosseini did more than that. He penned this beautiful tribute to a child he would never meet and the city of Homs which is not his own.  The voice is that of a father speaking to his son about the country of his birth, the beauty of the landscape and the bustle of the Old City: the souk, mosque, church and Old Town Square. He records the sounds of his grandmother's clanking pot, the bleating of goats and the smell of fried kibbeh.  He is trying to fix memories in the mind of a child who may never return for they are about to embark on that most dangerous of journeys, the flight to freedom.

The book's poetry floats on pages awash with beautiful illustrations. Dan Williams' water colours capture the essence of Syria in greens, golds and warm ochres. A mother and child walk through a field 'blown through with wild flowers' where poppies spill down the page in prophetic poignancy.  The political changes from protest through siege to war are chronicled in colour, or lack of it. Blues and greens bleach to inky hues and then to black, white and smoky grey as the city burns.

A bomb crater becomes a swimming pool and still the children play. The rubble is their schoolroom and they learn that dark blood is better than bright.

One double page needs no words at all. A huddled mass of humanity trudges wearily from bottom left to top right - sepia toned men, women, children and the elderly broken and beaten by despair. Those who bear witness to many deaths are as dead on the inside as those who die.

Now the father waits with his child. Hell and the devil are behind them and they face the cold waters of the deep blue sea. 'Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen,' says the father, repeating the age-old lie of parents who hope against hope that the world will be kind.  The father prays that the sea will know and care how precious is the cargo as they embark on their last voyage.  They are at its mercy. The colours are stormy black and fomenting ocean green. Inshallah.

In another beautiful book dabbling in the water theme, Mary Oliver writes about teaching children:

'Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent beautiful blossoms.'  (Upstream)

It is too late, sadly, for little Alan Kurdi and the thousands of other innocent children who have perished since 2015, but we who remain can and must work and pray for peaceful places where our little ones can flourish.

Heart's Skin

I have been a parent for thirty-four years and I am the grandmother of seven darlings but this week, for the first time, I had a little one in bed with me all night.

When the man and I were getting engaged someone gave us a piece of advice: 'Never allow your children to sleep between you in the bed.' That seemed ok to us and was consistent with the good parenting practices of our peers. In fact, we didn't even have our babies in the room with us.  They slept next door in a cosy smaller room where I went to feed. I breastfed them all for a year and so have no regrets about bonding, but the received wisdom now is that babies need to be close - all the time. This looks as exhausting as it sounds. My daughters carry their babies next to their bodies and sacrifice their sleep to reassure them during the night.

The man is away in Pakistan, Bethany was camping with her two eldest in a pod at Castlewellan lake so I agreed to have her eighteen-month-old baby overnight.  Jasper Nathanael is grandchild #5. In the daylight hours he is the cutest, sweetest little boy, trotting along behind his big brother and sister, joining in their mischief: climbing trees, exploring woodlands and wetlands, jumping in puddles, jumping in the sea and happily playing in all kinds of muck. He is joyful child with a sunny disposition and an inscrutable smile. When he turns his brown eyes on me, my heart melts.

Come the midnight hour, however, he turns into a werewolf.  When you put him down to sleep he goes from nought to distraught in seconds, howling to the moon like one of the abandoned infants of Shakespeare and so many fairy tales. His heart-rending wail is impossible to ignore. I tried sitting in the dark patting his back until the sobs settled and the breathing was steady, but as soon as I stood up to sneak out of the room he lifted his strawberry blonde curls and fixed me with a look that said, 'Don't you dare!'

So I brought little Jasper into bed with me, where he slept soundly till morning. I did not! He is a wriggler. He stays still for a few minutes and then lifts his whole body and hurls himself through ninety degrees to lie at right angles, his head hanging dangerously close to the edge of the bed. I dozed fitfully, my hand clutching his sleep suit to save him from falling.  The sleep deprivation was worth it, however; for one night only, I might add! It was a joy to cuddle my beautiful boy because he is in my heart.

In the car the next day I listened to Poetry Please on Radio 4. Viral poet, Hollie McNish, had selected her favourite poems and I wept as I listened to this one by Hull great grandmother, Norah Hanson:

 

Grafters

 

They come into your life, naked,

vulnerable, a mighty force you

have no defence against. They

cry you to attention, graft their

desires on your heart, take sleep

and reason from you and cast

a spell on you which you can't

or won't break.

 

They strengthen their hold with

every passing year, grafting their

joys and sorrows onto the throbbing

pulse of your life, and their children,

and their children, graft on the grafts

of generations until your heart's skin

is patched and stretched and aching

with the love and hurt they bring you.

This week I also heard the fabulous Aslan singing, Crazy World, and I cried some more:

'How can I protect you in this crazy world?

It's all right, it's all right.'

A Different Kind of Psalty

It was Christmas morning in Nature’s Valley in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The rain poured down as we walked to the community hall nestling in the trees. It was 7 am and we wanted to make it to the early church service delivered in both English and Afrikaans. We sang alternate verses of carols and I did my best using A level German pronunciation – not quite right, but as close as I could manage: ‘Ons buig in blye aanbidding’ (O come let us adore him) ‘Verlosser en Heer!’ I held my newest grandson, four-month-old Teddy, in my arms and sang praise for new birth and hope. Alternate verses in different languages is just about right for him, with an Irish mother and an Afrikaans father. Big boetie, Sebastian (3), is fluent in both and, recognising the sense of worship and thankfulness, he asked if this was 'a different kind of Psalty'.

Willem, Maria and Sebastian

The American singing songbook accompanied us and our four children when we lived in Zimbabwe and travelled to South Africa in the school holidays. On one occasion we drove the twenty-four hour journey from Bulawayo to Cape Town, where my daughter now lives, and it is wonderful to hear the old songs again and see the same calming effect on my grandchildren.
Nature’s Valley is an absolutely beautiful place. A steep road descends through the mountain into lush forest floor dotted with holiday homes surrounded by indigenous plants. It is a conservation area on the edge of the Tsitsikamma National Park housing bush buck and leopard in bountiful Fynbos undergrowth. Tsitsikamma is a Khoisan word meaning 'place of much water' and although it was not safe to dip in the churning ocean, I loved swimming in the brackish waters of the lagoon, like bathing in cold tea - the amber colour drawn from the roots and minerals in the surrounding hills. We stayed there for two weeks with my son-in-law’s family – a generous, warm-hearted house party with at least 16 people staying and many more stopping by on their way through. The heart of the house is the stoep, where people gather for coffee and rusks in the early morning, collapse after a swim or a sup (stand-up paddle board) and congregate in the evening for G&Ts, good conversation and the inevitable braai or potjie. There we stood breathless and watched as a pair of magnificent green loeries swooped down and perched on the wooden rail with a surprising flash of vermillion.

South African loerie

The stoep is the place of stories: how many dolphins, how strong the current or how long the cycle ride. Everyone brings their own flavour to the feast: the surgeon who told of how no one is allowed so much as a whisper while the heart patient is under the knife; the farmer’s brother who described a bush fire which destroyed acres of Knysna; the Polish girl who raved about boiled cabbage and the accountant who caught someone fiddling the books. We laughed together and shared each other’s lives, but the most special moments were when we stood together holding hands and gave thanks before we ate: for holidays, for friends, for food and for family.

Teddy bear

It behoves travellers to educate themselves about the places they visit. While the man took himself on The Great Trek Uncut, I have been on A Passage to Africa with George Alagiah, in a personal intimate portrait of the continent during his time as a foreign correspondent with the BBC. He traces its wars and sorrows in the countries where he worked, from the new dawn when Ghana first achieved independence to the more recent hopes for a rainbow nation in South Africa. He is unwavering in his harsh judgement of both the black leaders who disappointed their people and the white rulers who failed to accept personal responsibility for their blindness and greed. He describes Africa as a blighted continent but also imagines how the knarled and twisted baobab trees of Zimbabwe have seen it all and do not despair because no condition is permanent and Africa is stronger than she looks. Nkosi sikele Africa.
Before leaving Africa, we returned for a few days to the windy city. We traversed the southern tip of the continent along the Voortrekker Road through the mountains with their haunches bent together like huge giants huddled in a rugby scrum. We visited a wine farm at Boschendal where I found this amazing metal wire sculpture of Ouma Sarah, sitting on the vertebrae of a whale and musing on the lives of her offspring yet unborn. The book lying beside her is open at the following poem:

It's 3.23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do when the planet was plundered
what did you do when the earth was unravelling
surely you did something when the seasons started falling?
as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?
did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?
what did you do
once you knew?
(Drew Dellinger)

 

Ouma Sarah

Cape Town sits cradled where the mountains sweep down to the sea like our own beloved Mournes. The stark difference is that in Northern Ireland water is in plentiful supply. The Western Cape is in the grip of severe drought. My son-in-law is digging a dry toilet in his back garden because there is now no question of showers or flushing the loo. It is reckoned that Cape Town will finally run out of water by 12 April, already declared 'day zero' and will make history as the first modern metropolis to exhaust its clean water reserves. Very soon there will be one tap per five thousand people and my daughter will have to queue for her allocated 25 litres. ‘How will I carry it?’ she wailed on the phone. ‘On your head, of course,’ I replied. She is dreading the moment when nothing at all comes out of the taps. I am preparing the guest room!

Like Ouma Sarah, I am concerned about what we are doing with the world. These are, indeed, troubled times. Apparently Yeats’ poem The Second Coming has been quoted more in newspapers in the past twelve months than in the previous thirty years: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ The only antidote I know to the fear that this engenders is another wise man’s assertion that: ‘Jesus is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’ Or as Psalty sings,
‘Anytime I don’t know what to do, I will cast all my cares upon you.’