February 1st - Happy Eid
Clowning and boomchucking at the Eid show and rehearsals with Happy Family; some of their plans for the future.
Lack of electricity was delaying the start of the Eid show at the Happy Family base so I climbed up on my stilts and we started clowning and boomchucking. The kids and the Happy Family lads all shout it at us when we arrive now. I nicked Luis’s hat and, as I was posing and strutting about with it and he was finding a child to put on his shoulders to try and reach it, the power came back on, the music burst out and the kids jumped up and danced with us.
Not surprisingly, HF thinks a generator is the top item on the kit wish list. The boys from the Kurdish house started break dancing and took turns wearing the Sylvester and Tweetie-pie costumes, performing for the smaller kids. It was wicked seeing them using their creativity, playing, doing something to make other children happy. I’m hoping we can get them on stage during the show at the National Theatre. Applause must be life changing when you’ve been a drug addicted street beggar refused by the whole world.
Laith was already there when we arrived at 11 to practise. The other boys didn’t arrive till later. He was looking a bit sad, so I put my hands out, palm up. His eyes lit up and we played a couple of rounds of the counting game, which made me wonder what it must be like for them, to move from the street into a house. Food tastes different, wilder and sweeter, when you weren’t certain there would be any.
Whatever you find or get given is something special, something you never could’ve bought or made for yourself, the feast of kings and queens, but the ground is still hard and there’s no one to cuddle you before you go to bed on it, unless some semi-stranger you’ve befriended from one of the hotels comes past to give you one.
There’s only the glue to soften things, to make them look funny and feel less harsh, and meeting people who come from strange countries you’ve never heard of, who look strange and sound strange and teach you bits of English, or play games with you, and give you blankets and jumpers when you’re cold, and the kind of excitement that goes along with the exhaustion of living on your wits and knowing that what you need will come along, or that it won’t but you’ll tell yourself you don’t need the things you didn’t get, like warmth or medical care or a hug, that the things you did get mattered more.
Glamour attaches to the violence and drugs of the gang members, the appearance of power that comes with their weapons. Mortadha and Akan went back to the street and the gang and both decided after a couple of days that they wanted to go back to the orphanage, but Akan was scared out of it when one of them showed him a big knife and gestured, pulling it across his throat as a threat.
I remember myself moving into a house after months of living outside and finding it weird, too small, too square, too restrictive; I thought I’d never see anyone anymore because there was a closed door in front of me.
Uzma and I have been adopted by Safa’s sisters. Mum cooked us breakfast when we got there and Damia and Mariam whisked us off for beauty treatments, clearly the most important preparation for the show. I’m all for mutual grooming, the more so if accompanied by gossip and kids as cute as Ayu, Noor and Abdullah, but had to escape having my eyebrows ripped out of my head by pleading the needed to rehearse my dance.
For those who are interested in such things, Iraqi women use a length of cotton, one end held between the teeth, the other end in one hand, with a loop in between, that’s pulled tight around the offending hair to wrench it out of the skin. For non-facial areas they use an abrasive sugar solution.
Damia’s a dress maker. She wants to find a husband but she’s so shy she won’t even go out and talk to the Happy Family boys when they come to the house. She only knows their names. Mariam is married to one of Safa’s brothers. There seem to be dozens of brothers and I can’t keep track, but her first baby is Abdullah, a wide eyed sweetheart of six months. She parked him on the windowsill, legs out in the sunshine, one either side of the window bar, fixed in place with her headscarf so he could wriggle but not fall. I taught Mama to juggle scarves, yellow, pink and blue, the only thing I can juggle, after Peat taught me how in the morning.
As for the show, the dance was a bit shaky, because Uzma and I don’t know it very well, but the kids who go there a lot know the song that goes with it off by heart and sing it loudly. There’s a bit which I can’t really describe by e mail that needs an “Oy” so we imported one. Raed’s keen as long as it means he gets to re-record the song. He’s the sound engineer, co-founder of the group along with Safa and completely obsessed with recording and playing music.
He’s also taken the dubious decision to idolise Peat and wants to be just like him. He comes to our apartment to bring grapes and kiwis for Peat, talks endlessly about him and has adopted him as a brother. He runs a music shop full of bootleg CDs – the only kind you get here – of film soundtracks, Arabic singers, western boy bands, Britney and Britney clones and eighties classics.
He showed us the drawing of their plans for the garden. They want to turn the waste ground part at the end into a play space, plus a library and dressing room. The existing dressing room is the uncovered concrete space adjacent to the toilet. As well they want to extend the stage and cover it because it’s too small for the dance on: your fingers hit the wall when you spin with your arms out. The games were cut short by rain and in the summer it’s too hot for the kids without shade, so they’re planning a cover for the garden as well.
It was meant to be a day off, because there hadn’t been one for about a hundred years, but there was a women’s delegation over with good fundraising contacts so we agreed to do the show in the hope it will get the group some financial support for their plans. Someone had sent 50 quid via Peat for them. Safa got upset. He thought it was Peat’s money he was giving them, said we don’t do this for money.. It took ages to explain, and when we managed it they were really touched, that someone would really send money for something and someone they’d never met, just because they thought it was a good project.
I had to teach Mustafa a new word – ‘poser’. He’s always checking himself out in the mirror, wetting his curls, making sure they’re in the right place, making sure he’s still tall and dark and handsome and elegant. He’s a professional singer and dancer, so we got him to show us some folk dances. The National Theatre repairs are finished and the date for the Big Show is set, February 25th at 11am.
There’s still no sign of Esam, no word from the Americans about where they’re holding him or why. Amanj’s brother has also disappeared. No one seems to know whether he was arrested, kidnapped or something else.
Not surprisingly, HF thinks a generator is the top item on the kit wish list. The boys from the Kurdish house started break dancing and took turns wearing the Sylvester and Tweetie-pie costumes, performing for the smaller kids. It was wicked seeing them using their creativity, playing, doing something to make other children happy. I’m hoping we can get them on stage during the show at the National Theatre. Applause must be life changing when you’ve been a drug addicted street beggar refused by the whole world.
Laith was already there when we arrived at 11 to practise. The other boys didn’t arrive till later. He was looking a bit sad, so I put my hands out, palm up. His eyes lit up and we played a couple of rounds of the counting game, which made me wonder what it must be like for them, to move from the street into a house. Food tastes different, wilder and sweeter, when you weren’t certain there would be any.
Whatever you find or get given is something special, something you never could’ve bought or made for yourself, the feast of kings and queens, but the ground is still hard and there’s no one to cuddle you before you go to bed on it, unless some semi-stranger you’ve befriended from one of the hotels comes past to give you one.
There’s only the glue to soften things, to make them look funny and feel less harsh, and meeting people who come from strange countries you’ve never heard of, who look strange and sound strange and teach you bits of English, or play games with you, and give you blankets and jumpers when you’re cold, and the kind of excitement that goes along with the exhaustion of living on your wits and knowing that what you need will come along, or that it won’t but you’ll tell yourself you don’t need the things you didn’t get, like warmth or medical care or a hug, that the things you did get mattered more.
Glamour attaches to the violence and drugs of the gang members, the appearance of power that comes with their weapons. Mortadha and Akan went back to the street and the gang and both decided after a couple of days that they wanted to go back to the orphanage, but Akan was scared out of it when one of them showed him a big knife and gestured, pulling it across his throat as a threat.
I remember myself moving into a house after months of living outside and finding it weird, too small, too square, too restrictive; I thought I’d never see anyone anymore because there was a closed door in front of me.
Uzma and I have been adopted by Safa’s sisters. Mum cooked us breakfast when we got there and Damia and Mariam whisked us off for beauty treatments, clearly the most important preparation for the show. I’m all for mutual grooming, the more so if accompanied by gossip and kids as cute as Ayu, Noor and Abdullah, but had to escape having my eyebrows ripped out of my head by pleading the needed to rehearse my dance.
For those who are interested in such things, Iraqi women use a length of cotton, one end held between the teeth, the other end in one hand, with a loop in between, that’s pulled tight around the offending hair to wrench it out of the skin. For non-facial areas they use an abrasive sugar solution.
Damia’s a dress maker. She wants to find a husband but she’s so shy she won’t even go out and talk to the Happy Family boys when they come to the house. She only knows their names. Mariam is married to one of Safa’s brothers. There seem to be dozens of brothers and I can’t keep track, but her first baby is Abdullah, a wide eyed sweetheart of six months. She parked him on the windowsill, legs out in the sunshine, one either side of the window bar, fixed in place with her headscarf so he could wriggle but not fall. I taught Mama to juggle scarves, yellow, pink and blue, the only thing I can juggle, after Peat taught me how in the morning.
As for the show, the dance was a bit shaky, because Uzma and I don’t know it very well, but the kids who go there a lot know the song that goes with it off by heart and sing it loudly. There’s a bit which I can’t really describe by e mail that needs an “Oy” so we imported one. Raed’s keen as long as it means he gets to re-record the song. He’s the sound engineer, co-founder of the group along with Safa and completely obsessed with recording and playing music.
He’s also taken the dubious decision to idolise Peat and wants to be just like him. He comes to our apartment to bring grapes and kiwis for Peat, talks endlessly about him and has adopted him as a brother. He runs a music shop full of bootleg CDs – the only kind you get here – of film soundtracks, Arabic singers, western boy bands, Britney and Britney clones and eighties classics.
He showed us the drawing of their plans for the garden. They want to turn the waste ground part at the end into a play space, plus a library and dressing room. The existing dressing room is the uncovered concrete space adjacent to the toilet. As well they want to extend the stage and cover it because it’s too small for the dance on: your fingers hit the wall when you spin with your arms out. The games were cut short by rain and in the summer it’s too hot for the kids without shade, so they’re planning a cover for the garden as well.
It was meant to be a day off, because there hadn’t been one for about a hundred years, but there was a women’s delegation over with good fundraising contacts so we agreed to do the show in the hope it will get the group some financial support for their plans. Someone had sent 50 quid via Peat for them. Safa got upset. He thought it was Peat’s money he was giving them, said we don’t do this for money.. It took ages to explain, and when we managed it they were really touched, that someone would really send money for something and someone they’d never met, just because they thought it was a good project.
I had to teach Mustafa a new word – ‘poser’. He’s always checking himself out in the mirror, wetting his curls, making sure they’re in the right place, making sure he’s still tall and dark and handsome and elegant. He’s a professional singer and dancer, so we got him to show us some folk dances. The National Theatre repairs are finished and the date for the Big Show is set, February 25th at 11am.
There’s still no sign of Esam, no word from the Americans about where they’re holding him or why. Amanj’s brother has also disappeared. No one seems to know whether he was arrested, kidnapped or something else.