True Adventures of a Part Time Writer. The Sea of Galilee.

I sat here, at this table, in a state of slight disbelief. In the distance was the Sea of Galilee, the town I was in was Roman, and the restaurant had been built in a beautiful black and yellow stone Ottoman mansion.

Where was I?

The view south from the restaurant is like this, five miles of Roman temples, theatres, stores, and baths. In the bright November sun (yes, November) lizards sunbathed on blocks of stone, then sprinted away if you came too near, legs lifted high on each side.

The place is called Um Qais. It's in northern Jordan, the slice of pale water in the distance is the Sea of Galilee, now in Israel. The nearer hills are in Syria and Palestine, and the valley is that of the river Jordan.

The Roman town was called Gadara, most of it is now buried beneath olive groves, but it was once part of the Decapolis, the network of cities that ruled the area. It is the site of a biblical story about a herd of swine being chased into the water. When I was there it was also the site of an owl trying to sleep in a tree and a flock of sparrows determined not to let it.

The Ottoman village dates to when the Turks were in charge, but they left long ago, when their empire fell in upon itself. Local farmers took it over, but they too have gone.

The restaurant serves beautiful lamb stews, to the sound of haunting Lebanese guitar music. The day I was there, though, there were two other noises. The first was a weird trilling, like distant birds. I looked everywhere for them, until I spotted them high over head. Arrow head formations of broad winged, long legged cranes, migrating from the Russian Steppe to Africa for the winter.

The other noise was more distant, and more sinister. The muffled thump of artillery in Syria. Damascus is only just beyond the first range of hills, the infamous Golan heights. The whole area is scarred by millennia of wars. In the springtime the hillside is a riot of wildflowers, and filled with exiled Palestinians who throng there to see where they once lived.

There are stories everywhere, and some places few of them are happy. All we strive for is an end to this one, and as soon as possible.

Procrastination techniques, exercise, and how to work out what book to read next.

Not.

Doing.

Enough.

Writing.

That was the unspoken resolution. Get more writing done. Finish The Wills Tower, and move on to rewriting Levels 4. The good news is that I've printed out the first draft of Levels 4 in small writing on A3 paper. The whole thing is only 20 double page spreads, for me to scribble over and highlight. I particularly need to find where add some Great Gatsby, and some violence.

And I will do all that, and more, once I get started. Unfortunately I'm still loving the Vulture a bit too much. This is a chart that tells you what YA book you should read. Genius.

You can find it HERE, courtesy of the Vulture.

I'm not going to read the book, of course. I'm going to get on my new exercise routine, then get that final Wills Tower chapter done. The exercise involves walking up the steps to Jabal Webdei, walking down then back up again. Kittens skitter around my feet and from time to time the mosque drowns out my audio book. Got to get fit before Christmas...

No Books, No Stories. Real Life.

This blog is about fiction, writing it, reading it, and things that contribute to it. Real life doesn't often intrude here, and my real life never does.

But this post is an exception. Today, making up stories about King Arthur paled in comparison with the story of my working day.

 In my real life, my real job, for the last six months, I've been working on projects involving Syrian refugees in Jordan. Specifically, I've been organising programmes to deliver English training in the Zataari and EJC refugee camps.

I've visited them both.

I've travelled around a fair bit, I've been to thirty or so countries, but these are, hands down, the most dreadful places I've been. Before the war I visited Syria. Damascus was one of the most vibrant, fun, historical cities I knew. The people there had dynamic, comfortable lives.

The change they have experienced, and the violence that preceded it, have to be among the most horrible things that can happen to anybody.

They live in tents in the middle of the desert, miles from anyway. Everywhere they move they are surrounded by clouds of dust, though they can only really move in the daytime. At night it's too dangerous.

There are schools for the children, but not enough spaces in them, and even if they were many of the children are too busy to go to school. They need to bustle from place to place in the camp, queuing up for hours for bread, shoes, mattresses, whatever they hear is on offer. Some of it  they keep, some of it  they try and sell.

Today, for the first time in my life, I was in a traffic jam of wheelbarrows. Wheelbarrows are the commercial vehicle of choice in Zaatari camp. They are pushed by small boys, rented by the hour, to haul rice, bread, bricks, blankets, from one place to another. Don't get me wrong. The boys are laughing and shouting. But they should be at school.

Zaatari is a phenomenon. It is populated by 150,000 people who have had their homes torn from them. Everybody has family who have died. But life goes on. The resourcefulness is astonishing. Tents and caravans are converted into shops and businesses. I saw tailors, barbers, an internet cafe, shaorma restaurants, bakers and shops selling fruit and vegetables. There is a place you can rent wedding dresses for heaven's sake.

There are places, run by amazing teachers, themselves refugees, that are working with kids who have missed two years of school, so they can join the camp schools and not be in a class with children  3 years younger, then drop out. I'm planning training for these teachers, so they can better help the kids, and so that they feel like professionals, though they teach in a tent, coated with dust.

I've placed a teacher in a camp. She travels an hour to get there and she teaches refugees how to introduce themselves, how to fill in forms, and how to explain their wishes and dreams. Tiny children sneak into the back of the classroom, covered in dust, and stare at her goggle eyed. She treats them all with kindness and smiles. The adults get a sense of progression, that today, a little bit, was a good day. But she's just one teacher, and there are two million refugees.

And of course, the camps are only the thin end of the wedge. Jordan, a poor and tiny country, has taken half a million refugees into its towns and cities, the equivalent of Canada moving to America. They deal with it with astonishing sympathy, as desperate Syrians drive up rents and food prices, use scarce water and electricity, work for less than they will, and mean teachers work double shifts to deal with all the new pupils.

I don't know if you are the kind of person who gives to charity, who contributed to the Tsunami response. I don't know if you are distracted by the war rhetoric. I don't know if you think that food and water are most important, or that education and security are more so. Probably you're tired of  the constant influx of news of suffering.

But still, I would urge you to think about it a little, and wonder if you can contribute a little. There are a horde of organisations that are labouring to try and improve conditions in the camps and in Jordan. They focus on sanitation, or child brides, on education, or counselling. I won't recommend one to you, though if you email me a question, I'm happy to answer.

All I would say is think about the children, who are forgetting the street they came from, who are adapting to life in a hut, who still laugh, and jostle to play in the playgrounds and football pitches established by aid agencies. Day by day, as they don't go to school, their future shrinks, and is being curved and warped by the decisions of the powerful and the mad.

Do what works for you.