The Move

The day had finally arrived for my family to move into our new home. There were still many jobs to be completed on the house but it was liveable and most importantly, we had our own toilet and kitchen. The cement walls, doors and window frames needed painting and the kitchen and main lounge room were open to the elements of rain, wind and snow because the carpenter from the city of Hama was late delivering our specially designed doors.
Whenever a trades person worked on our home we were contracted to provide them with one main meal a day. I couldn't manage to cook for five to ten men on my one gas stove, so we provided them with takeaway food which included chicken, kebabs, hummus and salads.
We employed tilers from a nearby mountain village and they stayed with us whilst they completed the bathrooms. The painters were using oil based paint and we had to keep moving from room to room with our bedding etc. until they completed the ceilings and walls.
Unfortunately the carpenters from Hama had difficulty finishing the main doors so I used to cook in the kitchen during the winter wearing a beanie and scarf and dodging the snow that used to blow in with the westerly winds.
I moved from living in one room to ten, plus two bathrooms. We furnished one lounge room, a dining room and two bedrooms. Two sections of the lounge room were decorated with traditional Arabic floor seating. A multicoloured velvet couch with two matching chairs filled the remaining space. We used our lounge room for greeting visitors and it was also our bedroom and dining room. It was the warmest room in winter and the coolest in summer. The rest of the house was gradually furnished but Yasmin and Azzam were more than happy to use the other rooms as their personal play area.
During the summer we would block the entrances to the front two rooms and fill them with about fifteen centimetres of water. The children used to joyfully slide on their bellies from one room to another.
It was a huge chore but good exercise when I cleaned the floors by using a hose to water them and then a messarhah (a rubber implement similar to a window cleaner) to push the water into the drains. The floors were made from marble tiles with each one a masterpiece of natural beauty.
I used to cook for hours each day. Traditional Arabic food needed much time and patience to make.
A chicken was slaughtered on the day it was bought and I would gut it and take out the liver and giblets. The giblets were then cut in half and the feed that the chicken had been eating that day was removed. The undigested grains would still be warm. The fish were bought from fish farms and Fawaz brought them home already scaled and cleaned but they would still manage to wiggle and scare me, especially when they would jump from their container and onto the floor. I intensely disliked cutting off their heads. Fresh meat was hung from hooks in small shops and cut according to ones order. Minced meat was ground in front of the customer.
Life revolved around food and the one important meal of the day. The main meal was served between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, after which it was time for a nap. In summer the shops closed their doors at one and reopened at five. During winter they closed earlier but didn't reopen because of the cold and snow.
The summer temperature would be a constant 40C or more in the day and cool down at night. We used to take our afternoon nap on the bare tiled floor in front of the door to collect any small breeze. In Australia one could have all four seasons in one day. The blustery southerly winds would blow in from the Antarctic and change the searing heat into cool rain and sometimes hail and as quick as the storm would arrive it would depart. In Skelbieh the hot weather was constant and long. The sky was invariably blue and I could always expect the overwhelming heat of the afternoons.

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