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11/11/2024

Today I’m thinking deeply today about those who lost their lives in conflicts both in our time and out of it.

In 2009, this month, I had to leave Afghanistan where the Lion and I had been living for almost 2 years because the Afghan security services had foiled a bomb plot. It would have gone off under our bedroom window.

‘Were you ever afraid?’ Is a question people ask in relation to Afghanistan. I wasn’t. But rather mortified than terrified - to leave my job and dear Afghan colleagues who shone so much light into my days, and to be leaving them all to face what we now know was to come.

In my early days in Kabul, my Grandfather died and in our production meeting a colleague sang a beautiful Islamic prayer. The room was totally quiet as everyone bowed their heads in my Grandfather’s memory. I remember imagining the same reception in my old office in Soho before I swapped my heels for a headscarf.

The laughter in our office, as and and and will vouch, was a constant, reverberating energy wave in our building.

We laughed when I mis-spelled the Afghan province of Kunduz in newly learnt Farsi and wrote ‘butt thief’, and we laughed when they said thank you for your nice telephone message it sounded like telephone ‘massage’ and we laughed when I introduced our editor, called Marta, , and they thought I was talking about a martyr.

I tried on a burkha for a long car journey and it was so short I looked like a jellyfish and even in the longest one in the shop, Anwar said ‘Lucy Jaan do you really think an Afghan lady would be seen out with those on her feet?’ pointing to my size 42 white Converse.

Today, we’re all spread like pomegranate seeds around the world.

How I cried as I the plane soared out of the city, the dusty mountains blanketed in cubic housing, and minarets pointing into the blue grey sky.

I’m not just thinking about our grandparents and WW2. I’m thinking about all those in countries of conflict today.

And feeling huge gratitude to the Afghan security guys who allowed me to be here today with Debbie dog on my foot, wearing her little red poppy on her collar.

01/11/2024

Hello everyone - looking for a Photographer/Videographer based in or near Idlib in Syria to help out on a project. Any thoughts gratefully received. 😊

25/10/2024

Nathan Coley created this installation which is in Regents Park for Frieze London. He was inspired to create this piece after seeing these words on the separation wall in Jerusalem. It spoke to me.

16/10/2024

Toward Peace

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Perhaps some part of me still believes
peace is a destination,
a place we arrive, ideally together.

I notice how shiny it is, this belief,
like a flower made of crystal,
beautiful but lifeless,

devoid of the dust and scruff
that come from living a real day.
Meanwhile, there is this invitation

to grow into peace the way real flowers grow -
from dirt into air. With blight
and drought, beetles and hail.

Meanwhile this invitation
to live in the tangle of fear and failure,
to be humbled by my own inner wars

and wonder how to find a living peace
right here, the peace that arrives
when we take just one more step through the mess

toward compassion and notice,
as our foot rises, our heart also rises
and in that lifted moment,

still scraping along in the dirt,
there is peace so real we become light,
become the momentum that is the change.

09/10/2024

I just read that Israel bombed the last functioning bakery in Northern Gaza. Bread is known as عيش ‘aish’: ‘life’s’ in some Arab countries. The staple diet. The sine qua non of survival.

I was reminded of a film and photography assignment where I was allowed access to the basics of the UNRWA food and health provision in Gaza a few years ago.

I have the David Bowie song ‘Where are we now?’ running on repeat in my head.

And where is this strong young man with floury eyebrows, and this bright eyed girl having her pulse checked? The smiling local genius who recycled car batteries in his back room, and the dignified line of new Mums with their babies?

Last week I viewed Gaza through my zoom lens from the Israeli border near the Kibbutzim that have been the centre of the world’s attention with names and faces and banners and billboards. And stories - so many stories.

Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know, you know
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s me
As long as there’s you

24/09/2024

I put on this t shirt for my run this morning for the first time since 2016, when I took part in the Bethlehem Marathon organised by Right for Movement.

As my feet crunched through golden leaves - Debbie the dog in perfect autumnal camouflage - I centred my thoughts on Bethlehem, where our third cub was born just over 9 years ago.

That not so little town - recorded in my muscle memories for ever as the place of physical endurance from childbirth to running races.

We used to visit the Palestinian obstetrician for check ups - a charming and funny chain smoker in his white coat. I’d asked for a water birth, and the doc almost fell off his chair with laughter, recomposing himself with a glass of water. ‘My dear, here in the West Bank we have barely enough water to put in this glass and you are asking for a bath of it in which to have your baby!?’

The cub almost arrived in the car park as we hadn’t predicted red traffic lights all the way in our 1am dash.

And there she was, Petra, wrapped in a home knit blanket provided by the Holy Family Hospital and lying in a bassinet next to the Palestinian new arrivals - somewhat larger and with significantly less head hair.

‘They are, each one different and they are all so beautiful,’ sighed the midwife.

Petra has travelled far and wide since her birth but those Palestinian 9 year olds can’t move. To visit a relation in another West Bank town, such as Nablus, Hebron or Jenin is virtually impossible. The check points, the settlers running amok burning olive groves, killing villagers, the IDF demolishing houses and shooting with impunity.

The separation wall blocks all movement for Palestinians, which was the motivation for the founders - to get men and women out and about running in the tiny space they had.

There was every age and shape - elderly ladies in their long traditional ‘thobes’ and walking sticks; wiry young men, young girls in immaculate makeup.

It was a beautiful atmosphere. One that I need to revisit in my mind to imagine things can improve.

As the Arabic expression goes: iom asal, iom basal. Days of honey days of onion.

‎ 🧅 يوم عسل 🍯 يوم بصل

Praying for some honey.

18/09/2024

In 2007 the lion and I began married life in Afghanistan. Here we are in our hammock in our garden in Share Naw (The ‘new town’ of Kabul and central district).

I worked in an office with about 20 Afghan colleagues making radio programmes and documentary film. I have never laughed as much a place of work. Everyone called each other Jaan (Dear) or Qandam (my sugar lump). Qand (the sugar lump in Farsi) is where we get our word candy.

We had a sign on our door saying ‘Women Working’ as this kind of work place for women was a then novelty after the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 and women were forbidden to work.

My female colleagues, Nadia and Farida begged me to start having children there in Afghanistan. ‘You can bring them - the chooch-e-pooch (little brood of children) to the office and we’ll look after them, Lucy Jaan.’

Love was in the air both at work and at home.

My new Mum-in-law sent me packets of dried mushrooms in the post, as she knew I was a funghi-phile and loving the damp, mushrooms did not favour arid Afghanistan. Or so I thought - until I travelled to the far north east province of Badakhshan where I found huge white ‘khaternak’ which I brought home to the Lion along with a lump of raw Lapis lazuli for our first wedding anniversary.

The lapis sits on our shelf in London. An emblem of that time, and love.

Since August 2021, I have been rendered wordless since the Taliban took control of the country once more. But now there are some more beautiful words which matter.

Since their first book of short fiction, My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, the Afghan Women’s Writing Group with the amazing have just published Dear Kabul - A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women’s Writing Group.

These words are fragments of our time, already history. These are the words we need to be reading. Buy both books, and give them to your friends and family.

‘My dear Kabul, give me your hand, put your head on my shoulder and don’t be afraid.’

21/08/2024

Optimism is perhaps my greatest weakness.

Was I not thinking when I booked a train journey for myself and 3 children, 2 guinea pigs, a dog, a snare drum, a set of bagpipes, a trumpet, 9 large bags, and clearly a whole load of hope in my heart…Even when the boards in the station flipped down: delayed, cancelled, terminates at Edinburgh…we hung in there.

We always get there in the end, I thought, after 2 decades of unhappy-sounding suitcase zips and always a wing and a prayer.

We shared our carriage with what felt like the entire Edinburgh festival, buffet car out of service and not even a bottle of Highland Spring for sale.

Now, my every badly-planned travel ergonomic comes with a ‘mantra of: ‘But Mummy, what could possibly go wrong?’

And then they take pictures of me with my phone in gargling fish pose when I fall asleep. 😵

12/08/2024

It’s so difficult to address the complexities of our times and our extraordinary island with children, even with a Week Junior in hand.
We watched this brilliant film by Ken Loach with the children and it showed so much more than can ever be told. I’d highly recommend for age 12 plus - along with so many of his others - Sorry We Missed You, Kes, Kathy Come Home, I, Daniel Blake. The cubs have been incredibly moved by them all - but you might need subtitles for Kes 😉

19/07/2024

The Lion 🦁had a bit of a weep when he unveiled his birthday present from me and the cubs. I don’t know if you agree, but childhood is like a constantly moving, shifting thing - like a sky or a sea - the colours, the shapes, the expressions constantly evolving.

There are times when I study one of their newly-awoken faces and wonder if I’d set a film camera I could have charted the changes during the night. As I could swear they looked different when they went to bed.

Though not a cub as such, our faithful Debbie the dog has entwined herself in our little family trajectory in 6 years. She swam away our Covid cares with us in Oman, neatly switching to grubby Camden streets and green parks full of squirrels on our return, and loyally shares long hauls, trains and epic car journeys through mountains and deserts with a regulatory excited wag at the end of it. The pet trajectory is never long enough - and I can almost feel her whiskers and breath on my cheek as I look at this image.

I am in a constant state of wonder and admiration at anyone who can draw or paint anything, let alone something that looks exactly like the ones you love. Since I cheat and use a beautiful piece of technology to film - some people simply reach for a charcoal or oil with a bare hand and off they go…

These will be treasured til we end our days. And who knows where they’ll hang beyond that? The adventures continue.

Thank you dearest friend for your art and fun and your love.

13/03/2024

Really honoured to work with this amazing organisation once again.

07/03/2024

My inimitable Mum Lavinia Gordon will play a 4 hour piano-thon this Saturday March 9th starting at 9am to raise money for an artist’s shelter in Gaza. There is just one concert grand piano in Gaza, which has miraculously survived many an ordeal including this latest, heartbreaking assault on humanity. This is tragically not the case for thousands of Gazans. But the sleek black Yamaha plays on, and Pal Music www.palmusic.org.uk and the Music Fund are raising money for an artists’ shelter to house the piano, and provide an oasis of hope for local musicians and children alike, to come and share and play music, providing light and solace at the darkest of times. A few of us will be chiming in while she has her breaks. This is hosted on Zoom by our exceptional Jazz teacher Joe Thompson http://www.joethompson.london who is a maestro and a true friend. Joe Thompson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Pianoathon
Time: Mar 9, 2024 09:00 AM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81554925556?pwd=MklCOEtwSkNGK1d3bnRBeHJ1bjFUUT09

Meeting ID: 815 5492 5556
Passcode: 617620

—

Proramme:

9am – Baroque and Roll while you nibble on your bacon roll

10am – Interlude of Scottish trad by Muriel Johnstone

10.15 – Then SHOW Me – songs from the shows

11am – Lucy Lyon playing Love Songs for Gaza

11.15 Make it or Fake it – Jazz and Things

12.00 Abdel Fater entertains (one of Mum’s asylum seeker English Language pupils)

12.15 Play it again Sam – A medley to include a duet version of chopsticks

Please give generously. Unfortunately, there is no payment link possible but payments can be made to their Charitable Trust Account:

Mr and Mrs A D Gordon

60-93-03

14052851

09/02/2024

‘My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things,’ wrote Maya Angelou in Letter to my Daughter.

And never have I been more struck by livers of life than on trips to Gعza over the years. Dina Mattar - the artist who painted this lovely picture which now hangs in our house in London - once told me that since she lived in a place where there was often war, she wanted to draw attention in her paintings to the joys and every day details of life. The lady in the market buying green almonds. Here she is surrounded by piles of them and its blossom. The yellow gets me every time.

Our eldest cub was quite little when I brought the picture home. He scurried off into my office and spent an hour or so copying it. It got under his skin as well.

A month after I bought her picture I was lucky enough to visit Dina in her lovely apartment in Gعaza, filled with colour and light with her husband, an accomplished artist, and their two children - they were all drawing when I arrived. I filmed them as they spoke of making art and embracing life in a place continually in the firing line.

Now, to go to the market, if it’s even there at all, is a matter of life and death.

I don’t even know where Dina is. If you see this Dina, please know that I think of you and your family every day as I look at your beautiful work - and I explain all about you to our friends and family when they visit. How I wish I could open our doors to your family.

I read an extract from the Gعza notebook in the (I would recommend subscribing) a housewife wrote: ‘We miss the taste of life. We are living in an atmosphere of death.’

Frank Auerbach in a beautiful interview on This Cultural Life said that his muse Stella West’s father - a philosopher - laid down the distinction between ‘death avoiding behaviour’: everything we do to survive and pay the bills, and ‘life enhancing behaviour’. Most of us spend far too much time on the former.

Do we need death to be so close to remind us how to live?

‘In this short life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power’.
Emily Dickinson

24/01/2024

15 years ago today I was working in Niger with a wonderful team of radio producers. We had recently watched Obama’s inauguration on a big screen in a restaurant. The atmosphere was electric, and full of hope. I just re-found the blog I was writing at the time, and I’m busy reflecting: particularly this week as the Niger Prime Minister, Ali Lamine Zaine has arrived in Moscow for talks on defence, agriculture and energy 💭 (It makes you wonder…all French solders left Niger in December).
January 15th, 2009: ‘The Aeroport International Diori Hamani in Niamey was pretty quiet. There was nothing on the runway apart from a huge plane belonging to the Kuwait Airforce. I wondered what had brought them here. But perhaps they were thinking the same about me. The airport building itself is simply four brick walls with a roof perched on top, and a huge gap in between allowing the air to enter.

Miraculously my luggage arrived, my visa, passport and yellow fever form was given the okay and I found a little white van outside saying: ‘Le Grand Hotel du Niger’ – my accommodation for the next couple of weeks until I go to Chad. The driver was fast asleep with his legs dangling out of the window. West African tunes pumped from the stereo. He slowly woke up, rubbed his eyes and said Salaam Aleikum, then continued in French.

The earth here is a dark ochre colour. Considering that it’s only earth, it’s incredibly beautiful - perhaps because of the contrast to the huge blue sky. Weaving down the road we passed strings of camels and herds of goats in amongst the traffic. Vehicles sprayed orange dust, and there was endless scrubland and little round houses made of straw either side of the road.

We passed a huge sign saying: ‘Bienvenue dans un monde de simplicité et diversité’ and I thought that sounded quite a nice combination. The evidence already in the passers by, wearing either bold African prints, or a simple robe with blue, white or black scarves wound into a turban on the head with the ends allowed to flap loose or to cover the face against the dust, often with enormous gold framed aviators or Elvis shades perched on top.’

04/12/2023

9 years ago today. I was pregnant with the smallest cub and we took the boys to Bethlehem. I remember the boys asking: ‘Is this big wall still called ‘a wall?’ It is the ugliest wall we have ever seen. And you can’t even see over it.’

29/10/2023

Gábor Maté gives me the words I’ve been looking for these past devastating weeks. It’s easy to think there are no words - but really there are. And the words we use must be chosen carefully.

06/10/2023

Last week we bid farewell to John, our wonderful neighbour and friend. He’d had a good whack at life and how he used every juicy drop of his almost- century on the planet. His and Ken’s Georgian dolls house next to ours, on our little canal side terrace stands empty, the garden already overgrown

30/09/2023

We are an unlikely running pair in many ways…but it’s never too late to jump out of that rubber ring and into some jogging pants.

For the first time in 46 years, my brother Duncan and I will be running alongside each other in the Royal Parks half marathon in London on Sunday October 8th.

We’re raising money for the David Nott Foundation whose mission it is to deliver specialist training to surgeons saing lives in countries affected by conflict and catastrophe.

I’m lucky enough to have travelled with them on many of their trainings - including Somaliland and Palestine, to make short films documenting their work, and the heroic contributions of the local surgeons they train. I can vouch their work is truly impressive, humanitarian above all else, and never more vital for our world. Duncan and I would be so grateful if you could make a contribution on our behalf. It will make the 13 miles around London’s majestic streets and beautiful autumnal parks seem all the more worthwhile.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/lucy-lyon-duncan-gordon-1696055745554?newPage=true

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Videos

It’s always an honour to document the work of the amazing @david.nott.foundation In this chaotic world the foundation offers an extraordinary combination of altruism, authenticity and the highest of standards, bringing purpose and skill to conflict zones and enabling surgeons to do their bit, a hundred times better. Interviewing a surgeon from Somaliland or Palestine, Ethiopia or Syria, and hearing them talk of the nature of their work; the burden they carry when they don’t have the expertise to carry out an operation successfully, is sobering. Humanity lies in so many places. But there is so much of it alive and well in medicine - it is a robust and resilient bridge in times of conflict.

Dr Shukri Mohamed Dahir talks of one experience as a doctor in Somaliland. I am honoured to have opportunities to listen to and film professionals like Shukri, and to work for organisations like the #davidnottfoundation #somaliland

Ibrahim talks of his love for his little niece Lana. And also of the pain of losing his father. The wreckage of the latest conflict in Gaza sits on the scars of countless others. But Ibrahim still builds dreams. #freegaza