Lately, it seems like all I do is wait around—for food, for water, for a chance to return to what little is left of my home. But mostly I wait around for—you guessed it!—the birth of the royal baby.
Yes, we here in Jordan, at the Zaatari Refugee camp—just eight miles from the Syrian border, close enough to smell the artillery rounds turning our countrymen to ash—are just as rapt as the rest of the world. Sure, we’ve got some troubles here—but who’s got the time to worry about starving when Kate Middleton is days overdue?
Speaking of: How long will she torture us like this!? I’m getting more and more anxious every day! (Seriously, I feel sick, and it’s not just that my dried, pre-cooked food rations are dangerously low on nutrients). Lately, my main worry is that the media are camped outside the wrong hospital. Sheesh people, what if the baby is born in Reading instead of London?! Have you lost your minds? What, you expect the public to settle for extended, static shots of the wrong hospital’s façade? You might as well film my house, and my house is a tent.
Some of the refugees here have taken to placing bets on the baby’s gender and name (just like the British!), probably because it’s a convenient distraction from the fact that more than 100,000 of our fellow-Syrians have been slaughtered since the civil war began. Personally, I think betting on something as beautiful and earth shattering as the birth of a royal is profane—but hey, that’s just me. I also don’t like rioting—and that’s pretty popular here, too.
You might be wondering: Why am I not upset that everyone’s paying more attention to Kate Middleton’s pregnancy than the plight of Syrian refugees? Well, isn’t it obvious? Kate and people like me are basically soul-mates. Both of us were suddenly plucked from the only life we knew and forced into a completely foreign existence. (Sure—she went from upper middle class comfort to the opulent life of a princess, whereas I went from poor to really poor; and the pressure she’s under is mostly from the media, whereas mine stems from having half my family killed—but these differences are mostly semantic). I feel like Kate really understands me—even though I can’t quite imagine getting my picture taken as often as she does, since most photographers have only documented this camp from helicopters. (Believe me, you’d do the same).
When it comes down to it, I just hope that a team of world’s best doctors are attending to Kate’s every need. Maybe if the baby is born soon, a couple of them could head this way? Please?
You’ll excuse me if I sign-off now. All 120,000 of my campmates just went BM, and the place stinks to high-heaven. Makes me wonder: Do you think William is ready for diaper-changing duty? I bet not!!
