Politics is the Family at Breakfast

In North America, “politics” seems to have become a dreaded word, one thrown out with disgust and contempt, and, I think, a lack of understanding of what “politics” really means, at least in its full definition. When asked in North America what I studied at college/university and I reply “political science”, I usually get one of three responses: 1) Blank stares 2) “So… you’re going to be a lawyer?” 3) “So… you’re going to be the next Canadian Prime Minister?” (said with a smirk). I’ve never felt as if I had a satisfactory answer to what “politics” are, and why I chose and choose to study them. Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading “I Saw Ramallah” by a Palestinian author named Mourid Barghouti. His book, about his experiences returning to Palestine after being in exile for 30 years, is as much political is it is a memoir, and he describes politics as nothing, and as everything. For him, politics are real, and politics are life – affecting almost every aspect of the experiences of people in this area of the world. In many senses, Barghouti is both a poet and politician, and he understands what it means to be both. Below are some of his words – a description of “politics” which I love:

“Politics is the family at breakfast. Who is there and who is absent and why. Who misses whom when the coffee is poured into the waiting cups. Can you, for example, afford your breakfast? Where are you children who have gone forever from these their usual chairs? Whom do you long for this morning? What rhythm is it that pushes you to hurry toward pleasures life has promised you, or to a confrontation you wish you could win just this once? Where are the children of this mother who, in her slightly crooked spectacles, sits knitting a pullover of dark blue wool for the absent one who does not write regularly? Where is your gentle chatter, your splendid isolation, your lack of need of the outside world for even a few moments? Where is your illusion laid bare by the newspapers lying on the cane chair at your side? What small act of forgiveness are you training yourself to perform today? What reproach do you wish to utter? And what reproach do you wish erased? Who threatens your wonderful mistakes, staying up to spoil your night? Who ruins your sweet inconsequential things with the awe of this authority and his driver and his servants and his happy bodyguards? Who imported this small, shiny teaspoon from Taiwan? What giant ships ploughed the seas to bring you some trivial piece of primitive gadgetry from Stockholm? How did the flower merchants make their millions and build their fine houses from selling the bouquets carried by mothers and sisters to the graveyards that are always damp: raindrops, flowers, and tears. You question why even the silence in the graveyards is wet. Politics is the number of coffee-cups on the table, it is the sudden presence of what you have forgotten, the memories you are afraid to look at too closely, though you look anyways. Staying away from politics is also politics. Politics is nothing and it is everything.”

On other matters: My parents are here in Egypt, and it's wonderful.