“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 your 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 newspaper 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 his 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 gad-getry
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 anyway. Staying away from politics is also politics. Politics is
nothing and it is everything.”
―
Mourid Barghouti,
رأيت رام الله
