More politics

[brigdh]

While I was living in Syria this summer, we tended to take off one day a week and go to the nearby big city, Aleppo. One day a group of us had gone to a liquor store, one which we would visit several times over the summer. The guy running it would explain to me the difference between good arak and bad arak.

But this was the first time we'd been there. It was a little store, barely bigger than a closet, located just off a plaza surrounded mostly by cheap jewelry stores, cafes, clothing stores- all things aimed at tourists. And we too were recognizable as- if not exactly tourists, than certainly not local. So the man in charge asked us where we were from. Adam, one of the people I was working with, told him America.

Ah, the man said. What about George Bush?

No, we said. All of this conversation was going on in our broken Arabic, so it was hard to convey subtleties. We don't like him.

The man nodded. Obama? he asked.

Inshallah, we said, the best word to pick up from Arabic; literally it means "if God wills", but people use it as something halfway between 'I hope' and 'please let it be'.

Inshallah, the man said, and he was echoed by the other Syrian men standing around the store, Inshallah.

This election has been making me nervous, keeping me checking political blogs and polls nonstop. I want a president who appeals to the better, bigger things in people, and not to their fear. If Obama talks about Hope and Change, is that such a bad thing? Why shouldn't presidents aim to be inspirational, to make the kind of speeches that live on as a sort of poetry? Aren't those the ones we remember: FDR's "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" speech, Lincoln's "a house divided cannot stand", Kennedy's "ask what you have to give for your country". I want a President who doesn't make the rest of the world look on America as a place of aggression and hate. If McCain is elected, I'm afraid that the rest of the world will see that as a confirmation of the policies of invasions, torture, prisoners held without trial. But we have a choice. People around the world like Obama. The news shows the pictures of crowds in Berlin and Japan, I hear the stories from my friends who work in Turkey and Oman and Ireland and Cyprus: they have heard of Obama. They see this as a change in America. And it can be. Please vote. Please convince your friends and family to vote. Volunteer.

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

No, I think that makes sense. It must be kind of worrying, to see something that so many people are talking about and which is likely to be influential for the whole world- but not to be able to participate in it, or affect it in any way.
*grins* Thank you!