Be That As It May

My brother Alan, having bought a flat in Alghero, Sardinia, needed of course to furnish it. I went down to keep him company and help with all that needs to be done when one has bought a new place, especially in such a bureaucracy-happy country as Italy.

One day, Alan and I ventured by bus to the nearest big city, Sássari, in search of a few sticks. Antonio, who owns a big furniture store, had already come out to the flat to measure up, so we knew what would fit.

From the intercity bus we transferred onto a local service, which took us to the vast industrial estate where this shop was. We spotted the place in the distance and got off the bus a bit further down the road. However, seeing a place in one of these industrial estates and figuring out how to reach it are quite different matters, and we spent about half an hour wandering around until we found it. When we did, it dawned on us that if we had only turned left instead of right at the first junction we had come to, we would have found the place in minutes.

But that was nothing compared to the fun of buying furniture in Italian. I am fluent in French and my brother in Spanish, both of which help. We can manage in Italian, but when it comes to specialised terms we are sometimes stumped.

‘We’ll need those things that go next to the bed,’ my brother said at one point. ‘Bedside tables?’ the woman who was helping us asked (we assumed). ‘That’s the one,’ we said. ‘Here,’ she said, although the word for that in Italian sounds rather like ‘echo’. There was a lot of that – us describing what we wanted and the saleswoman echoing it back to us using the correct terminology.

Eventually we got there, and options were agreed for my brother to consider. By then, we were in danger of missing the last coach back to Alghero. Could they call us a taxi to get to the bus? Antonio emerges. ‘No problem, I’ll drive you.’

‘To the bus station?’ we asked. ‘No no, to Alghero. No problem.’

We offered Antonio an apéritif when we got to Alghero. It was the least we could do. I left Alan and Antonio at the cash register arguing over who should pay for the drinks. ‘Did you win?’ I asked my brother when I returned. ‘No,’ he said.

I enjoyed the spiritual and mental refreshment of the visit. The pace in Sardinia is so much slower, although it was a stressful few weeks of hard work for my brother. ‘Back to the real world’, I said just before I left. Alan just looked at me. Reality is, indeed, a state of mind.

Last night, I watched a re-run of a season one West Wing episode. Entitled Take this Sabbath day, it follows the fictional President Bartlet’s anguish as he struggles to decide whether or not to commute the death sentence passed on a drug dealer who killed two other dealers and is eligible for capital punishment under a new omnibus crime bill. While he is opposed to the death penalty, he does not feel that his personal beliefs can legitimately overrule the wishes of the American public, and he ultimately allows the execution to proceed.

In making that decision, he consults several people, including one who happens to be a Quaker, and his hometown Roman Catholic parish priest. The priest arrives in the Oval Office as the clock is ticking down to the midnight execution. The President tells of his struggle to know what God wants him to do. The priest replies with the story of the man in the flood who is so convinced that God will save him that he ignores all attempts to rescue him, and dies. When he asks God why he didn’t save him, He replies, “I sent you a radio warning, a man in a rowboat and a helicopter. What more did you want from me?” The priest adds, “God sent you a priest, a rabbi and a Quaker. What more did you want from him?”

This episode highlights the many dilemmas that Barack Obama will face once he is sworn in as US President today. Much of what he has campaigned on is laudable, good and idealistic. But history has shown that, in the Oval Office, idealism must often take a back seat to pragmatism. Bartlet alludes to this when the priest asks him how he wishes to be addressed, since he had always called him by his first name. Bartlet asks to be called “Mr. President”, not, he explains, because he is egotistical, but because it is helpful for him to think of himself as the office rather than the man as he takes difficult decisions.

President Obama will certainly have to make difficult decisions that will test the man as well as the office. Some seem, on the face of it, quite mundane, like whether or not to give up his Blackberry. But on a personal level, it must have brought home to him that life will never again be the same for him or his family.

Already we see slippage on some of his promises, including the closure of Guantanamo Bay. No doubt it will happen, but it won’t be as quickly as some would like. So too other changes will be slower in coming than many would hope. And some promises will not be kept, as the new President comes face to face with the realities of office. He will have to do things that both he and his supporters would wish he didn’t have to do.

Be that as it may, today is a day of celebration and hope for many, in the US and around the world. The American people will judge the Obama administration in just under four years time. In the meantime, the world watches and waits.