I have an invitation to a reception at the home of the ambassador of a Middle-Eastern nation on my desk. I plan to attend.
I assume that no one will talk about Egypt. A circle of invitation large enough to include me surely indicates that nothing much serious is expected. It is a social occasion, and I am in fact tempted to consult my own embassy for advice on expected clothing, conversation, and comportment.
To wit: the invitation does not indicate black tie. Is that simply taken for granted? A rube like myself does not know. And I am sure that we are not expected to bring chocolates or flowers. Right?
It’s at a big house in a neighborhood of mansions – the ambassador’s house. They’ valet my car. Or will they? Either way I think I lose. At a minimum, it will take an hour to clean the inside of my embarrassingly modest Nissan so that the car parker/bodyguard/spy who valets it won’t a) come out covered in crumbs from the crusty bread my wife and I like to pick up and munch on when we drive home sometimes, and b) get the wrong idea from the surplus East German gas mask our 12-year-old son keeps in the car to freak out other drivers. It’s a tight-fitting rubber bladder with goggles for the eyeholes and a bendy pipe leading to a metal disk meant to hold a filter running from the mouth. A guest planning no mischief would likely not bring one to dinner. It’s a sign of trouble.
And trouble we have plenty of today, particularly in the Middle East. Perhaps the good kind, the kind that brings what Martin Luther King used to call the latent tensions below the surface to the light of day – trouble that’s overdue, that brings change, that reminds us that fundamentally we are all the same, that the distance from East Germany to Cairo to Beverly Hills, where I expect to dine soon enough, is not great.
Today, I hear people who seem to know about these things say that what’s happening in Egypt will almost certainly be good for the peace process there because, of course, governments that do not truly represent their people, that themselves are never truly AT peace, cannot truly MAKE peace. How sensible this sounds. How odd that we have heard it said so little in the recent past.
And so I resolve to attend the party at the ambassador’s house, already thankful for his hospitality but wondering how polite one really ought to be.
The.American.Word. 