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COMMENTARY
March 5, 2005
A bag of Smarties
Yes Martha Stewart is out of jail. Don't worry we're still safe she is confined to her 153-acre upstate New York thrall for some time longer. Only in America do they put a lady like that away for doing something everyone of her class was doing until they made it illegal a few minutes before sending her inside. You have to laugh (I'm sure Ms Stewart was laughing). Meanwhile in her absence I got an attractively simple Martha Stewart floor lamp for a considerable discount from Sears. That is America. Also B.T.K. Also the dreadful viciously immoral Hollywood movies that won Oscars last Sunday night; and the one that didn't The Passion of the Christ . I don't know what comes into the reader's mind when he hears the word "America" in a word-association quiz. (Sorry; I forgot to ask.) I'll tell you what comes into mine. It is a big bag of Smarties. This was from something that happened when I was a child of six in Lahore Pakistan. My father was possibly dying from an acute case of jaundice and Pakistan was not a welfare state: his salary disappeared when he could no longer teach at the College of Art. My mother a proud woman of Scots ancestry kept her fears to herself; though I can imagine the prospect of becoming a widow with two young children penniless in a very exotic place was not pleasing to her. Somehow she continued to pay our Christian cook Bill . She would rather die than tell anyone we were starving. The occasional crumpled Canadian banknote arrived in the mail from some relative back home. Servants observe everything they are much wiser than masters. Bill apparently knew some other Christian cooks (they all wore a distinctive Catholic turban) working for some Americans we hardly knew in the gleaming district of Gulberg. That anyway is the information we extracted after the fact. Those servants told their American masters what had happened to us coincidentally a little before Christmas in the year of grace 1959. All I remember is when the Americans arrived. (Remember I was only six.) No one asked them to come they just came. Lots of them it seemed: mostly women. And so far as I could tell with piles of money and every imaginable good thing like an Amazon tribe of Santa Clauses. My sister and I got children's books and a subscription to some American kid's magazine and much head-patting. But the thing I will remember for the rest of my life is the bag of Smarties. It was the size of a pillow. And I had never seen so much as a chocolate bar in the time we had been in Pakistan. I think I cried. Many readers have asked me over the years why I am so sympathetic to Americans. I suppose I'm just the grateful type. Whenever they ask I think of that bag of Smarties. A few decades have passed and I've travelled a bit more and I've come to think the behaviour of those Americans from Gulberg was not untypical -- their free-hearted crazy gormless generosity. People don't believe in national traits any more -- at least not officially -- but things continue to exist even after they're believed in. And that is a genuine American trait. It is shared by a whole bunch of Canadians and I am very proud that it is. It is missing from many Americans too. But in the main I fear we are much better than the Americans at meticulously counting the investment and return. We are more in the skinflint European tradition. Generosity is not the only quality that distinguishes Americans. Many of the other qualities are less attractive. Sometimes I even think they are boobs but usually not for long. An open heart is an open mind in my experience and I know no other people who are such quick learners. And why do I like Bush? Because he is so damned American. The course he has led over the last four years and through the hell of Afghanistan and Iraq and is now beginning to lead into Lebanon is I am now utterly convinced one of the glorious passages in American history. The good that is being achieved without entirely counting the cost is real and I will pray enduring. The sun is shining today. So many people ask me sarcastically how can I like Americans and how can I like Bush? I thought I would just answer. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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