Only in America. Matt Frei
for three hours just to be told that I had brought the wrong papers. The man who informed me of this had clearly failed to read and learn the DMV’s customer service commandments about courtesy and efficiency pinned up on the board. I didn’t have the guts to point them out. To add injury to insult he informed me that the car I had bought from my predecessor was worth $2000 less than I had paid for it. ‘Sure hope he ain’t your friend!’ he added, laughing. The sad truth is that he was.
It also didn’t help that, unlike 92 per cent of America’s driving population, I belonged to that tiny, benighted minority that failed their multiple-choice driving test. Some questions were easy. Like: ‘If you come across a funeral procession, do you A slow down B speed up and drive through it or C come to a complete stop?’ The two questions that made the difference between success and failure were: ‘What is the minimum distance you have to maintain from a fire truck with sirens on?’ I hadn’t a clue. And one about car insurance. I cheated and called up the insurance broker to get the right answer. She gave me the wrong one and that was it. I flunked the test. A kind woman at reception whose enormous girth swivelled cheerfully on a small chair helped out: ‘Oh, honey, I am sorry. You can always use a study aid,’ she said at the top of her voice. The people around me started to take an interest. I was the only one wearing a suit. I was the guy they had all put their faith in. And I had failed. Then I saw the large notice on the wall aimed at the clientele. No eating! No fighting! No pro-fanities! I felt like doing all three. Unfortunately there is no escape from the DMV if you want to drive a car legally or have a driving licence. In a country where only 25 per cent of citizens have passports, the driving licence is the photo ID of choice, without which you can board no plane, send no parcels and retrieve no shirts from the laundry. The DL is de rigueur. Especially during the ‘global war on terror’. In America you want to be able to prove who you are at all times.
By the end of my first week I had hit rock bottom. I had acquired a car I was not yet allowed to drive. I had not found a house for us to live in. And I barely had time to visit the schools that would mould the future of my precious children. I was camping out in my predecessor’s home for a few weeks, before the American owners returned. I had dragged Penny and the children away from their friends, from our idyllic house in Singapore with its frangipani and avocado trees, its pool and the sultry tropical languor that provided a welcome anaesthetic from the more mundane tasks of family life. Asia was intoxicating in the best possible sense. Washington was proving to be a major detox. And in late August it was just as hot as Singapore, if not hotter. But the formal dress code of jacket and tie meant that one was walking around in a permanent mobile sauna. The mosquitoes were the size of birds, trained for combat and confident in their belief that no city authorities would ever have the temerity to kill them with insecticide. I began to dream of the grey clouds of DDT that enveloped our house in Singapore every two weeks and killed everything with tiny wings.
Penny flew in on the day that the heavens opened with late summer vengeance over Washington. I was stuck thirty miles away at IKEA buying bedding and cutlery and I couldn’t make it to Dulles Airport to pick up my own family. This was not good. I rang Gerald, a taxi driver frequently used by the office. He bailed me out and met a confused, bedraggled troupe of surly children and their mother in a country they had never visited before and were not entirely sure why they had to move to. The passport queue was two hours long. The customs officer behaved as if he was closely related to the prick at the DMV. The family had been hit on the head by the hammer of transcontinental jet lag. The British Airways stewardess had been excessively rude even by the standards of the mile-high gulag at the back of the plane. And because of the torrential rain, the drive from the airport to our house took an hour and a half.
I looked out of the kitchen window as they finally arrived. It struck me that none of them wanted to get out of the car. They all sat there, rooted to their seats like wax figures. Not smiling. Lottie, the youngest – not even a year old – could always be relied upon to be irrepressibly good-humoured. She was in tears. ‘Welcome to Washington,’ I muttered without conviction. Gerald shook his head. Penny glowered. Things could only get better. And they did.
Some foreign postings are love affairs: passionate, all-consuming. They are prone to deep disappointment but always cherished and remembered as an intimate and special bond. Other are arranged marriages. The beginnings are more prosaic and businesslike but they can blossom into something precious. Washington was the latter. It had started on a dog-tired note with an exhausted groom – me – and an indifferent bride – America. It wasn’t made easy by the fact that the rest of the world had very entrenched, preconceived notions about the bride, which became more and more virulent as the relationship took shape. For those judging America from abroad the middle ground had been eroded. President Bush’s famous statement about loyalty after 9/11 – ‘you are either with us or with the terrorists’ – had become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the rest of the world. You were now either with Bush or against him, with America or against it. In response the world became less willing to differentiate between an administration and an entire country. Criticizing an aspect of government policy immediately threw you open to charges of being anti-American, just as lauding a piece of policy made you into a snivelling sycophant, Bush’s poodle, Uncle Sam’s lackey and someone who was hell-bent on force-feeding their children Big Macs.
Washington is the window into America’s political soul. It is the Rome and the Athens of the twenty-first century, a city of raw power and a citadel of refined ideas. I was lucky enough to be dispatched there during a crucial juncture in the constant cluttering evolution of this huge country. I was a political tourist with family in tow, trying to find my way around the corridors of power, discover what made the colossus tick and set up a home. Invariably the broad tapestry of politics is interwoven with very personal experiences, many mundane, a few dramatic. They conspire to build a subjective impression of America which aims to be neither complete, comprehensive nor even very fair. It is, however, personal.
For many years my morning commute was regularly enlivened by an encounter with the American Vice President, Dick Cheney. He lives in a secure compound next to the British Embassy that also houses the United States Naval Observatory. Does Cheney wander over to the giant telescope in the dead of night to try and catch a glimpse of distant stars and imagine alien civilizations? I doubt it. His gaze is firmly fixed on the terrestrial.
At 7.30 a.m. precisely the traffic is stopped in a surprisingly elaborate ceremony that is Washington’s equivalent of the Changing of the Guard. At first nimble policemen on mountain bikes wearing aerodynamic pod-shaped bicycle helmets pop out of the undergrowth and flag down the traffic. Then their less trim cousins emerge from police cars humming with more lights than a funfair attraction. They block the flow. Finally the super-sized outriders on their Harley-Davidsons park right across the street. The man-meets-machine road block is in place.
The wait begins. The curtain is about to be raised on a vintage Washington spectacle. We all sit in traffic, fiddling with our steering wheels, making unnecessary calls on our phones and waiting for the main event. Then the gates of the Naval Observatory swing open, the bomb barriers are swallowed up by the road and more policemen on Harleys appear with screeching sirens. They gesticulate furiously, guns in hand, reinforcing a point that has already been made eloquently and unambiguously by the grunts preceding them. Next, two black secret service vans appear, followed by an armoured stretch limo – the decoy – followed by the real one, in which the Vice President can briefly be spotted, sitting in the back, squinting at the ungrateful world outside. We always make eye contact.
Then there’s another secret service van. This one is open at the back and displays two agents looking at potential assassins through the sights of M16 rifles. At this stage I always take my hands off the wheel, just in case I make an involuntary move that could get me shot. I resist the urge to scratch the back of my head. Then there’s the obligatory ambulance. It follows dutifully in case the Vice President, who had the first of his four heart attacks when he was only thirty-six, doesn’t survive the six-minute commute to the White House. Finally there is the tail escort, another three howling Harleys. So, just to recap: two armoured