Mendacity

 

Photograph: a sign in my doctor’s clinic when I went for the booster last Wednesday.

 Now, let me get this right. When you say ‘The people incarcerated in that hotel are not refugees’, you don’t mean they’re not refugees. They are not refugees, based on the argument that you are who you are, the person with his picture everywhere, the person expected to explain to the populace what is the case. Next week, or next year, your picture will not be everywhere, no one will care what you say about anything, and the refugees will still be refugees, possibly still incarcerated, possibly still in a hotel. To the best of your knowledge at the time, this was probably the case. When you say ‘The people incarcerated are on a pathway somewhere’, you don’t mean they are on a pathway, you mean they are incarcerated in a hotel. Last week you said they were not refugees, only to backtrack and deny you had said that, or had said that but not meant it to sound the way it sounded, and that what you meant by refugees then probably isn’t what you mean by refugees now, because the whole thing is, it’s not what you say but that you could be talking to a blind bat, or the King of Spain, or a journalist who will write down anything you say, or a lamppost, even. Not that you are listening to anything I say; I may as well be talking to a lamppost myself. To the best of your knowledge, that’s what you thought refugee meant at the time, which might possibly be different again from what you meant by refugee one year ago, or mean by refugee sometime in the near future, when your picture has vanished from the gaze of the populace, or say in ten minutes. Given that a time will come when you no longer talk to journalists, or intelligent politicians, or autocues, a time when your picture will no longer be seen daily, or at all much, anywhere, it’s hard to know whether you understand your own system of refugee incarceration, or the difference between a refugee and a champion tennis player. Even when you’re the person in the picture primarily responsible for the incarceration of refugees. Summer will pass. Perhaps the only important thing is that it’s you saying those refugees are not refugees, and not someone else. Pathways are pathways, hotels are hotels, rules are rules. Personally, I am fairly indifferent to your picture every day, the square jaw, the square suit, the square autocue, and all the rest of you, the lies and denial of lies for example. Like the rest of the populace I will not miss the picture everywhere once it’s no longer there, or the lies. My attention is caught by those who actually say ‘I am a refugee’, as they sit in a hotel where they have been incarcerated for years. I find it difficult, very difficult, to imagine what that is like. Nor do I expect most journalists to have much of an idea, either. I cannot imagine it has crossed your mind much, who can say when a refugee isn’t a refugee.