Mairead Byrne: In My Culture

In my culture it is the custom that if someone offers you something you say no, even if you want it. The person knows—if they are in your culture too—that you may well want the thing you just refused and so they offer it again.  If you are at ease with that person you refuse again and of course they offer again.  If you know the person really well or are related by blood or marriage or if they are a neighbor or the neighbor of a neighbor, then you refuse again and of course if they stand in any of those relationships to you they offer again.  And so it goes with each offer and refusal incrementally more vehement until finally at the moment of highest tension the sun bursts from behind the cloud and you say Yes!  And the tea is poured or the wad of money pressed into the palm or you get into the car.  It would be devastating if, after the third or fourth exchange, one or other person said Oh okay.  It would be like a death or as if the top of a mountain were removed or as if there were no air.  In my new culture no-one offers me anything and if they did I would of course refuse and of course they would accept that and of course I would not get anything ho-hum because they would not offer again.  No-one knows how to get to the place of agreement and how many times to go round before meeting there.  I feel as if I am alone in the center of a maze, high boxwood hedge all round and in the air barely apprehensible snatches of the voices of a family in the distance having a picnic on the level ground at the bottom of the rolling lawn at the back of their majestic house.