The Dictations of an Ambassador
There’s a special kind of torture only a few can truly appreciate – the dictation. I was an intern back then, fresh out of school, still trying to figure out what “diplomatic protocol” actually meant and how many commas one should use in a government memo. My boss, a seasoned Ambassador – though he didn’t hold a formal post anymore, which, if you ask a diplomat, is a peculiar status reserved for those who have seen too many farewell parties and are too good to retire – had a unique method of teaching.
It wasn’t just about the endless meetings, the foreign dignitaries, or the global crises we’d discuss in hushed tones. No, the true lesson came when he called me into his office and asked me to bring paper. Now, you might think this is just another bureaucratic ritual, but no. The paper was to become my prison. You see, every time my boss summoned us, it was to dictate something important. It could be anything – from an urgent letter to an inane memo about the office thermostat. But the rule was the same: speed. It had to be done in record time, and no, you couldn’t hesitate. It was a diplomatic hell, and I was its unwilling apprentice.
And there was the light. The damned light. When that light outside the door was switched on, we were locked in. Nobody could enter. And nobody could leave. It was as if we were trapped in a chamber of international bureaucracy, the walls slowly closing in as the hours ticked by. The only thing worse than being stuck in that room was the palpable sense of I should have known better that accompanied each command.
One day, the call came. The Ambassador wanted a letter typed up immediately. I grabbed my paper, sat down, and with the kind of urgency that could only come from years of fear-induced reflex, I typed away. The letter was flawless, at least in my eyes, until he pointed out the glaring omission – a crase. A simple accent mark, but to him, it was everything.
He didn’t hold back. “This is the problem with the Ministry,” he said, shaking his head. “You people can’t even get your grammar right. How can we be trusted to draft agreements if we can’t even punctuate?” The critique rolled off his tongue, as he lectured me on the dire state of public service – long-winded, often incomprehensible, and grammatically disastrous. He told me that, as a future diplomat, I couldn’t afford to make such basic mistakes. “You’ll need to read Camões,” he declared with the solemnity of a sage passing down the keys to wisdom.
At this point, I wasn’t sure whether he was serious or just on a power trip. I was an intern, for heaven’s sake. Yet, he looked at me as if I were the future of diplomacy, and the future of diplomacy needed to know where to place a crase. He finished with a question that haunted me to this day: “Did you even finish high school?”
Now, I had two choices. I could take my bruised ego, fix the damn crase, and forget about it, or I could take his advice to heart. So, I did what any rational intern would do – I ran to my friend Márcio Porto (now a diplomat himself), and told him the whole story. Márcio, without missing a beat, said, “You’d better read Camões. He’s going to take you.” I didn’t fully grasp what he meant, but I knew this was serious.
That night, I buried my face in Camões. I read about Portuguese history, about his poetry, about the weight of words and the elegance of language. I even made notes. And by morning, I was somehow ready.
But when the Ambassador finally arrived, he didn’t ask me about Camões. No, he wanted me to do something personal for him, something that had nothing to do with diplomatic grammar, high school, or punctuation.
And that, my friends, is a whole other story.