The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

Studying the manual, however, is not the same as flying.

We make sense of our lives through stories. Regardless of our different backgrounds and perspectives, stories have the power to bind us.

In my Irish family, being able to tell a lively story has always been a means of fitting in and drawing people together.

He drank too much and clearly didn’t do much work, but he had infinite time for me—a child’s only true measure of a parent.

growing up in Ireland, there was simply nothing worse than “being boring.” “You could be smelly, you could be ugly, you could be fierce dumb,” he said, happily, “but you could not be boring.”

The United States was the first place I had been that didn’t seem to want its people to pause and reflect during the day.

Again, I was struck by the importance of dignity as a historical force.

I noticed that Mort always rearranged his schedule to see Fred when he was in town. “He is a practical man,” Mort said of the Texan. “He doesn’t just tell us ‘something must be done.’ He tells us what should be done and how we should do it. I’ve never known anybody like him.” Fred was useful. And Mort valued usefulness.

He never seemed afraid of looking uninformed—which, to me, seemed to be the highest form of confidence.

I waited until the Foreign Policy editorial staff had headed home and the cleaners had completed their nighttime rounds on the floor. Once the suite was completely deserted, I walked into the office of Charles William Maynes, the journal’s editor, picked up several sheets of his stationery, and then hurried back to my desk. Hands shaking, I began typing a letter impersonating the unwitting Maynes. I was committing a fireable offense, but to me it felt like a felony. All these years later, I still feel terrible for having violated the trust of a program that was giving me so much. But determined to get to Bosnia, I went ahead and wrote to the head of the UN Press Office, asking that the UN provide Samantha Power, Foreign Policy’s “Balkan Correspondent,” with “all necessary access.” I had a guilty conscience, but I also had what I needed to obtain my press pass.

When I asked whether a newcomer like me would be able to find work, though, they quickly shot me down. “The strings are all taken,” one said definitively. Laura, the only woman in the group, did not contradict her colleagues in the moment, but she pulled me aside before I left. “I don’t know what these guys are talking about,” she said. “There is plenty of work to go around. You should move here and give it a try.” Looking around, she grabbed a cardboard coaster out from under a beer and wrote down her email and phone number. “You can totally do this,” she said as she handed me the coaster. “Write me if you’re coming back. I’ll show you around.”

And while there was much to cry about, Sarajevans did not lose their sense of humor. At the start of the war, the Serb militants frequently graffitied areas they claimed should be theirs with the words “Ovo je Srbija!,” or “This is Serbia!” When they did this to a post office in Sarajevo, a resident famously responded in spray paint: “Budalo, ovo je pošta,” or “Idiot, this is a post office.” And when the siege of Sarajevo officially outlasted the siege of Leningrad, becoming the longest in modern history, a pirate radio station blared the Queen song “We Are the Champions.” The heart of the country refused to stop beating.