I had witnessed change

I spent the first fourteen years of my life in a dark age; some have called ironically a golden age. As I grew up, the people around me became overshadowed by cold, hunger and fear.

And I had witnessed change. Young people, a few years older than I, chose to die rather than live in cold, hunger and fear. The political environment and the crowd’s mentality had not changed in a year, nor did it change in five years. Even today, almost twenty years later, some of the people living there are still overshadowed by fear and darkness and cold. However, today, in Romania, there is not a five-year-old child that is going to risk her life for a bottle of cooking oil, because somebody decided exactly how much cooking oil is needed for the people. No fourteen year old will fear that he’ll be caught in the street and bit up just because he’s a boy that chose to let his hair long. No woman will have to be humiliated each month in a cold doctor’s office, where some skewed nurse will have to check her entrails to make sure she’s not pregnant and looking to abort the unborn child.


I spent many years looking for a church where I could celebrate the God I loved, the God of mercy and forgiveness. A church where all are invited and only measured for their faith. But most churches I attended seemed to confine faith with their small understanding of right and wrong. And few years ago I had discovered with dismay a church that celebrated bigotry and preached hate.

But I had witnessed change. In this church I had only attended since June, last Sunday the Presiding Bishop said that we had been all claimed as saints (1). The people we acknowledge as saintly, as well as the ones that we do not like. The people that reason like us as well as the ones whose logic we cannot follow. It is not for us to judge the ones that do not agree with our points of view, for us is to realize our own sainthood. (2)


I spent five years in the United States, and during this time I had lost almost all faith in the American people. I strongly believed that no one would re-elect a president that pushed this country to an absurd war. But they did it, and he was re-elected not because he was competent but because he re-assured them they were right in their prejudices about race, and same –sex marriages and their wives right to choose. And I had seen acts of racism (3). And I heard a woman mocking the very same ideals that women had fought for so many years, a woman some called a feminist.

And I witnessed change. I had seen Americans overcoming their racial bias (4) and electing the man they considered right for the job. And I had seen a young generation remembering that it has a voice and that “yes, we can” (5) change our minds, overcome prejudice and bring hope back. That each small voice counts (6).

And yesterday, when I went to work I made my very nice co-worker G. cry. For she had to listen for about two years now, all my bickering and all my doubts and my anger. But yesterday I told her how proud I was to have witnessed change.

(1) all that had been baptized, since it is hard to capture sainthood in non-Christian terms.
(2) For the whole sermon here. And the issue addressed.
(3) I went through the whole grief circle when I was called the c *** word. Well, I guess I had been called many things before but a racial slur? I had to move to the US though, to find out that I am South Asian. When living in Europe I was under the impression that all that comes out of Romania is, in the worse case scenario, Romani (gypsy).
(4) I had noticed some new Obama/Biden placards in my neighbourhood after the elections. (After all you did not want the Jones to think that you actually might like black people.) The real victory was realized in counties such as Allegheny County, where the number of African American children in a school is still a measure of the school's quality, and states such as North Carolina.
(5) And the speech.
From now on, the rest is politics.
White people from Allegheny County will not suddenly embrace each potential black neighbour, my only African American co-worker did not get promoted and Barack Obama has yet to prove that he is the skilled, smart and competitive President that they voted.
(6) the small voices

December (part II, my readwritepoem for #39)

December

Five, nineteen, twenty years later
I shall never forget my town in December
where night snow got dirty by day,
as passers-by ,we’d all grow old, silent and gray,
colorless dormant trees December would confine.

One day Mother got home too soon,
one December well before noon
with neurotic shiver she shouts about days of doom
“I beg, hide your head, lock your room”!
Bareheaded, young rebels were facing the army.

My Nana was eighty years old;
“I had seen two wars of the world”
she said we would need bread and flour,
“I‘d be back in a quarter an hour,
an old lady too small for their guns, I’d be fine”

My Nana, too old to fear death,
and all in young age were no longer afraid.
Their dance of colors and laughter
Flooded the town: one stream, two and ten more after,
barehanded, deathless rebels faced the army.

One December Nana bought back bread and a song
home. “Raise your head, come along,
fear not death, we’re only afraid
we’d all grow old, silent and gray”.
Mother locked my door and she left me to pine

for the dream of colors in spring;
bloom’d trees will raise in the morning as birds to sing.
Whilst left alone to deal with my strife,
I heard the machine guns the first time in my life,
bare-chested, young rebels bleed over the army.


Five, Nineteen, Twenty years later
we lull our dead from December,
for all whom lived through that day don't forget to pray
as they grow old, tired and gray,
springless dormant trees December will confine.

December (part I, the events of December 21st 1989 as I remember them)

My month is December , my town is Bucharest. No, I did not go out on the streets that day –my mother did not really have to lock me in my room for I was only 14 and all it took her to keep me in the house was to order me not go outside.
I do not remember much about that day, I am not even sure if it snowed the night before or not, but I think there was no snow. I also think that it was a sunny day, though it might have been cloudy as well for I did not get a chance to go out as I was planning. I was ready to step out when my mother came home from work, hysterical, telling us that the rebellion had started in Bucharest too. The next thing she did was to ban me from going out of the house and beg my grandmother and my Nana to stay in.

We all knew about Timisoara, about the communist leaders falling one after another but nobody in my family, believed that our crazy dictator would have the same fate, all but I. Actually I was the only one with an opinion on political change, a very naïve opinion given my age and lack of political education. I was careful to keep my beliefs for me; I was old enough to know that it was not wise to share such ideas about freedom without running the risk of getting everybody in trouble. I was listening Radio Free Europe and Radio Free America for about two years and read a few classics with liberal political opinions.

But on the 21st the revolt reached Bucharest, the capital. Short after my mother came in we started to hear the uproar on the streets. Now our apartment was in the back of an old building , one would have to pass through two courtyards to get to it and all we could see was only the other side of the apartment complex. But we were also living less than half a mile from both University Square and Romana Square so we could hear very well the people shouting. At a point their shouts became so clear, so loud that we could understand what they were saying.

My Nana decided that since she was the oldest and since she survived two wars she will go to the nearest grocery store to buy as much food as she could for we might have to stay in for a while. She would not listen to my mother, she got dressed and she left. When she got back we all met her in the foyer and while she took her coat off she started telling us that she saw the Business Academy students and their teachers walking towards University square were they were expecting to rally with the students from Bucharest University and the ones from the School of Architecture. They did not get that far, my Nana barely finished talking when I heard real gunshots for the first time in my life. I do not recall how long they lasted but I can recall that sound like only few minutes had passed since that day. And I remember my Nana kneeling down and praying and in her prayer she was repeating, “Oh God, they were so young, so young”.
All other memories from that day and the days that followed are blurred by the pass of time, all but young students shouting, Nana’s prayer and the sounds of gunshots echoing over our building.