The capitalistic orange or the Romanian revolution seen through the eyes of a child

 

 

A few days ago a colleague from primary school send me a picture from when we were small. I recognized it immediately, it was on a trip with the class to the mountains, to try the mineral springs in Slanic Moldova. I asked my colleague which year the picture was taken and he send me the back of it, where it was written in pencil: September 1989. I showed it to my work colleagues and I received all smiles and most of them were not able to recognize me. "It it like from another century", one of my work colleagues said, then he was quiet realizing that he actually called me old. Well, comparing to him , who is 19 i am obviously old. I was about to tell him something ironical but in that moment I saw something in the picture. Very small, almost not visible if you do not know what it was, on the left shoulder of my jacket I saw my pioneer number. Every young pupil becoming a pioneer used to get a number, which he was obliged to wear on his jacket all the time, so people would be able to contact the school and praise or complain of your behavior. After the revolution in 1989, the number and pioneer program was thankfully cancelled. I started thinking that indeed I was from another century, at least for my 19 year old colleague. Then i saw him taking out 2 oranges and a banana for his snack and for the first time in my life i realized how old I was. I had my first banana at 13 years old and oranges during communist time in Romania were available only before Christmas, or New Years Eve, as officially according to Ceausescu Christmas was not a celebration. At the beginning of every December all the Romanian parents were entering into a frenzy, trying to get as much food as possible for Christmas. Meat, butter, oranges, bananas, chocolates, high quality ham or salaam and other type of sweets, these were usually the things that all Romanians were trying to have on Christmas, and they were ready to do anything for it, stay hours in queues, fight between themselves or buy them at high prices on the black market. Oranges were considered a delicacy, if we were lucky we would receive them in our shoes from St. Nicholas or on Christmas under the tree. There was a special way to eat an orange, it couldn't be eaten just anyhow. My grandfather used to make perpendicular cuts on the fruit and opened it like a flower. We would then enjoy the sweet fruit inside while the amazing citrus smell would fill the whole room.

There are wounds that never heal and fears that never go away. I can see it in my parents every times I visit, the full stuffed fridge, the full freezer with portioned meat, the oranges that are never missing from their house, I can see them running after offers in shops. I can see the same behavior in most of the Romanians when we visit. There is that drive to stock that remained from the communism time, that unconscious inside fear of not being able to feed your family. Sometimes I think I am bless, that i was born when i was born, that i was old enough to understand the horror of the time but small enough not to be affected too much by it. My sister only 2 years younger then me doesn't remember anything.

December 1989 came cold and empty, no snow and no oranges. There was a weird feeling of anticipation and fear in the air that we children we did not understand. There were 3 months from our trip in Slanic Moldova and I was a responsible pioneer. I was given a new younger student under my care whom I needed to prepare in order to receive the title. The last day of school 17 December I forgot my pioneer tie at home and I was shown as a bad example in front of the classroom. I had no idea that I will never wear that tie again. There were whispers all around us about strange things and events in Timisoara. My parents had to stay at their job until 22 December, however they asked our grandparents to take me and my sister to the mountains. On 18 December we climbed the train to go Sinaia, a small beautiful city on the Prahova valley. At that time I did not know that we will not see my parents until the last day of 1989, just a few hours before New Years Eve. I also didn't know about the start of the revolution in Timisoara and the last atrocity of the Ceausescu regime: the Rose operation. After the first 2 days of shooting in Timisoara, there was a period of calm when the Ceausescu couple believed the revolution is over and wanted to cover what happened. The dead bodies were secretly taken from the hospital morgue and carried in a truck to Bucharest, where they were burned in the incinerator, the ashes were collected in garbage bins and was thrown in a canal outside Bucharest, where all the human waist from all of toilets in Bucharest were gathering. There are multiple documentaries on it now and even a film on the operation. Instead of covering up, this disgusting event was like the spark that moved the revolution along. The whole country came out in support of the families whose brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers and children were burned and discarded in the toilet.

On 21 December Ceausescu kept a speech in front of hundreds of Romanians in Bucharest, it was televised all over the country. Durring the speak boos and screams of anger started from the crowd. The transmission was stopped and patriotic songs were given. I watching from a hotel in the mountains, the whole hosts of the hotel gathered in front of the only television set in the front desk. The transmission was cut however us and all the country caught online the first few moments of violence of the revolution. People were scared to speak of what they saw however everybody was aware something uncommon was happening. Life went on in Sinaia, we went for a walk and to the shops and market, we played in the park and we prayed for snow. Unknown to us the revolution started in Bucharest, Ceausescu ordered tanks and the army to shoot unarmed people. On 22 December the presidential couple escaped via helicopter and we watched with amazement how the usual propaganda program on TV was interrupted and a group of revolutionary who enter the television tower started broadcasting directly. "We are free! The dictator is gone!". The whole hotel guests started gathering around the TV in the reception room, the adults cried and hugged themselves, the children stood in wonder not understanding what had happened. Suddenly the "beloved father and mother of the nation" were cursed and for the first time we heard the "Down communism!" cry. Mixed with the screams for freedom there was also the "bring back our dead so we will bury then as Christians" as the whole country came in solidarity with the events in Timisoara.

The news and rumors traveled fast, there were rumors the water had been poisoned to destroy all the population, there was spread all over the rumor that terrorist groups are looking to save and restore the Ceausescu couple, soldiers were put around the hotel to guard us from an unexpected attacked. We slept on the ground near the bed as my grandparents were afraid of a stray bullet through the window. Since there is a considerable number of children and old people who died in their beds in that manner, I understand now my grandparents fear.

25 December 1989, Christmas day, we were all gathered in the reception area and watching the trial of the Ceausescu couple. As they were caught, an ad-hoc tribunal was formed and they were tried and convicted to death. It was probably in order to pacify the population and stop the fighting. Many years later, now, i do longer believe that argument what the sole reason for their death, but that day we did. All the children in the hotel were sitting on the ground watching the execution. The couple had there hands tied and eyes covered and they were put in front of a wall. We heard the order and then the rain of bullets hitting them and the wall.  After the shooting stopped a doctor checked the bodies and male Ceausescu was still alive. He was shot again in the head. Black blood started to pour from his head on our black and white TV screen.

I was amazed that our parents and grandparents let us watch this. All the children were there watching together with us, some of them much smaller then me. Not only the execution but the whole revolution, the shootings, the bloody bodies on streets, some in weird unnatural positions, naked bodies in the morgues all over the country. Usually parents would have never allowed their little ones to watch such violence, however in that December they let us watch probably to be witnesses also to the historic event and to be assured of the death of the hated dictator. It is also weird to me when i speak with foreigners about the Romanian revolution, the only thing they know is the execution of the Ceausescu couple. Nobody asks me about the dead bodies in the street, or the murdered young people in the squares, however all speak about the inhumane way Ceausescu died. I sometimes answer that what Ceausescu did to us was also inhumane, however the only imagine which they have of the revolution remains the execution.

On one of my first Christmases with my parents in law they asked me if I was sad or impressed by the execution of the Ceausescu couple. Not really, I answered. Why not? Because I saw more horrible things during the revolution, images that will remain with me for my whole life. The picture that most impressed me however from the revolution is of a mother and daughter on the floor of a morgue, both with eyes still opened, with short black hair, the child is placed on the stomach of the mother. She has a pink woolen jacket and looks no more then 5 or 6 years old. The mother has the hands in a weird arched position as if in her last breath she tried to protect the daughter. I hated the picture as i hated the revolution and Ceausescu with it. I disliked the picture mostly because it showed me what it means to be a woman, and I hated it more and more as I grew up and, I got married and I started a family. Many year later in an interview about the revolution I found a more horrible thing about the picture. The husband and father of the child was interview and apparently the hated picture of his dead family is the only picture he has of them. Cameras were not as usual and cheap that times. I then understood that a worst fate then dying during the revolution was surviving such a loss. I was to small to give a name to what Ceausescu did the population during the revolution, but now I see it as similar to the massacre of the innocents in the Bible. Herod killed all children under 2 in order to keep his power as a king. Ceausescu killed children and students and mothers and fathers and bothers and sisters on the streets of Romania for the same reason.

The violence continued for a few days, the horrible rumors and the shooting and killing also. My hometown Braila is now one of the martyr cities of the revolution and the fighting there was intense. My parents had a good intuition to send us away in vacation. From 21 December until 31 December my father went daily through a rain of bullets from home to the train-station at 10 in the evening when the train from the mountains usually came. The phones were not working, there was no way for him to contact us. He had no idea if we are OK, if there were fighting or not in Sinaia. He came to the train station and waited for one hour until he was sure no train came that day, then returned home to my mother through another rain of bullets. I can not imagine what was in their minds not knowing anything about what their children were doing, if they were safe or not, if they were alive or not. When the train stopped on New Years Eve in our small train station and I stepped out with my sister and grandparents on the platform I saw my father for the time in his life falling on his knees and crying.

December 31 the trains started working again, the fighting stopped already for a few days. It started to snow very early in the morning. There was a thick beautiful layer of snow on the tress and the mountains around us. It was so beautiful and peaceful. It looked like the sky was happy for our freedom, it was happy that the massacre of the Romanian's youth stopped and it tried to cover with this beautiful white pure snow the blood spilled in the last days. There was no train directly going to our hometown so we took a train to Ploiesti and waited there for another 5 hours for a train going to Braila. The Ploiesti train station is one of the biggest in the country. There was chaos and noise, everybody was trying to get home. There were wounded with bloody bandages and soldier with riffle guns. It was cold and scary and the snow around was already muddy from the hundreds of boots. We boarded a train for Braila at 4 in the afternoon. As we stepped inside we realized it was full of soldiers and revolutionaries who were returning home from Bucharest to our hometown or to the end station in Galati. Some were sleeping exhausted, most of them were dirty and smelling of sweat, some were wounded and had bandages. They were tired, however a place was made with respect for the 2 old people with the 2 littlechildren. In our compartment there was a young man with a bandage around the head and the blood was visible on one side of it. My grandparents started talking loudly with them, they were smiling and laughing, reading the first newspapers after revolution. There was a feeling of excitement.

It was already very dark outside and we were soon to arrive to our destination, when a very young soldier in front of me put his hand in his green bag and took out 2 oranges and offered them us. "For the children" he said. We were in shock, I didn't dare to put out my hand to take them. Giving away an orange in that time was absolutely unheard off, oranges were rare and special. Nobody offered them just like this. The soldier smiled and put them in my lap. "For the children" he repeated. And the he lied back with the head on the back of his seat smiling "now we don't have to be afraid, our children will eat oranges whenever they want." In a few moments the compartment smelled of the citrus perfume. Your Christmases might smell of cinnamon or cabbage soup or of freshly baked cookies, but my Christmas will always smell of freshly opened oranges.