I Must Betray You

Paradise: If communism is Paradise, why do we need barriers, walls, and laws to keep people from escaping?

How could we expect others to feel our pain or hear our cries for help when all we could do was whisper?

Good luck comes at a price. Bad luck is free.

An old woman is fast asleep when she hears a knock at the door. Who is it? she whispers, terrified. It is death, the voice answers. Oh, good. I thought it might be the Securitate.

As the saying goes, better to die standing than live kneeling.

You’re wrong. They steal our power by making us believe we don’t have any. They’re controlling us through our own fear.

Trading Kents for the lives of children. And he said it without hesitation, without the pain and shameful truth it carried—that the guards cared more about nicotine than humans.

Will YOU REMEMBER ME? A boy with wings of hope. Strapped to his back. That never had a chance to open, denied Fforever knowing, What he could have become. What we all could have become.

The State controls the amount of food we eat, our electricity, our transportation, the information we receive. But with philosophy, we control our own minds. What if the internal landscape was ours to build and paint?

Do you hear me? Reciting jokes Laughing to hide the tears of truth That we are denied the present With empty promises Of an emptier future.

But I was not going to have a breakdown. I was going to take them all down.

Sorrow. Anger. An expanse of emptiness that takes form as a separate entity living inside of you. It digs, takes root, and dwells there. And somehow, you know that even if it worms its way out, there will be no relief. If it leaves, there will be nothing left but charred remains, like the inside of a house torched by fire.

When we don't know the full story, sometimes we create one of our own. That's what I had done. And that can be dangerous.

What is the cost of self-worth?

Your father's hungry, Cristian, literally and figuratively. Ration cards in the 1980s? We had more food during World War II," complained Bunu. "Do you see the lunacy of all this? They've got us brainwashed, standing in lines for hours, grateful for rotten beans. But what is the cost of self-worth?

Mistrust is a form of terror. The regime pits us against one another

You think you know someone. And when you realize you're wrong, the humiliation steals something from you. Your mind becomes a thick forest of dark thoughts and you wonder; 'what else am I not seeing?

I didn’t yet know that sometimes in outwitting others, we accidentally outwit ourselves.

This never knowing, it weakens us,” Bunu would say. “It’s a form of control. They know exactly what they’re doing.

A LETTER FROM ROMANIA Do you see me? Squinting beneath the half-light, Searching for a key to The locked door of the world, Lost within my own shadow Amidst an empire of fear. Do you feel me? Heating a brick To warm my sleep. Drifting into dreams, In search of myself, In search of a conscience, a country. Do you hear me? Reciting jokes Laughing to hide tears of truth That we are denied the present With empty promises Of an emptier future. Do you pity me? Lips that know no taste of fruit, Lonely in a country of millions, Stumbling toward the gallows Of bad decisions While the walls listen and laugh. Will you remember me? A boy with wings of hope Strapped to his back That never had a chance to open, Denied forever knowing What he could have become. What we all could have become.

We were marked “present” in attendance but were often absent from ourselves.

An unexamined life is not worth living.

Just remember, Pui, good luck comes at a price. Bad luck is free.

If communism is Paradise, why do we need barriers, walls, and laws to keep people from escaping? A great question indeed. In the days ahead, let us not forget these sentiments as we reflect upon communism's aim to create a man without a memory.

Sometimes we think we know. We’re sure we know. But we know nothing. Years pass and eventually, time becomes the unveiler of truth.

He had stolen us from ourselves, for himself. He had broken the soul of Romania and parched a beautiful country into an apocalyptic landscape of the lost.

But the person responsible - he wasn't suffering. We were. Our hero, Draculescu, sat in his cardboard castle wearing a hollow crown, surrounding himself with clapping men who bowed to him as the Golden Man of the Carpathians while his people suffered, starved, and lived in terror.

I’ll take it. I’ll keep it locked in the box. Maybe we can trade it for medicine for Bunu.” Cici looked at me, displeased. “A Coke and a dollar. What’s going on, Pui?” she whispered. “Nothing,” I assured her. “Just good luck and bad luck.” Cici nodded slowly, suspicious. “Just remember, Pui, good luck comes at a price. Bad luck is free.

They steal our power by making us believe we don’t have any,” said Bunu. “But words and creative phrases—they have power, Cristian. Explore that power in your mind.