Joe Keller Lived in Romania for Two Years Under Ceausescu's Regime

Joe Keller wrote:

I was on a flight out of Communist Bucharest, Romania on my way to Frankfurt. I was on Lufthansa. It was filled with Romanians who had bought their way to freedom. But, they knew they were not free until they were out of Romanian airspace.

The tension was thick and I could see the fear in their faces.  I had gotten up to stretch legs and looked out the windows. Turning around, I told the nervous faces to relax, we were no longer in Romania and they were safe.

One of them asked me how I could be sure. I told them to look out the windows, all the towns had lights.  The towns in Romania were largely blacked out.

Heads went to the windows and there was a huge cheer and collective sigh of relief with lots of tears and hugging.

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My Latest Story

Read my latest story at The Epoch Times:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-warm-day-brings-back-memories-of-summers-under-communism_2582514.html

Inese's Story of Pain and Triumph

Inese before the fire

Our paths have crossed in 1998. I was looking for an elegant but inexpensive dress in Parisians, a department store in the newly opened mall in the neighboring town. The stylishly dressed blonde, blue-eyed associate seemed out of place; she certainly did not look southern, did not dress southern, she belonged in a chic boutique in Europe.

With her foreign accent and impeccable professionalism, she offered to search off the show floor for a classy dress. After about ten minutes she returned with a beautiful black dress with tiny white polka dots, perfect for a teacher like me. I bought the dress and, while chatting with Inese, I found out that she was from Latvia and had recently gotten married to a local man named Mike, thus explaining her American last name.

This chance encounter was meant for a reason but I did not know why at the time. I had returned many times afterwards and we spent time eating out, socializing, and talking about the past and the future. We invited her into our home and she visited a few times with her young daughters. We built a friendship based on the common experiences of having lived in Eastern Europe under the communist boot, and the life of a foreign transplant married to an American.

Trying to fit into the southern culture was challenging because acceptance was based on how many generations of one’s ancestors lived in those parts. A college education or the willingness to assimilate and contribute to society in a positive way was far less significant. Seven generations of southern residence, we were told, was the passport to societal acceptance. Little did they know that, instead of legal immigrants like us, in two decades Americans would be forced by their own governments to accept illegal immigrants and dangerous refugees from far more threatening locales and backgrounds.

Inese was born and raised in Riga, Latvia, and speaks fluent Russian and Latvian. Her love of tea changed her life forever on a fateful day in May 1974. She was eight years old and home alone. As she turned on the gas stove, a slow leak which had built up gas in the small room blew up in her face and ignited her flannel nightgown. Not knowing what to do, she crouched down and hid her face inside her knees, a move that saved her face but burned her entire torso. By the time the fire was put out, she had third degree burns on 60 percent of her body. A neighbor pulled off what remained of her thick gown which had exacerbated her severe burns.

The same neighbor called an ambulance and the day care where her father was picking up her three-year old brother. He dropped everything and rushed home.  The ambulance was already there and Inese was being whisked away on a stretcher, to the children’s wing of the Riga hospital.  Her mom was so distraught that she had to be admitted as well for a nervous breakdown. For two weeks she was cared for in the same hospital in which her daughter was struggling between life and death. Doctors did not expect Inese to survive and had told her dad to prepare for the worst.

But miraculously, she did wake up from her coma and told her doctor that she had seen a long and narrow tunnel with a bright light at the end. A booming voice had told her, it was not her time, she had to go back. That’s when she opened her eyes for the first time to such excruciating pain that she still remembers it vividly today, more than four decades later.

Inese endured three months of agonizing and unimaginable pain; her dad watched over her with devotion and fervent prayer. He sold most valuables and emptied his savings in order to bribe doctors and medical personnel with walk-around cash in envelopes, as it was the case in every socialist/communist country, to give extra medical attention to his little girl. One doctor, who was to care for her for many years, refused any money.

Once a week, Inese was taken to a special bath where she was soaked in a purple solution that would help nurses cut away, peel off, and remove the bandages that would stick to her burned flesh. The purple dye was an antiseptic to prevent infection. When morphine wore off, the eight-year old little girl would suffer merciless pain.

At the end of three months of torturous care, she was released just in time to start second grade. Her dancing days as an aspiring ballerina were over. Physical therapy did not help her much – the wounds were too fresh and she needed more grafts and many plastic surgeries for years. That is how her eight-year trek to St. Petersburg, then part of the USSR, began, every spring and summer vacation, for much needed reconstructions.

She and her mom traveled by train from Riga, Latvia, to St. Petersburg from 9:00 p.m. to 9 a.m., a 12-hour overnight ride. A caring friend would put her mom up in her small apartment for the duration. Remarkably, the courageous Inese remained an honor roll student through her entire ordeal. By the time she finished all possible plastic reconstructions, high school was almost over.

After college, Inese met, fell in love with, and married a Russian officer in 1987, at the age of 22, and settled into a difficult life on his assigned base in Irkutsk, Siberia, in the former USSR. To visit her mom and dad, Inese would fly for nine hours to Riga, Latvia, and back, even when she became pregnant. Despite all her pain and suffering, Inese gave birth to two beautiful girls in 1988 and 1989. The difficult marriage, drowning in infidelity and alcohol, ended five years later and it seemed that she was going to remain a single mom in Riga until God brought Mike into her life.

It was hard for most men to accept the responsibility of raising someone else’s little girls but Mike had a deep faith in God and a rare generosity. His kindness, determination, and love convinced her to marry him even though it meant that she had to uproot again and move to another foreign country. They were married in 1998, the year I met her in Tupelo.

A young grandmother, Inese is living today the peaceful life full of grace she always yearned for, even though one of her daughters is estranged from the family. Church, prayer, family, and God are very important parts of her life. She confessed to me recently that all the pain she endured during the eight years of constant physical therapy, skin grafts from her legs, and plastic surgeries, even the botched one in the U.S., do not even compare with the pain of not having the love and respect of her estranged daughter.

Yet Inese feels blessed and remains happy, positive, and hopeful, centered on her Christian faith, a true inspiration for other burn victims. During her life’s struggles, she had crossed the globe; she emerged from the difficult times of communist tyranny in USSR and landed in our vast country, where she built a better life for herself and for her family.

Malalai, an Afghani's Story

Bamiyan Valley

Malalai is tall and willowy, an elegantly dressed Afghani beauty with a witty sense of humor. Her piercing and fascinating green eyes remind me of Michael Zhang’s iconic 1995 National Geographic portrait of the mysterious “Afghan Girl.”

With such expressive eyes, it is easy to imagine the modern version of Mona Lisa. You would not know by her confident demeanor and warm smile the gut-wrenching pain and sorrow she harbors in her heart.

Malalai was born and raised in Kabul at a time when life was relatively comfortable and free and girls were allowed to go school and attend the university. The town had parks, trees, vegetation, and had not been devastated by the Russian bombing raids, by the Taliban’s purposeful destruction of any remnant of history and culture, and by the fighting between the liberating American troops and the Taliban.

The Taliban was born as a resistance movement to free Afghanistan of Soviet troops, following the Soviet invasion in 1979. Aided by the United States and Pakistan, the Afghan Mujahedeen injured and killed many Russians. According to the New York Times, the Soviet Union lost 15,000 soldiers over a ten-year period.

Three years after the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, Afghani Mujahedeen led by Massoud took over the country and overthrew President Sayid Mohammed Najibullah who was backed by the Soviets.

The Taliban was one of the Mujahedeen factions fighting for power to fill the vacuum left by President Najibullah. The Taliban faction was composed of Sunni Muslim Pashtuns. Pashtuns are heavily concentrated in the North-West Frontier Province. The command center for the Mujahedeen fighters who were battling the Soviets was located in this province.

Afghani woman in Kabul

The draconian Taliban, who ordered windows painted black and women dressed in blue burkas, whipped women mercilessly if they happened to show any skin at all.  Girls could no longer go to school. Music, art, painting, photography, and films were forbidden.

Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the destruction of the two famous Buddhas of Bamiyan. They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 in spite of vehement international protests and offers to save them from demolition.

Bamiyan Buddhas

The priceless sixth century statues were carved into the side of the Bamwam valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, 140 miles northwest of Kabul. Both statues were examples of Gandhara art and were built in 507 A.D. (the smaller one, 35 m tall) and 554 A.D (the larger one). The Taliban government declared these priceless statues “idols.” It is still painful to watch David Adams’ film, “Journey to the Ends of the Earth,” showing their obliteration.

Little remains of the beautiful Paghman Gardens, outside of Kabul, formerly decorated with a Roman style triumphant arch. People relaxed on weekends there, bringing their families for picnics; the dress code was European.

Paghman Gardens

Malalai speaks with a soft but firm voice. The pain overcomes her from time to time and her eyes tear up. “The Taliban changed everything. If it was bad under the Russian occupation, the Taliban made it infinitely worse. Ladies could not get out of the house without men. The extended family had to live together for safety reasons and out of necessity. My sister Hamida was a widow with four kids during the Taliban rule. My brother was a professor at a local college but Taliban closed all colleges and my brother stayed home.”

The night our tragedy happened, the Taliban was sending men around, ordering people to board up their windows or paint them black to conceal light and the silhouettes of women inside the house. We could hear bombing again. We never knew who was bombing, they were bombing constantly. My mom heard a knock on the door at 10 p.m. My brother Nasir answered the door - it was one of my nieces asking him to go to their house. During the bombing raid, her mother, Hamida, was wounded and her 13-year old daughter Shkeeb had been killed by shrapnel.

Nasir bandaged Hamida the best he could to stave off the bleeding and drove her six hours to an open “hospital” and had to leave her there and return home. Hamida stayed in a coma for six months from the wounds received that night.  My brother drove back to Kabul to take care of the funeral for our 13-year old niece. From the horrible shock, my father, Aslam, passed away that same night as well, probably from a heart attack or stroke.

Nasir was going to bury my dad and my niece as soon as they got permission. The next day, he was painting the windows black as the Taliban had ordered, and a bombing raid started again. Mom said that my brother walked from the window towards her; he was pale, wobbly, and speechless; mom became concerned and asked what happened because he looked rather strange; he grabbed my mom and that is when she saw that a piece of shrapnel had pierced his heart. Blood was oozing from the hole. Nasir was 34 years old. My mom was with him all night. In the end, neighbors had to help bury all three family members, my niece, my dad, and my brother, in the mosque nearby because the cemeteries were too far.

After six months in a coma, my sister Hamida, her three remaining children, and my mom crossed into Pakistan where she underwent three operations. When she was stronger and could talk and walk, she was told of Nasir’s death and of our dad’s passing in 1993.

Hamida lives in Vancouver now. She was granted asylum in Canada during her stay in Pakistan when she was treated for her wounds.  While in a Canadian hospital, as they were attempting to remove more shrapnel lodged in her body, Hamida found out that she had breast cancer. While undergoing chemotherapy, her only son, 24-years old, was killed by a drunk driver. Hamida is cancer free now and lives with her two remaining daughters.

Malalai was spared the gruesome details, she was already in the U.S. when she received the dreadful telegram one day. She came to the U.S. in 1986 as a 22-year old sponsored by another sister. The government had given her a travel visa to come to the U.S. to help her dad with a painful back surgery that had temporarily paralyzed him. He went back to his wife and family but Malalai stayed with her sister. She found the love of her life through a college classmate and got married here. She never went back because she would have been killed as a defector. She can go back now to visit but she does not feel safe.

During her life in Afghanistan, before the Taliban, women did not wear burkas, they wore western clothes. Even her mom, Kadjia, who is 85 years old wears only a head scarf. “We had a good life, we were happy with what we had. We dressed up like we do here, nothing different, we did not want to go back to the stone ages. We had nice homes, nice developments, people went on vacations, we had a normal life but the Taliban turned everything upside down.”

Decorated Policharki Prison Cell in Kabul

Malalai had two brothers who were jailed during the Russian occupation, 8 and 4 years respectively. Their crimes were political, fighting the Russians. The Mujahedeen released them and both immigrated to the U.S. in 1996.

During bombing raids Malalai’s family hid in the cellar, a dark and dank dungeon with no electricity where they could not stay a long time because sewer pipes ran everywhere and it was hard to breathe. Hospitals had been destroyed. The “hospital” where Hamida was taken was not even a hospital, it was someone’s home that was taking in wounded people. They did not have much medicine or medical treatment. People were cared for and bandaged but there were no doctors. “The bombing raids destroyed the hospitals and the Taliban did the rest, just like they did the Buddhas.”

Where did people get their food and medicine when they were under siege?  They had a schedule to go stand in line and get food but sometimes came home empty-handed. No food aid from the west. Water came from wells, sometimes it was really polluted, and they had to boil it to cook with it or drink it. There was no running water or electricity except for 10 minutes intervals and everyone hurried to fill bottles, buckets, and any container available. It was a challenge to keep clean or wash clothes. “When I left in 1986, no electricity, nothing, we were cooking on the stove with charcoal. My brother Nasir invented a makeshift grill from an oil metal can and made a frame over the charcoal.”

Malalai’s youngest brother went back to Afghanistan for a very painful visit four years ago. The government found Hamida and asked her to come and disinter her daughter, her brother, and her father’s remains from the mosque and bury them into a cemetery.  Sawyar, the 40-year old youngest brother went instead. He was very depressed, he would not talk about his visit for a long time. He was very quiet and did not want to socialize. He said, he was shocked, graveyards were everywhere, even by the airport. Every mile after mile had graves. It was worse than what he had seen 8-9 years before. And the Taliban is coming back.

Blazing the Trail of Seven Vultures

The sudden balmy day had prompted him to explore the newly forged and difficult trail in the forest, leading into the marshy area along the Potomac. A creek’s tributaries flow into the river all over the densely forested and marshy banks.

He’s always wanted to venture into this area. Until recently, it was impossible to explore it without some bridges over deep marshy patches. There was so much mud, it felt like quick sand. It would have been suicidal to get trapped in those areas with no possibility of rescue. The more he would have struggled to free himself, the more he would have sunk into the mud.

As soon as his boots leave the higher elevations at the edge of the forest, he sinks into the soaked ground. He is thankful for a Gandalf-like walking stick that provides him with much- needed balance and traction. The melting snow saturated the soil. The black mud traps his feet to the ankle like a natural vise. When he walks, the slosh and the mud enveloping his rubber boots make a popping sound.

A thick carpet of dead leaves, on the boundaries of the trail, makes it possible to gain some traction. The prints of deer hooves, three inches deep, are visible here and there. They always roam in packs of at least five.

Pristine snow patches are still clinging to the ground underneath trees with peachy canopies of what appears to be dead leaves that had refused to fall and cover the ground.

As he crosses tiny tributaries, still-under-construction wooden bridges fill the air with the aroma of freshly cut planks of lumber.

The scent of rotting fallen trees and decaying moisture is overpowering. Mushrooms of various shapes, sizes, and colors grow everywhere.

An hour into his walk, he spots a flock of seven vultures feasting on the remains of a frozen dog. The carcass is half eaten and the birds of prey seem to hold their ground with menacing sounds and wind flapping. He backtracks slowly lest the vultures decide to attack him. The air has a putrid quality and he is anxious to put some distance between him and the scavengers.

Perhaps the dog escaped his owners’ care, decided to roam too far from the neighborhood and got trapped in the ice or was attacked by coyotes. Are his owners still looking for him? Maybe he was a stray dog with no home to go to and died of exposure to the recent extreme cold weather.

He trudges through mud in the opposite direction all the way to the promontory overlooking the river, not far from the railroad bridge.  A freight train is whistling in the distance. The train’s loud warning whistle blares right before the bridge crossing. Not that any human or animal would be foolish enough to be caught on the train tracks on the bridge with no area to escape other than jumping to certain death into the river below.

The water level is extremely low; the flood areas are completely dry with a few patches of frozen water. The dense and strangulating water lilies have long since died. He could actually walk across the dry land. During the blizzard of 2010, the water level was much higher; the entire flood area looked like a skating rink with deep water frozen solid. Reeds were protruding from the ice like impaling bayonets.

The beaver dam is so dry, he can safely walk across the water to the other side of the forest. Empty large snail shells are littering the yellow soil. After two and a half hours of exploration, he decides to return home. He baptizes this sinewy walking path, the Trail of Seven Vultures.

The Watermelon Patch

Mr. Goodman, a lanky, hardened, coveralls-clad southern gentleman, had magical calloused hands. He could grow the largest and sweetest watermelons for miles and miles. His famous Watermelon Patch opened every summer morning with the day’s harvest. There was a steady streaming line of cars and, they sold very quickly.

Everyone waited with bated breath for the stand to open in June or July, depending on the growing season. We often drove on Hwy. 45 to check out the shuttered stand and left disappointed when the place was deserted.

The cantaloupes had a special fragrance oozing through the tough skin. The fresh watermelons cracked ahead of the knife, red and yellow skin varieties, and plump with juice, ripe and glistening from the natural sweetness. We fought over the first cut slices and especially the crested part of the slice. There was a cutting ritual, first in half, then each slice lengthwise, then tall sections off each slice – no melon balls in our family.

Picking the black seeds, as the red juice dribbled down our chins, we had an inimitable smile of satisfaction of having tasted perfection. We made fun of those who salted their slices. It was such a waste of natural sweetness!

I tried to save the seeds and grow my own patch but my watermelons never tasted so sweet or grew as large as Mr. Goodman’s.  He had a secret he never shared or a magical piece of land that grew Jack and the Bean Stalk sized melons.

The summer of 2008 was very disappointing and sad - the Watermelon Patch never opened. Mr. Goodman had a heart attack. He survived but was told by doctors to stop doing strenuous work – and growing, picking, and hauling watermelons to the stand was hard work.

Dad and I used to go to the market in Romania to buy much smaller watermelons; the climate was colder and they never grew so large. The farmers let us cut a small triangle into the melon and taste the flesh before we carried it home. We haggled over the price if the melon was not very sweet. Once we brought it home in a shopping bag, Dad put it in the bathtub and ran a small stream of cold water over it because we did not have refrigerators. We did not use the tub in summertime anyway, we had no hot water. In a few hours, Dad would slice the chilled watermelon open. It was a royal treat because we only had fresh vegetables and fruits in summertime.

I drove on Hwy. 45 this April. The stand and the fenced area were falling apart. The sign was leaning, discolored by rain and sunshine. I stopped as if I was trying to smell the melon harvest of the past. It was raining and I all I could smell was wet dirt. But my imagination could see the mounds of cherished watermelons.

I never tasted such exceptional watermelons since then. I wished Mr. Goodman had shared his secret with me. I looked up his name in the phone book but there was no record of him. Maybe he moved or is growing tasty sweet watermelons in heaven. Wherever he is, I hope he is happy. His hard work gave us a patch of deliciousness every summer.

The Flushing Outhouse

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55958

Ray loves to tell stories about his childhood of long ago America - his eyes twinkle with excitement. He was a teen in rural West Virginia of 1950, carefree and happy. His parents’ farmhouse lacked indoor plumbing, not that it bothered the boys that much. They bathed every Saturday evening before church in the family washtub in the kitchen after the adults in the household.

Water was heated on the stovetop and everyone took their turns in the same soapy water, gradually turning into muddy brown. The metal tub was large enough to accommodate one person sitting in a crouched position. By the time the boys got to bathe, the water was dirty and lukewarm. The adage, “don’t’ throw the baby out with the bathwater” was certainly true.

It was a royal treat in summertime to wash in the creek that crossed the farm nearby. The boys learned to swim there, frolicked in their underwear, drank the water, and took baths upstream or downstream, wherever was most convenient at the moment. The creek was their refrigerator as well. In the shallows, they kept bottles of fresh, unpasteurized cow’s milk. In August, the creek kept watermelons cold.

It did not bother Ray that the outhouse was hanging over the creek upstream on stilts, dumping its contents in the water. When a summer deluge came, the tiny creek would swell to raging rapids, overflowing its banks, and floating the outhouse away. The local bridge, a tenth of a mile downstream, would stop the outhouse from its treacherous descent.

Ray’s dad and the boys would bring it back to its resting place, closer to the farmhouse, dragging it through sand and mud with sleds pulled by horses.

The interior was always a sandy, muddy mess and the cleanup with shovels and buckets took hours. Once the outhouse was resting again on its stilts, all cleaned up, nobody was too upset over the hard work they had just completed, but everyone bemoaned the loss of the Sears and Roebuck catalog, their free toilet paper.

Happy as coons in a corn field, the boys took turns swinging naked from the trees around the banks, dropping into a deeper hole, splashing in the swollen creek. Most became good swimmers by necessity, yet it was a miracle that nobody drowned.

The creek was truly the nature’s bounty in a time when people had to be creative to survive. Nobody knew much about modern conveniences nor cared. Ray’s family’s outhouse was the only “flush toilet” for miles around.