My Life, My Country

                                                 My Life, My Country

                                                                Chapter 1    

                                                     When spring didn't come

The noise was profound and growing accompanied with a slow shake of the building. The first seconds gave us the impression of an earthquake but then its enduring crescendo made us run out to the balcony of our second flour apartment in Patission Avenue. On the right, we could see in the distance their coming - large, heavy, scary and disgraceful - the military monsters called tanks, rolling along the avenue, in a peaceful Friday morning of the 21rst of April. People standing on the pavement and on the other balconies, were watching frozen and speechless from shock, wonder and fear.

"What is it, Daddy? Is it a national celebration today?" I asked my father.

"No, it isn't", he replied coldly. "It is junta".            

"Oh", I said with none at all understanding, but the sound of this unknown word along with the site of the army and the look on the faces of my parents somehow signified something bad and terrifying and inauspicious.

My father asked us to get inside and he shut the doors of the balcony trying to prevent the rasping sound of the tanks enter our home. He turned on the radio. An unusually ugly voice were announcing between musical brakes -national marches and popular songs- that the army had taken over the government for the sake of the country and its people, giving instructions of dos and don'ts, and all kind of orders. 

They send me in my room while they sat on the living room talking, in a whispering voice, as if they were trying to hide not only their conversation but their thoughts as well. I looked through my window were I could see pieces of the scenery on the road. I felt my heart freezing, my emotions and thoughts so confused. The radio was reassuring us loudly that everything was under control but my parents seemed worried about this junta and myself had to choose whom to believe. I chose my parents, of course. At that time I couldn't quite comprehend what was this all about, but the situation felt unusual. Ugly unusual.

After a while I could see no more tanks through my window but I could hear their noise fading away. Their heavy drifting seemed to have carried away the promising lightness of the springtime atmosphere leaving behind the bigness of their being into our hearts, our minds and our fate. It seemed it carried away my childhood as well.

I was only eleven at that time, with no particular worries, as a child should be. I was the younger daughter after a brother who already was in Paris for his studies in music. My father was an architect working as a public servant in the ministry of public works and he was the only one in his family who was not an actor. Everybody else was. And the tree was huge: aunts and uncles, grand parents, cousins, even my much elder sister from his first marriage with an actress, also, all people of the theater, all except my father who liked to repeat Shakespeare's saying "Life is a play", adding, "and it involves a lot of pretending already". And all these branches of our family tree were twice and trice married, with children from their different marriages, creating a big mess to understand who is whose, even to ourselves.  

On the top of the tree was a grand mother, alone from grand fathers. She was really grand from every point of view.  Cybele was "The "First Lady of the Theater", as they used to call her, a beautiful, awesome, grandiose creature whose being in a room could fill, light, possess, dominate and control it with just one look or one word, sometimes said like a Zen master, sometimes like a dictator. Either ways, it demanded from the rest discipline, devotion and respect rather than love. As she got married too young, she had the chance to see some grand-grand children.  She was always much sweeter with the youngest, but never to the point to let her arms and her lap host them. She had three marriages and three divorces: the first husband was also an actor and made her famous, the second was a theatrical producer and made her rich, and the third one was a prime minister and made my father get fired.   

The days that followed the coup were filled of learning the new rules of living. We were not allowed to gather in groups outside or inside our homes or anywhere else. We were not allowed to speak freely and the mail arrived opened. We could be arrested with no need of a warrant, any time, any place. People could easily go through marshal courts and, found guilty of treason, be executed immediately. 

My parents felt the need to inform me what this junta was all about. After they explained me everything about this new situation, the most important was to teach and train me in a new way of behavior. I was not supposed to talk to people openly, not even to those whom we considered as close or friends. I should be extremely careful on the phone - which by the way started making funny noises and brakes and sometimes I could even hear or thought to have heard the sound of someone's breathing - I should keep going to school and act normally as nothing happened and, apart my lessons, in every other question I should reply I don't know, have no idea, and I should never ask anything anybody, only my parents, trust nobody, only my parents.

I stopped exchanging visits with my friends and each time I was on the phone my mother stood in front of me looking me right in my eyes, hers wild and wide open, reminding me of how careful I should be in my words. And although they kept telling me not to trust anybody but them, they didn't always trust me and had these long private talks, always whispered, in an air of worrying, fear and insecure. All, except from one, which scared me so much and made me realize that things were really bad.

It happened one month after the coup when my father came back from work and started talking to my mother but instead of whispers I heard shouts and cries.

  "Why? Why! We are not relatives! He was your mother's third husband. We are not blood relatives and you were never a member of his party. You were not politically involved with him or with anybody else. When he was a prime minister and they were still married you gained nothing. Nothing! Why now this? Why?" my mother kept asking between loud sobs, a question directed to my father and God at the same time. My father remained calm, as God, I suppose, and tried to calm her too doing the 'it could be worse' technique.

"We should be grateful that I am not in prison or exiled, like they do with the communists. I only lost my job".

 "You only lost your job? You only lost your job!  You are in your 60's and have a son who studies in Paris and a daughter who still goes to school. How are we going to live now? Where will you find another work? You needed a few more years to get a pension. Now what?"

They saw me standing at the opening of the door but this time they didn't send me to my room. My mother started a new round of crying in my presence and my father tried to explain the reason: these army people told him he was no longer working in the ministry. He wasn't exactly fired, because according to the constitution no public servant can be dismissed, but they abolished his position as a consultant, so he was automatically with no subject, therefore no work. In this case, he had no right of getting any restitution, they even asked him to return the one third of his pay as he was not supposed to work the whole month. 

I could see despair in my mother's crying and sadness in my father's calm talk. As for myself, this was the final goodbye to my childhood. The new living rules limited my innocence to a constantly suspicious and reserved person. Then the loss of our financial security and stability created more changes, more excises, more stress and more sadness.

That spring refused to come, and winter had taken all over my country.