Let There Be Peace!

I watched yesterday while they were demolishing an old house nearby. And it all got into unsettling dimensions since before this, I watched videos and seen pictures of what is going on in Ukraine.

I can’t stop thinking that this cannot be possible, but the suffering is real and the danger even so.

When I wrote the novella ‘I am a Veteran! (in Romanian - Sunt Veteran!)’, my focus was on what had my grandfather experienced while fighting in the World War II, and also wishing that the history will not repeat itself and that all of us learn from the past. Wars are never fought for the wellbeing and prosperity of simple people, especially since simple people are the ones losing their lives in the battle.

 

I just hope that this wish for peace and tranquility will come true as soon as possible:

‘….

I still remember that bitter taste that could not be washed with water or bread. It was the taste of fear. At a certain point, we did not know anymore of what we were afraid. Of death, of hunger, of thirst, of losing our limbs, of lice?! I had never seen robots, but I had heard they existed. And in the smut that surrounded us, while on the battlefield, we all seemed like robots marching forward. We were scared but we still went forward. Some of us were in such a state of shock that they had lost their weapons and were moving forward because the others next to me were doing that. I remember that once I tried to say a prayer, but the loud noise and the sizzling of the bullets passing us hindered me from uttering more than ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, …’ . Boom! Boom! And so I forgot the line of the prayer I was uttering and started again than ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, …’ . Boom!

We kept walking. And walking. We did not even know to where. As if us going forward meant that this land marked out with our blood would end and we could be saved of the horror of dying, of the pain wails around us, of the open eyes so still and ominous of the fallen bodies, of the smell of the burned air. Maybe some of us were dreaming of clean sheets. But I just wanted to get to a quiet place, a place where one could only hear the birds sing and the land was dry, and not swamping with blood.‘

(paragraph from the novella din nuvela ‘I am a Veteran!' (in Romanian - Sunt Veteran!)