The Man Is Dead, But Only on Paper
BARLAD, Romania — Reliu Constantin had not been home in almost 20 years. His family had not heard from him in all that time, and he hadn’t sent any money back. All efforts to locate him in Turkey, where he had gone for work, had been fruitless.
Under the circumstances, it seemed reasonable that his estranged wife asked a Romanian court to declare him legally dead. A death certificate was issued in 2016. The only problem was that Mr. Constantin was very much alive.
But that was just the beginning of Mr. Constantin’s troubles, as he discovered when he finally returned home in January. A different Romanian court last month refused to overturn his death certificate, leaving him in limbo between life and administrative death.
“I am officially dead. I have no income,” he said, sitting in a dingy Communist- era apartment block in the city of Barlad. “I spend my days going back and forth between governmental agencies, the police station, the courts. I have diabetes, without papers I can’t go for a medical checkup.”
His apparent return from the grave was also hard for friends and family. His mother was hospitalized for three days with shock after seeing him. His daughter Luiza, now in her late 30s and living in Spain, reproached him for being absent for the last 20 years. “Do you know what I’ve been through? I have three kids,” he says she told him.
Mr. Constantin returned to Romania in January after being deported from Turkey, where the authorities discovered he had been living illegally for almost two decades.
He had gone to Turkey in 1992, initially working on a building site and then as a cook. At first, he returned every few months, and he sent money back to his wife and young daughter. But in 1999, during a visit home, he decided to leave for good.
In Mr. Constantin’s telling, his was an acrimonious and unhappy marriage, with infidelity on both sides. During that last visit home, his wife was drinking heavily and a man turned up on his doorstep around midnight.
His wife, who now lives in Italy, did not respond to repeated attempts to reach her.
“I cut off ties with everyone, as I didn’t want them tracking me down,” he said. “I knew it was hard for my daughter, but I felt it would be better for her.”
It wasn’t until 2013, after not hearing from her husband for 14 years, that Mr. Constantin’s wife asked a court to declare him dead.
On landing in Romania after 26 days in Turkish detention, he was given the news. “At the airport in Bucharest,” he said, “I was surrounded by customs officials. They said, ‘ You’re dead.’ I thought they were joking.”
“I’m a living ghost,” he said. “My daily routine has been waiting around, going to fix my mother’s bandages, going to check with the tribunal to see if anything has changed.”
Because he cannot work without an ID, he lives on handouts from relatives.
A lawyer who is helping him on a pro bono basis, Cristian Calinita, said he had sent the required documents for Mr. Constantin. “Once it is registered, it should be about two weeks to be solved,” Mr. Calinita said.
Beyond being declared alive again, Mr. Constantin hopes to return to Turkey.
“I want to be buried in Turkey,” he said. “My life is there.”