Hope lifts a heart jaded by history
TWENTY-NINE years ago, I was preparing to set off for Germany and Romania, alone, for a daunting research project. It resulted in a screenplay, a novel, a story for older children and a magazine short story.
There was snow on the streets of Timisoara ( where the uprising against the communist tyrant Ceausescu started) and many little candlelit shrines in Bucharest, marking where people were killed.
I made two long visits to Romania and met cowed people suddenly full of hope. How disappointing it is to realise that today Romania (an EU member) has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world . . .
Anyway, I’ve recently had a delightful email exchange (through my website) with a 12-year-old in Bucharest who’s reading my novel, The Voices Of Silence, set in 1989 at the time of the revolution. I’m so pleased!
She asked me various questions, including who the main character was based on. Nobody, I replied, because novelists can make things up. She wrote back: ‘I didn’t think Flora was a made-up character because she sounds so realistic. I hope that something devastating like the Romanian Revolution doesn’t happen again in Romania or in the world.’
Ah, my dear, I thought, but it will . . . and sometimes (as in Romania) the upheaval heralds a change for the better.
Surely children in former Eastern Bloc countries are taught what communism was like? When everybody was terrified of the Secret Police? When there was nothing in the shops, and only the elite had access to the all-powerful dollar? That was on-going devastation.
Just lately, dear readers, I confess I’ve been feeling jaded. Those of us who have lived through political changes, seen lying leaders come and go, listened to the latest nonsense, witnessed the hypocrisy of the ‘virtuous’, heard the angry shrieks of the young . . . no wonder we feel there’s nothing new under the sun. Except sad, freshly minted hopes.
BEL answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.