walking in Bucharest – Page 2 – a lover of the road

“Have you ever felt the ground falling from beneath your feet?”

The thin, short haired lactation consultant asks the three of us, sitting with our hands resting on our bumps at this white, round table in a shabby chic corner tea house in the old city of Bucharest, the only customers this sunny summer morning.

And I’m suddenly back twelve years ago.

“I want us to split”, my boyfriend tells me bluntly, sitting legs apart in the small, torn armchair by the balcony door in our rented studio five bus stops away from the University square in Bucharest. “I don’t love you anymore,” he adds, stretching his long legs across the Turkish carpet in dusty shades of blue on top of the worn out linoleum covering the floor.

I’m mute for a few seconds and I feel my throat exploding and wonder if I’m ever gonna be able to utter a sound again. At the same time, I remember our love making the night before and the goodbye kisses that very morning and the “I love you” before he closed the door behind him and went to work. They all seem like faint memories from another lifetime. What’s happened in the meantime? When did I die? I have no job ’cause “you’ve just finished university, don’t get hired just yet, let’s travel this summer” and nowhere to go. I can’t breathe.

Five months later, having spent about a month apart, we are married. Too afraid of loneliness, both of us, to pass the opportunity. Nine years later we are divorced. On our ten year wedding anniversary we sign the bank papers so I’ll no longer be part of the mortgage contract on our commonly held apartment – a home so hard to leave behind. That same day also happens to be the first day of my last menstruation before I get pregnant.

The two lines on the pregnancy test, on March 8, at around 3 am leave no ground beneath my feet, nothing to hold on to, and force big tears out of my eyes like in a manga comic. Happiness and panic, two long and slippery snakes mating in my solar plexus. Another burial awaits – the girl I used to be is struck dead by two pink lines on a white background she’s just peed on, alone in her boyfriend’s bathroom, the whole universe spinning around her. Yet never again alone, to be accurate.

Then the phone call I get when I am 15 from my first lover, announcing me he’s cheated on me and “I need to meet that girl and discuss our feelings for each other… I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.” I can’t talk. The dirty receiver is heavy in my right hand and my thighs are getting wet as I’m kneeling by the bedside cabinet of my ground floor neighbors, who keep poking their heads around the door to check up on me from time to time. We don’t have our own phone, you see. I have to go down two floors to take the call, leave my corpse on my neighbors’ bedroom floor and then carry my ghost back upstairs again.

Then it’s early morning again, last year in spring, and I’m standing in front of the bed in that scruffy hotel room in Sultanahmet in Istanbul, dimly lit through the thick and brown heavy curtains. Ten years younger than me, short and handsome, amber skin, light brown hair, thick eyebrows and long lashes, full lips covering his tobacco stained teeth, my Syrian lover seems perfect. I’ve taken a shower, put my makeup on, got dressed, packed my suitcase and I’m ready to leave. And I can’t. I can’t wake him up. I can’t open and close that bloody door behind me.

I can’t stop looking at him sleeping there, so vulnerable, his bare chest moving up and down with his soft breath, a bent knee resting over the white sheet, his toes almost reaching the wooden side of the bed. I feel my chest exploding in a thousand pieces at the sight; silently and deadly. I’m perfectly aware I’ll probably never see him again. “Don’t make it difficult”, he says, seeing my face as I pull myself together and wake him up, whispering his name while running my hand over his face. “Take care of yourself, Dhana”, he advises, knowing I’ll never listen. “Just go…”, he adds when I go back the second time for one last kiss. Minutes later, in the car seat taking me to the airport, I say goodbye to the sea.

“How do you know?”, the Cancer boy I’ve met using a dating app asks me, his big, beautiful eyes resting on my lips, unable to look higher. Lying flat on my belly in his bed, I tell him exactly what he did on a specific day in December last year, precisely one week after our first date. “I hate lies”, I warn him. “Please forgive me, I promise I’ll never lie to you again. Can we just leave this behind us? We have so much to do together…” I know I can’t trust him about the first part, but I am perfectly aware he’s absolutely right about the last part. Still, a leftover from the innocent me dies in this scene, too. About a month and a half later, in the same bed, a strong light warms up my womb as if a comet hit the earth and I describe the whole experience in my diary the next morning, so that five weeks later, holding the two lined test in my hand, I find the exact conception date: Valentine’s day/ night. Three weeks after that, manga tears again as I’m listening to my baby’s heart during the first ultrasound in the doctor’s office.

“Yes, I have…” I answer when the lactation consultant says it’s my turn. The other two expecting mothers have already spoken while my memories were flooding my brain like a swollen river on a sunny day in mid spring, when the snow melts all at once.

“And? What can you share with us?”

“You know, my life has changed so much and so many times… And there have been moments when I felt I couldn’t breathe, when there was absolutely nothing familiar to hold on to anymore, nothing to cling to, seemingly no one and nothing to rely on… I’ve felt driven out of my own life. I’ve died. And I’ve survived every time. The hardest thing, feeling suddenly suspended in mid air, was having enough patience to get to the bottom of the pit, having enough patience to fall all the way, to hit the ground. Then crawl and cry down there for as long as necessary and climb back up again. To a new life. I’ve survived all my deaths… Every time… All of us do.” I answer, giggling at the revelation, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and confidence filling me up as my left elbow reaches behind over the bentwood chair back, to make room for my growing heart.

There’s a short silence as the three smiling women are all looking at me as if I’ve just said something important.

PS Attachment is the name of the monster I’m learning to tame.

PPS Took this photo in Văcărești natural park earlier this week – felt like early fall is creeping in…

sunset in vacaresti natural park

The little prince hiding behind his fists, on the coldest hot summer day

It’s a hot day in Bucharest and I’ve arrived half an hour early for my ultrasound appointment. The clinic is right on the street where I spent my university years. So I take a walk and again I feel like a young girl visiting her grandparents in the city, on a summer holiday.

deserted garden bucharest

The dust particles stirred by occasional cars linger in mid air before deciding upon a surface to rest on after their flight. I walk by the old honey shop, where this very old bee keeper, white hair, blue eyes, wearing a sturdy white apron, used to welcome his customers into a different century as they were crossing his threshold. It’s been closed for years. He’s most probably died… I’ll always feel sorry I’ve never been in. I was just thinking I cannot afford to buy anything and was feeling guilty to go in just out of pure pleasure and curiosity. Such limitations have long been overcome by now and I prefer socializing and risk taking to regret.

closed honey shop bucharest

As always, I am impressed by wild gardens and their run down, deserted houses, where parties used to be held in the old times, love made, babies born… My own baby is squirming in my womb and I can feel his weight getting heavier by the day. Gradually his presence is becoming more and more noticeable, more and more real, albeit still miraculous in my view.

garden behind gate bucharest

The cold and sterile environment in the clinic half an hour later is making me uncomfortable and I realize I must be really nervous. My tensed muscles and shallow voice are giving me away. It’s also getting harder to focus and I start feeling like taking off. The doctor pushes the baby with her fingers and then taps on my belly, stinging me with her nails, in repeated, unsuccessful attempts to get him to turn his face towards us. He’s looking away all the time and hiding his face behind his fists. I cannot blame him.

His father, whom his profile seems to take after, is looking at the screen sitting on a chair behind the doctor, paying attention to all the details and trying to get as much of a view of his son as he can. I think he’s too far away and there should be room next to the bed so he can hug my shoulders, kiss me and hold my hand. There isn’t any, although the doctor’s office is impressive in size. Big and cold.

Later on, all three of us attend “The little prince. A show for grownups” and it dawns on me this is how our baby must feel. He’s left his world behind and is now travelling on a different planet. This is how I feel, how I’ve been feeling all my life, actually. An alien trying to establish contact with the species populating this planet, its inhabitants utterly and strangely autistic and so cold that their proximity freezes the blood in my veins. I’m a complete stranger to these people… What am I doing here? I’ve left so many lives behind, so many identities, so many worlds… Where am I heading? Who is by my side? Who have I become?

The first day in Bucharest after a week on the island

It feels as if I were going through the long corridors of a mental institution. What is wrong with these people? I wonder.

The metro ride seems to last forever and I’m looking at people’s faces for a while, before getting out my book. A guy smelling of alcohol sits next to me and keeps falling asleep and over me. After two stops he is replaced by an overweight lady, who strategically places her big shopping bag full of groceries over my foot. I carefully extract it and she has no intention to apologize. I miss the cold politeness and remoteness on the fringes of autism of he Nordic countries. Patience, my dear, I tell myself and go on reading the story about a girl who has no friends and she can see and talk to ghosts.

I interrupt my reading to get off the train and find that it gets more bearable when I get into the park and among the trees, in a shaded alley, where I sit on a bench and enjoy the light being filtered by the leaf curtain. A girl gets up from a nearby bench, mounts her bike and rides off, the water in her plastic bottle fastened behind her seat sending rays of light to the tree trunks lining the alley. I miss my carefree bike riding, having only myself to think of. And as soon as I write this I my head I wonder if that’s even true. If indeed I ever only had myself to worry about and if indeed I miss those times when I longed for my travel companion and a family.

I take out my book, “Stories of the Peculiar”, and finish the story I started on my metro ride to the park. The girl in the story eventually falls in love with a living man, he loves her back, they move in together and have kids.

I am secretly hoping for a happy end, though I am afraid of a disappointment. That is why I don’t reject the possibility of a tragedy. It’s there, masking my hope for a happy end for fear I might look stupid (even to myself) for imagining pure happiness.

When I come to the end, after the ghosts of her dead parents and sister find her in her new home, having looked for her for a long time, and I read the ending

ending of story

I realize I do have a fear of happiness. When everything is fine I am afraid of things going wrong. I tend to be secretive about my plans until they have worked out for fear that spelling them out might spoil their chances of coming true.

I miss our holiday mood.

For photos from our journey in Samothrakis, follow “A lover of the road” on Instagram and Facebook.

Getting ready to leave Harmony Street

“Look how beautiful this is! A clear road ahead, we’re walking, the sun in shining, the air is fresh… No one pushing, nothing like the crowded morning underground ride…” I hesitantly say as we’re walking to the city center this morning.

Four more weeks before I move house. It’s hard. I live in my favorite area in Bucharest, where I’ve wanted to live ever since I first discovered these quiet narrow streets, lined with old houses, some run down, others still retaining some of their former glory in sumptuous ornaments and elegant architecture. Most of them date back to the period between the two world wars or even earlier, before the first world war. They belong to times when rich people were stiff, elegant, conservative and stylish, but also generally well educated.

I moved here at a time in my life when I was going through great changes. I had moved out of my own apartment, where I’d lived for nine years and in which I not only invested finances, but also hopes and dreams and ideas and feelings and a great part of my heart. “The bed I’m going to get pregnant into” was left behind along with painted radiator masks, chairs and so on. I have to admit I went through a gradual process of letting go that started long before I actually left the place. I cried for every object. I admit. I cried for the wooden floor in the living room as if it were a dear old friend I was leaving.

But when I left, there were no more tears for objects. I never looked back. Never felt sorry for anything anymore. Cut the cords and moved on. From time to time I would go to the fridge to pick up something I’d left in my other fridge, but that didn’t take long, either, and made me giggle eventually.

Before I found the house in Harmony street I made a list with everything I wanted from the new place I was moving into. This place met every strict requirement. I knew immediately it was going to be my new home and that I was going to love it. And that it would only be temporary. Though my initial ‘plan’ has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening in my life now, it still prevented me from forming too close attachments to the new place.

Nevertheless, now, that I’m preparing to leave again, I’m trying to enjoy every detail, every second spent here, every walk to work and back home again, every bike ride along these beautiful streets. I’m making mental lists of things that will remind me of this place: how happy I was here, how free, so much travelling I’ve done, the open terrace, the run down attic, the cracks in the walls, the dancing during earthquakes, the trembling floor when the washing machine is on, the comfortable bed, the decorations, the marble steps, the sound of the wind blowing last autumn, the piles of virgin snow covering the tiny front yard one winter morning as I struggled to pushed the door open to go to work, the crazy guy downstairs paying me a surprise visit around lunchtime on a Sunday, the parties, the skype conversations, the nighttime jogging last summer and poetry while jogging, hooker spotting and so many other big and small details that will keep this place and this period in my heart for a long while.

I am moving on now. It’s a leap of faith, just like every important move in life. No guarantees. There were no guarantees when I moved here, either. And yet I felt that the happiest period in my life so far was starting. I was right. Sometimes I feel confident, other times I am so afraid. I keep telling myself it’s an adventure. It will take me somewhere. I don’t know where yet. But I know I’m not stuck, I am moving. This time last year I was looking forward to my second trip to Istanbul and talking to my Syrian boyfriend every night on Skype. Now it’s like I have died in the meantime and was born into a new life already. I still have some memories from the previous one, but it’s a totally different story now. I have no regrets. I have moved past the threshold. More about my new life as it unfolds.

Bus ride across Bucharest

After the morning subway ride, having appreciated how my contact improvisation skills helped me get on the packed train through body surfing and gliding, it’s around 1.30 pm and I am now riding the bus:

the sun shining in puddles and on top of dirty snow piles
three middle aged gypsy women dancing in front of a block of flats, in their long, large skirts
a car crash
three angry drivers swearing and spitting words in each other’s faces from just a few centimeters’ distance
traffic police dancing at a crossroads, rushing everyone on their own way in life
unzipped coats flapping around hibernating bodies like worn out wings

A very loud phone conversation:

“Say, doc, what’s up? … Oh… Aha… Ok… His name? Wait! Wait a little! … Iulian Feather! Iulian Feather! Feather! … Yes! Ok, Violin, bye!”

A dialogue:

“I’m sorry, please excuse me…”
“You know, we are all relatives actually. It’s just that we are too embarrassed to talk to one another. So we’d rather keep our eyes stuck on the screens of our phones.”

I am thinking about a dream I had the night before, walking through a quiet village in plain spring and stopping next to the fence of a luxurious garden to feel the smell of a lemon tree and get the title of a book I’m supposed to write.

A meeting with an old friend, flooded in light

“You’re basically doing all the right things”, the ophthalmologist tells me after the examination, having almost blinded me with her strong light, taking the deepest look into my eyes anyone has ever taken.

The flood of light when I get out into the sun and the snow is so painful I can barely keep my eyes open and I’m feeling a little bit confused trying to make my way to the park to meet some of the kids in my class. There are no contours and everything seems to float and move all the time, as if I were trying to focus and the camera just won’t keep still.

“Mrs Daniela, Mrs Daniela, I missed you so much”, he says running towards me and jumping into my arms. I forget he’s grown and, hugging him tight, I lift him at my chest to make keeping him close easier on my back. This embarrasses him, so I quickly put him down and tell him how much he’s grown (though I’m not so credible anymore, since I could lift him).

“Me too, my darling, me too. Let me look at you” and I’m searching for his eyes and, through the blinding light still pouring in, I can still see that part of me I’ve always seen in him and that part of him I see in me every morning when I look in the mirror.

He’s so sensitive it almost feels like his skin has been peeled off his chest and his heart has no way of defending herself against the world doing all it does just by being itself. He takes it all in and lets it storm throughout his entire being. His heart is so big everyone and everything fits inside and there is still room for more. I wish mine were brave enough to be like that all the time. Leaving the doors and the windows wide open through the lowest and the highest temperatures.

He lives in India now with his family. A travelers’ family. We’re from the same family, so not even for a moment do I feel we have ever been apart. And I do feel, with all my heart, that there is a strong connection between us and it will stay strong and live through many life changes. I knew it since the first time I saw him – a strong, intelligent and scared eight year old, blinking all the time and hiding his eyes from mine. I knew he’s from my ship. We’re still sailing together.

Thank you, Rareș.

Confessions in the electricity shop

“You know, I can pay you through a bank transfer if you give me your account number.” I tell my dentist as she’s pulling her instruments out of my mouth so I can talk again. “I don’t have enough cash and I don’t have my cards anymore, but I can do that.” I add.

“No, no, it’s fine, I told you. I was actually thinking I might give you some money for food” she says and that brings tears into my eyes but I quickly swallow them thanking her for her infinite kindness. She’s a good friend, my ‘dangerous Syrian boy’ would say. I’d told her my wallet was stolen/ lost and she insisted I should still come for the appointment.

And when she’s done fixing a tooth on the upper right side (the side with the swollen eye and the upset ear from landing this Saturday and the bike crash before my birthday this autumn), we both get out and she gives me a lift and drops me close to my home. We catch up on each other’s lives on the way and I meet her husband when I get out of the car and knowing that he, too, exists is reassuring and makes me more confident about my resolutions.

I stop at a small electricity shop and I find the door is locked. I look for the schedule on the narrow glass door and, before I find it, the door opens and a beautiful lady in her mid sixties welcomes me in.

“I’m listening. What is it?” she says and I notice her heavy makeup behind her thick glasses and her beautiful mouth and her clear, shiny skin.

“I need two light bulbs. A smaller one and a bigger one” I say hesitantly, realizing I sound like a woman who doesn’t know about electrical stuff. But since I’m talking to another woman, I’m relaxed about it.

“Do you know this neighborhood?” she asks fetching a couple of light bulbs from a shelf behind her and placing them on the counter in front of me, taking them out of their boxes and trying them for me to see that they work.

“Well, a little bit, I suppose. I haven’t lived here very long.”

“How long?”

“About a year and a half I think…”

“Do you get along with them?”

“I don’t know? With who? I don’t really interact with people around here…”

“I can’t take it anymore. I have some problems” she says making me stop and suddenly evaluate my possibilities. “How long can I still go on? What do you think I should do?” she asks staring into my eyes. “These people, they expect me to have sex with the boss of the neighborhood. Would you have sex with someone whose hands look like sausages? Would you be able to? With someone with loose skin, hanging about them like this?” she asks painting the image around her with her hands. “With someone who smells of garlic or who knows what else? With a seventy-five year old? I’m sixty-three. I am clean, I take care of myself, I can’t have sex with anyone like that.” she continues. “Why do you think they torment me like this?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” At this point she’s got all my attention and my heart feels warm and a part of me reaches out to her over the counter, hugging her and wiping the tears running down her powdered, wrinkled cheeks.

“I had a family. They took it from me. I want my son. I want Cristi to come. Why isn’t he coming? You tell me.”

“I’m sorry… I don’t know…”

“I had a husband. My husband had a mistress. He would go and fuck her and then come back home to me and our son. You know, home is a state, an atmosphere. He couldn’t leave us… He came home every time. I see him sitting on a chair in the kitchen, his tears falling on the tiled floor. It’s you that I love, he used to say to me. And I believed him. Still, he kept fucking her. Now he is dead. But our family was destroyed before he died. They ran into it with a bulldozer. Why would anyone do that to someone?” she pauses again for me to answer.

“I don’t know…” and my own tears start blurring my vision as she’s giving me a glimpse into a possible future and I’m emptied of myself like a bath tub of which you suddenly remove the drain stop.

“At least if someone came to me and said: Mrs Doina, I have this against you…. I don’t like this about you… That is why I am tormenting you… But nobody says anything… You have to explain to me! Tell me!” her tears prevent her from continuing here and she takes a short break.

“I am sorry… I don’t know why this is happening to you…”

“And they torment me every day. They say nasty words, they steal my things, they took my boy, they took my family, my life, everything… Tell me why… Would you do that to anyone?”

“I don’t know why… I wouldn’t do that. I hope I’ll never be able to do that to anyone.”

“What can I do? Tell me?”

“Perhaps you should pray. Ask for guidance… Try to find some inner peace…”

“I can’t. I have tried. I can’t do that anymore. It’s too difficult. I can’t even go to church. It’s too much. You know?”

“I know…”

“Is it because I have these eyes?” she asks taking off her glasses to reveal her beautiful big eyes under her heavily made up eye lids. “Is it because I have these lips? Is it? Because I see when men come into the shop, they look at my lips. Perhaps they imagine their organ between my lips, you know… Perhaps that’s what they imagine…”

Her lips are beautiful – so soft and innocent and still so feminine and elegant, nothing vulgar or withered about them. And at this point I imagine kissing them. Just because I feel so much love for this woman right now and I imagine my touch would make her fly a little, help her forget about her life and take off with me in a dream. We could both disappear. I imagine leaning over the counter between us, my lips searching for hers and at the first soft touch, we both take off like two sister rockets and shoot up through the roof of the shop, making all the light bulbs and the cables and the fuses and everything burn in short, strong explosions like fireworks all around us. And we just disappear together. A well deserved break from life.

I’m standing still, back straight, arms straight, chin raised to meet hers, my eyes holding hers. What is it about me that puts me in situations like this? I am the silent dervish again (references here and here). Holding it all together so that the other one can express the pain. I am there for her. I love her with all my heart. I don’t judge, I just listen.

“Why is this happening to me?” she insists. “Why do people do this to other people? Why? What do you think?”

Since she insists, I make my confession, too. Just because for a moment there I think she needs to know she’s not the only one in pain, she’s not the only one asking herself and the others questions about life and the meaning of things. I confess everything.

“Oh, but that’s a totally different thing”, she says without the faintest sign of compassion.

“I should pay for the light bulbs”, I add deciding to get out of there.

“It’s 3 lei. And take care of yourself.” she replies.

“Thank you” I say in the end. “I wish you all the best, a light heart and peace.” and I truly feel blessed with a precious gift as I’m walking out of the shop.

Before getting home to write her story, a poem for a friend and a thank you card marking an end and a beginning, I make another short stop in the market across the road for some cheese. Just as I step out of the cheese shop and head for the exit, I am met by Annie Lennox’s convincing voice coming from a radio in a shop:

How many sorrows
Do you try to hide
In a world of illusion
That’s covering your mind?
I’ll show you something good
Oh I’ll show you something good.
When you open your mind
You’ll discover the sign
That there’s something
You’re longing to find

The miracle of love
Will take away your pain
When the miracle of love
Comes your way again.

I have absolutely no doubt about it.

PS Coming up on the blog: the story of my week in Sweden this winter.

Another earthquake, another leap of faith

The blond girl waving her pony tail is smiling behind the counter of the small coffee shop at the underground exit, making her cheekbones shine under the heavy layer of bronze blush and her white teeth sparkle under the yellow, artificial light. Her customer is a regular and so their encounter is warm and pleasant.

“It must be so nice to be smiled at like that as you’re getting your coffee in the morning”, I tell him and he smiles in approval, holding my hand tightly and leading me up the stairs and into the morning light.

There was another earthquake last night. A strong one. This time it caught me in a completely different situation than last time. Travel plans already made, cards laid face up on the table, bare heart and warm arms. Another jump into the unknown. Another leap of faith. Come what may. Thy will be done.

Leaving the blond girl behind, we’re walking right through the old city, with its street sweepers all busy and cold, cigarette buds bearing marks of lipstick and kisses and alcohol and promises, lies and stories over what all of us are going through – the pursuit of happiness.

My right eye is upset and keeps shedding tears, all swollen and red, itchy and bad. The eye that insisted on becoming blue last month. The eye I hit against the asphalt. The eye that has got tired of seeing too much. The eye that wants to sleep. I keep encouraging it to show me the truth no matter what.

And still, a part of me, like those street sweepers cleaning the narrow streets in the old city the morning after each party, is desperately trying to clear the area of all the information that may cause pain. I am not afraid of the truth. I know it too well. I am afraid of the impossibility to keep up an illusion long enough to give me the impression I can still be loved.

PS Sorry for the drama. Getting back to happiness mode in 3… 2… 1…