The road from prison to home

Sima Dimcica and Puiu Atanasiu have not recovered from the ankylosis they fell into. I don’t know what happened to Puiu Atanasiu, but I do know that his wife and daughter came to Aiud for Sima Dimcica and took him home to Sinoe. The train went to Bucharest and from there everyone went in a different direction, to their homes and families. On the 3rd of August we took the train to Tulcea and got off at Mihai Viteazul station. It was four kilometres from the station to Sinoe commune.

My brother-in-law Dumitru Grasu had heard from the world that the last prisoners from Aiud had been released and were coming home. He had come to the station in the middle of the night and was waiting for me on his motorbike. My brother-in-law, who was in a hurry to get to work, only took me part of the way and I went home. It was just the time when day and night meet, and when I entered the house I looked and looked for my wife. I saw an old lady and thought she was a neighbour of my wife’s to borrow something, as is the custom in the country. It never occurred to me that the old woman was my wife. Well, my wife was young, upright, energetic, healthy, whereas this woman, apart from being old, is also a bit of a pain in the backside. My wife must be in one of the rooms in the house.

Although I didn’t know the old woman, I said good morning to her with the common sense that exists in every man. The old lady said good morning to me too, and I was not a little surprised when I recognised my wife’s voice. Then I said to her, Hey Piho, is that you?

– Yes, it’s me.

She ran to me and put her arms around me and cried and cried. I said: What are you crying for , darling? Look, I’m home too, I’m healthy, and we’re going to work together, and from now on all the problems will be solved.

I didn’t realise at the time that my absence from home, almost twenty years of imprisonment and communist terror, and the work she had to do to keep the family going, had aged her. But I could see them getting old, because I couldn’t see myself, but I’m sure I was getting quite old myself. For my family, I was dead and now I am here in the middle of my family.

My son Iancu was a vet at the Palas sheep farm in Constanța. He got the call and came. My daughter Maria was eight years old when I was arrested, she was married now. She heard of my arrival and came with her husband, father-in-law, mother-in-law and a baby in her arms. When she came through the door, I recognised her. She looked exactly like my sister Angelica, who died in 1942 while I was in prison in Galați. She put the baby down, ran to me, put her arms around my neck and cried her eyes out. I said to her:

Why are you crying, my daughter? Instead of rejoicing and celebrating, we were weeping. Let the wicked be washed away, let us forget them.

Father’s sister, Aunt Sultana, is here. My sister Chirața came with her husband Costea Brândea. When I saw myself in the middle of my family, between my children and my wife, between my sister and my grandchildren, with my dear relatives, I cannot describe how great my joy was. My heart trembled with joy. No matter how many years of imprisonment and exile I went through the forests of Babadag, I always believed in destiny. Everything comes from God and nothing happens without His knowledge.

My wife, during the many years I was away from the family, kept the house, raised the children and worked hard in the collective. She would leave with the hoe on her back, with water, with food, usually going to the field where she had land to work. In the evening, after a hard day’s work, he would walk through the bush to collect straw or cobs for the fire, to protect the children from the cold and frost when winter came. This was the only fuel she could get as the forests were too far from the village to bring dry branches. But I would like to add here that not only my wife, but all the wives of the more than one thousand arrested Dobrogean people had to struggle in this way. They were among the best housekeepers and good Romanians, and their wives struggled and kept the house and brought up their children with great difficulty. More than a hundred people were murdered by the red beasts, and the Dodica couple were both killed, leaving seven orphaned children without parents to raise them. And there were other cases where both husbands were murdered, leaving behind small children, without parents, left to God’s care, perhaps to relatives or neighbours who took pity on them. These were just some of the benefits of communism for our country and for the world.

(Nicolae Ciolacu – The Dobrogea Outlaws)