Ica Iova's Blog - Posts Tagged "communism"
Duality--The true story behind the story
Twenty years ago, I started writing my story because, well, because everyone told me it’s book-worthy. And so, I started writing it. It was going to be mostly about my husband’s bravery.
Let me take a step back and start from the beginning. In 1987, my husband and two of his good friends had decided to flee our home country, communist Romania. He’d had enough of communist oppression, he’d said.
Romania’s late ‘80s was as dark as midnight—literally—but his decision had blown me away, because I refused to see it for what it was. You just don’t know what you don’t know, and it’s hard to know when you have nothing better to compare it with. We both had careers, a nice three-bedroom apartment, my parents owned their land and we didn’t really have to stay in line for food; what more does anybody need, right?
My husband did, and nothing I had said changed his decision. He and his friends crossed into former Yugoslavia without getting caught, but only he was successful at the interview; the other two were sent back to Romania and ended up in jail like all “traitors.”
All alone in another country, my husband’s bravery got the best of him. Instead of finding a girlfriend to cheer up his loneliness, like almost every other man in the refugee camp, he’d decided to cross back into Romania—illegally—to bring his wife and children with him (aka me and our two young children.)
That’s how it all started, but as time passed, my husband’s heroism took backstage to my romances. I know, I know, shame on me. What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart. In my defense, I never gave up on our story; I just didn’t know if I could put everything into words that were worthy of my husband’s courage.
And then Trump was elected, and the more he attacked immigrants the more I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. This excuse for a human being, who never had to prove his worth, who got rewarded only for showing up, who has no regard for anyone else but himself, who would not blink when sacrificing his own family if it somehow benefited him, this illiterate man who can’t put a single coherent sentence together was mocking and ridiculing people who risked their lives to search for better beyond their borders. I was mad. No, I was furious. But what I couldn’t wrap my head around were people who covered themselves in the language of values but found excuse after excuse of why Trump’s behavior was acceptable. Even when his intentions became crystal-clear about becoming America’s first dictator, they continued to prop him up. Having lived in a country where people couldn’t trust their neighbors or family members, I find it mind-boggling that anyone would want to take a free country to something like that ever again.
But I am Canadian and can’t even vote him out of office. To stay sane, about two years ago I pulled our story out from the bottom of a drawer and picked up where I had left off a few years back. Since then, it went through a few versions—from an autobiography to one filled with killers and KGB agents, and even more titles. It eventually ended in its current form—a mixture of fact and fiction—but even the fictional part has grains of fact in it as I’m sure, it has happened to someone, somewhere.
Moral of this story, if anything good came out of Trump’s presidency is the fact that I finally got to tell part of my husband’s bravery story. The book is now available to pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JGCWP4L DualityI hope you enjoy reading it.
Let me take a step back and start from the beginning. In 1987, my husband and two of his good friends had decided to flee our home country, communist Romania. He’d had enough of communist oppression, he’d said.
Romania’s late ‘80s was as dark as midnight—literally—but his decision had blown me away, because I refused to see it for what it was. You just don’t know what you don’t know, and it’s hard to know when you have nothing better to compare it with. We both had careers, a nice three-bedroom apartment, my parents owned their land and we didn’t really have to stay in line for food; what more does anybody need, right?
My husband did, and nothing I had said changed his decision. He and his friends crossed into former Yugoslavia without getting caught, but only he was successful at the interview; the other two were sent back to Romania and ended up in jail like all “traitors.”
All alone in another country, my husband’s bravery got the best of him. Instead of finding a girlfriend to cheer up his loneliness, like almost every other man in the refugee camp, he’d decided to cross back into Romania—illegally—to bring his wife and children with him (aka me and our two young children.)
That’s how it all started, but as time passed, my husband’s heroism took backstage to my romances. I know, I know, shame on me. What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart. In my defense, I never gave up on our story; I just didn’t know if I could put everything into words that were worthy of my husband’s courage.
And then Trump was elected, and the more he attacked immigrants the more I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. This excuse for a human being, who never had to prove his worth, who got rewarded only for showing up, who has no regard for anyone else but himself, who would not blink when sacrificing his own family if it somehow benefited him, this illiterate man who can’t put a single coherent sentence together was mocking and ridiculing people who risked their lives to search for better beyond their borders. I was mad. No, I was furious. But what I couldn’t wrap my head around were people who covered themselves in the language of values but found excuse after excuse of why Trump’s behavior was acceptable. Even when his intentions became crystal-clear about becoming America’s first dictator, they continued to prop him up. Having lived in a country where people couldn’t trust their neighbors or family members, I find it mind-boggling that anyone would want to take a free country to something like that ever again.
But I am Canadian and can’t even vote him out of office. To stay sane, about two years ago I pulled our story out from the bottom of a drawer and picked up where I had left off a few years back. Since then, it went through a few versions—from an autobiography to one filled with killers and KGB agents, and even more titles. It eventually ended in its current form—a mixture of fact and fiction—but even the fictional part has grains of fact in it as I’m sure, it has happened to someone, somewhere.
Moral of this story, if anything good came out of Trump’s presidency is the fact that I finally got to tell part of my husband’s bravery story. The book is now available to pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JGCWP4L DualityI hope you enjoy reading it.
