Growing Up Grey: Childhood in Cold War Romania (467)

0:00Oana Aristide:Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War. I was very upset because they had gotten rid of the cartoons on TV. We had half an hour of Tom and Jerry or Disney cartoons per week on TV and they got rid of them and replaced them with some engineer cartoons from the Soviet Union. So I wrote these manifestos and said, down with Ceausescu, I want more cartoons. Romania in the 1980s was a country of empty shops, power cuts, rationing and fear. But for one little girl, it was also home. In this episode, author Oana Aristide shares the remarkable childhood experiences that inspired her novel Astronaut.

0:45Oana Aristide:From writing an anti-Ciausescu protest, demanding more cartoons, to surviving freezing winters, queuing for food and learning not to trust the wrong people, her memories bring Cold War Romania vividly to life. Ioana explains how children experience dictatorship differently from adults, revealing a world where imagination flourished despite repression. Rich with humour, warmth and poignant reflection, this conversation offers a unique perspective on life behind the Iron Curtain in Ceausescu's Romania. I'm delighted to welcome Oana Aristide to our Cold War conversation. Oana's book Astronaut is available via a link in the episode information and every purchase will help support the podcast.

1:35The first 10 years of my life were the 80s in Romania.

1:39Oana Aristide:You set it in Sigish, is it Sigishwara? Sigishwara, yes. Oh, okay. Gosh, I'm getting my pronunciation correct for a change today. It's not an easy one. No, why was it set there? Was that where you were brought up? I was brought up there and it was easier to write about a place that I knew well Can you describe what Sigishwara was like in the late 80s? It's unusual, it's not a typical place in a communist country because it's a medieval town The school I went to, the buildings are from the 12th century So there's this mix of the rich and colourful history but then you have everything that's new that's from one generation back is grey and sad and uniform and i think it's in transylvania is that correct yes okay yeah because i was doing a bit of background research on this and saw that somebody had the bright idea of trying to build a dracula theme park next to it um yes it's better it's it's better known now as the birthplace of Dracula.

2:46Oana Aristide:Brilliant. Brilliant. Who was in your immediate family when you were there? I grew up with my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. My father is from Yemen. My parents met when my father was an exchange student in Romania. Romania and Yemen were both part of something they call the non-aligned countries. It was countries that nominally weren't aligned with either the US or Russia. And they had their own little trade programs and student exchanges. So my father was in Romania studying, met my mom. And then because he was a foreigner, he was allowed to travel and something which Romanians were not normally allowed to do.

3:30And my mother was allowed to go with him, but they had to always leave behind the child to make sure they would come back. And because it was the oldest child, I was left with my grandma and my sister went abroad with them. So most of the 80s I spent with my grandma.

3:49Oana Aristide:And what was your grandma like? She would have obviously had possibly experience of World War II and certainly the whole of the communist period. You're right. She was a child during the Second World War and then she married a lawyer who came from a reasonably wealthy family But after communism, everything was confiscated and the people who were considered enemies of the state, simply by virtue of them having been wealthy or having been intellectuals, were persecuted. So her husband, my grandfather, was sent to the canal, as it was known at the time. The communist regime, they built the Danube Black Sea Canal, mainly with forced labour, with political prisoners.

4:36Oana Aristide:And so is your grandfather not on the scene? No, he died before I was born. And so how did your grandmother support you and her? She was working. My parents were sending money. My grandma, she was a judge. Our finances were similar to everyone else's. There was some money and almost nothing to buy. I don't remember anyone complaining of not having money. There was just never anything to buy with it. Is the character, the judge in the book, based on her? She didn't talk to me about any cases. I would like to think that if she had that kind of case, she would react ethically. But I don't. It's not a real story, that one.

5:22Oana Aristide:I'm just trying to piece together fact from fiction here. So where were you living? Were you in flats or some sort of? We were in a small flat, similar to Leah's flat that's described in the book. But actually, the flats in Romania were very similar at the time. You would go from house to house and you would see the same object. I think one of the characters points this out at some point that there's one of every object in every house. The same thing, the same blanket, the same statue, the same decorative object. Yeah, that's right. I think it's Constantin, the detective. mentions that in there.

6:02Oana Aristide:I was going to ask you if you had any relatives abroad and obviously you would have had your Yemeni side of the family. So were they sending you gifts or anything like that? My mother and my father did. I wasn't close to the other Yemeni side of the family. They didn't speak English. I had only met them once when I was four years old before my sister was born. So no, I wasn't really in touch with them. I did see a lot of things, objects from the West via my kindergarten and school. In Transylvania, there's a German ethnic minority, Saxon ethnic minority, and there were kindergarten and primary schools in the German language.

6:47And they tended to have relatives in West Germany who were sending them things. So you would see the sort of thing that Leah in the book is fascinated by, very colourful pen holders and toys and just things that look like alien objects from her perspective.

7:08Oana Aristide:One of the themes in the book is that Lear is concerned about how colour is being lost in Romania and the greyness and the drabness. That's how you experienced it? yes except i don't think i i don't think i made that connection at the time i just noticed that there were things that were from elsewhere that were very colorful compared to our things you could if you were a biologist and the two would be side by side you would say this is from a different continent uh and when i realized how stark the difference was it was because of a a short film I saw, I think, in the early 90s. It was footage from a Bucharest street.

7:55And I was watching this, just a street in the center of Bucharest and thinking that it's black and white footage. And then suddenly a yellow car entered the frame and I realized, no, this was color film. It was just so great that you could think the center of a capital city is black and White.

8:16Oana Aristide:Were there any relatives in the family who were members of the Communist Party? I was under the impression that everyone had to be a member of the Communist Party, everyone who had any sort of civil servant job. Again, we didn't discuss this, but I remember the revolution, the last couple of days, when we were fairly certain that the regime would be overthrown, that my grandma was wondering whether she should burn her membership card and was in two minds about it, didn't know if she would burn it and they didn't go away if she would be in trouble. It's also sad that, how frightened were they if they thought that the regime that comes after it would punish them for being members of a party that they were forced to be members of?

9:08Oana Aristide:Did your grandmother or your mother and father discuss the regime at home at all? Not in front of me. They were trying to pretend that it's okay. It was strange. They would sometimes praise Ceausescu and then they would let something escape them that made it clear they don't like him it was this they tried to avoid saying something that i might repeat in school or with other kids because this is the challenge with leah isn't it and her parents is that she does say things at school that she shouldn't say did you have any experience of that yes one of the scenes in the book is that when leah writes something like a manifesto and leaves it in front of her a tower block um i did something like that but it was i was very upset because they had they had gotten rid of the cartoons on tv we had half an hour of tom and jerry on or disney cartoons per week on tv and they got rid of them and replaced them with some engineer cartoons from the Soviet Union.

10:24So I wrote his manifestos and said, down with Ceausescu, I want more cartoons.

10:30Oana Aristide:Wow. And nobody was very happy about that. I can imagine not, because I guess the impact on the rest of your family would not have been good. Yeah, no. And luckily, a neighbor saw me do it and brought them back to my grandma before anyone else found them. So like Comrade Popper in the book? Yes. You've got all the characters. Hey, I told you, I read the book. You memorized it. I do a bit of preparation here. And yeah, you experienced the power cuts and the queuing as well? Yes, there was a lot of that. what I didn't experience was I'm aware now that all the grown-ups were very stressed about putting food on the table and stressed about the kids being undernourished we had very little meat this is not something I was aware of at the time I thought the cues were annoying I was never in a panic about attending one it was something they forced me to do so I wasn't experiencing the same level of distress that grown-ups were.

11:42Oana Aristide:The power cuts would come unannounced. So how did you light your home or cook in those situations? We had those oil lamps that are mentioned in the book for light. There were winters we went to bed wearing all our clothes, like hats and gloves and everything. It's pretty cold in Transylvania, so if the power goes in winter, that's bad and there are people who did things like we had gas ovens and the gas was it wasn't from your own boiler it was a like a the town's gas if they would cut the heating then some people decided to risk it and sleep with the oven on and just try to warm the room maybe they would sleep in the kitchen and try to to get it warm via the fire.

12:38But then if they would also cut the gas and then turn it back on, people were sleeping in that room. This is something that happens routinely, that people would die because of gas poisoning because they tried to heat a house with the gas. Wow.

13:00Oana Aristide:Wow. And I think you had a mishap yourself with an oil lamp. Yes. How do you know that? Again, research. Don't worry, I'm not securitate here, but I do like to find out what I can. Yes, that scene is also true. I was drawing next to an oil lamp and it slipped on my hand. I still have the scar. It was in an interview that I found online. I'm relieved. Yeah, yeah, don't worry. Don't worry. And were you helping your grandmother get food? Were you out queuing for food? It's hard for me to... I don't really know how often I did it. I don't have a sense of it, but I remember many queues. I remember having to queue very early in the morning.

13:52Sometimes the deliveries, if it was something very valuable, like any kind of meat, then they would be announced maybe the day ahead and people would camp outside the shop but usually it was the grown-ups who had to do it because they didn't especially if it was something important they didn't trust the kids to

14:09Oana Aristide:be able to hold their place in line in the book you talk about eating chicken claws so is that actually the foot of the chicken rather than anything else yes yeah the last bit of the foot it was fine.

14:29Oana Aristide:The bit about queuing in the book fascinated me because you had the detail there, but I think one of my favourite bits in the book, and there were loads of great little details that you've got in the book, and I don't want to spoil people with revealing too much of the plot here, but the thing about the butcher shop hoax, can you just reveal that for us? because there was a shortage of almost anything. There was a shortage of toilet paper. There was flour, everything. Every foodstuff was rationed. People would queue sometimes without knowing what's being sold. They would just see that some people are standing in line and get behind them.

15:11Almost anything that shop would sell would be useful to them. so in in the book a character uses this what do you call it this habit to

15:24Oana Aristide:as a trick let's say to gain something yeah to start a queue a closed shop yes and people join it because the queues and there must be something good at the end is the theory yeah yes is that how it was? Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. And obviously with Leah being eight years old, I think in the book, she's at school. Can you tell me much about your schooling and what that was like? Again, because I was in this German school, I think it was less influenced by the regime than the normal Romanian school. Every school book had the front page with a photo of Ceausescu and a poem. And we had to sing songs and learn poems to celebrate the National Day or Labor Day.

16:18But it wasn't non-stop. And I think I got the chance to learn other things as well via the German language and the German teaching. I didn't feel, I can't say I felt policed by the school or persecuted and forced to be a regime puppet.

16:45Oana Aristide:So you didn't have a comrade cauliflower then? No, I actually had a very nice teacher. But I knew there were several schools in town and I had friends who were attending them and I knew it could be like that. I had heard stories about teachers who were like that. And because you're at the German school, are you learning in German? Yes. Romanian taught as a foreign language there and all the other classes were in German. Wow. So the Germans were a protected minority then within Romania? They had some additional rights, let's say. I think they were allowed to have more contact with the West. I don't know if it's fair to say they were protected they had this little community and they had their own churches and they were allowed to have schools in German but they were on the other hand they were queuing with us they suffered from the same shortages they had no political freedom let's say they had some cultural freedom So they could celebrate their I don't know, Saint's Days or certain German celebrations?

17:58Yes. One impact that they had was that there was a lot of... When there was black... The black market currency was German marks, Deutsche Marks, and there were shops that were on the face of it. They were supposed to be for tourists, but people found ways of finding someone who had their passport and had deutsche marks and could maybe buy a chocolate bar so there were these signs of wealth and shops that had things we wanted even there but they were very restricted

18:42Oana Aristide:yeah i think that was bizarre in amongst other countries in the eastern block i know the The East Germans had inter shops, which were similar. And I think Czechoslovakia had the Beriofska shops, which were the same thing. So you could get Levi jeans and Coca-Cola and all sorts of stuff there. But you had to pay for it in a hard currency, i.e. a Western currency. Yes, in Romania, you had to have dollars or German marks. And I think you had to have your passport, which you never had. The police kept your passport. Okay. And what were your friends like at school? Did you have a Dora there? And just if you can explain the character of Dora as well.

19:27The character Dora is a very studious classmate of Leah's, but who also has her parents are important. I think in the book, her father is the prosecutor in town and she is favoured by the teachers. And whenever there's a prize to be won, she's the main candidate to win it, whether she deserves it or not.

19:54Oana Aristide:And did you have any friends like Dora? I think because I was in the German class and they tended not to have politically important positions, I didn't. I don't remember experiencing that.

20:14Oana Aristide:and you were in the equivalent of the young pioneers yes and this was you were enrolled in that automatically okay so you couldn't opt out no i'd never heard of anything like that okay you have to check me on this but i don't think i don't think you had the option of doing that. Yeah, it would certainly put you under the spotlight of the regime if you did ask for that. And what did you get up to as a young pioneer? How did that work? There were probably kids who were more active in it. The way I remember it, it was something, it was a uniform we wore on national holidays, on parades, when we had to perform publicly and recite these poems, these patriotic poems.

21:04and songs. I don't remember having much to do with it outside of preparation for holidays. But probably, I think, I also left Romania when I was quite young. So after the fifth year of school, I think there were summer camps that you could attend.

21:22Oana Aristide:When you were at school, did you have to do things like this competition that Leah has to enter? Just trying to remember what it was called. Something about a drawing of a socialist utopia. Yes, whenever there was a competition, whether it was an essay that you had to write or draw something, the theme was always something, either about how beautiful the country is or how amazing Ceausescu and his wife are. It was hard to get around that, and it was not very inspiring. No, I can imagine. because Leah falls foul at school a couple of times, doesn't she? Because she draws a monster on the official national map of Romania.

22:06If you look, you know what the map of Romania looks like.

22:12Oana Aristide:It really looks a bit like a flatfish. It just needs an eye. You paint an eye on it and colour it green and it's a flatfish. and since we had this we had the map in almost every school book it was tempting to doodle on it around it on a map in the classroom did you get up to any mischief at school you mean political mischief any sort of mischief I don't remember anything particular Okay, okay Because the title of the book is from some mischief that Leah gets up to Yes, she's using a word she's not allowed to use And it's not explained to her properly why she can't use it, so it rebels against it The word is astronaut and obviously in the Eastern Bloc they call it Cosmonaut so she gets reprimanded over that.

23:17Yes, she has access to an older pre-communist book that she inherited from her grandfather and she sees the word and uses it in school and gets in trouble with her teacher for it. and she's very as many children are she's very overt she doesn't like it when she's just told to do something for the sake of it when it's not properly explained and these things were never

23:48Oana Aristide:properly explained yeah it was just you just need to do it you just need to do it yes i remember going to vote with my grandma and she explained to me the concept of elections and then my reaction was like, yay, we'll get rid of them. She was like, no, we can only vote with Ceausescu. And then she couldn't explain to me, why do we have elections then? Why are we voting? It's all pretense. It's a circus. But by the time you've had 30 years on the communism, they just did it. They didn't even wonder about it. And the book really illustrates well that whole climate of fear and sort of self-censorship of people because they know what they can't say and self -censor, certainly publicly.

24:46Oana Aristide:But you've also got this culture of surveillance and informers. Did your mother and father or grandmothers come up against the security services in their daily life? They were constantly warning me about talking to anyone. They would say that even not to trust even people we considered friends of the family, that I should never repeat anything I hear in the house to anyone else. There were particular neighbors that they thought were securitate informers, and they were extra dangerous to talk to. And I don't know if these people were curious about everyone or they were curious about me because of my father who was a foreigner, but they did always try to get me to talk and tell them things and where's your father, where's your mother?

25:40And either I would try to come up with some excuse or my grandma would come and rescue me, but they definitely existed.