“You didn’t kill him,” the prison commander told Radu Codrescu on that July afternoon in 1984. “You only broke his teeth and his ego.” The man in charge with running the Popa Şapcă jail in Timişoara leafed through a file labeled Codrescu as Radu stood, handcuffed, in front of his desk and described what had happened that…
Category: Our Borders
Our Borders: Doing Time (1984), Part 1
They stood in front of each other, bars between them. Radu listened and didn’t say much. They had only fifteen minutes. Florina said that she’d gone to the militia on a moment’s impulse, a stupid thing to do, yes, but she’d informed on Radu because she’d been afraid, afraid that they wouldn’t see each other ever…
Our Borders: A Scrap of Evidence for the Genocide Story (1988)
When Radu Codrescu (name changed for privacy reasons), the protagonist of Our Borders, told me what he had seen at Orşova in 1982, he was a little concerned that people would not believe his story. Michael Domnitei, who himself had done time for trying to flee Romania in the ‘80s, and who managed to cross the border in…
Our Borders: Nineteen Eighty-Four
I stood on the windy bluff above the Danube, at the foot of the monument. My heart was racing. What if I forgot the words? My mother had bought my outfit weeks before that cloudy autumn day. The polyester clothes smelled like new toys: the white shirt, the black pleated skirt, the white knee-length socks….
Our Borders: Lost at Sea (1983), Part 3
Radu Codrescu, his wife, Florina, and their friend Iulian were safe for the moment on board Sunshine, a Kuwaiti-owned handysize coal bulker operated by a Bulgarian crew. But if Captain Nicolai reached his cabin and called the Romanian border authorities in Mangalia, things were going to change for the three fugitives.
Our Borders: Lost at Sea (1983), Part 2
Night came early on Sunday, August 21, 1983. Somewhere in the middle of a stormy Black Sea, three Romanian fugitives—Radu Codrescu, Florina, his wife, and Iulian, their friend—held onto the sides of their deflated orange boat, riding up and down strong waves, wind buffeting their faces, dark skies closing down on them. They called to…
Our Borders: Lost at Sea (1983), Part 1
I was six years old in 1983 and I was living in Galaţi, Romania. One winter afternoon, I was standing with my father in line at the grocery store, packed between dark, heavy woolen coats. Neon lights buzzed and flickered above our heads. The woman behind the counter wore woolen fingerless gloves and a sleeveless…
Our Borders: Radu’s First Escape Attempt (1982)
I first met Radu Codrescu (name changed for privacy reasons) in 2001 in Redmond, Washington, soon after I started my software developer job at Microsoft. Radu also worked for Microsoft, but we didn’t meet there. Some friends introduced us down an aisle at a grocery store. Radu was tall and athletic, a middle-aged man with graying hair…
Our Borders: When History First Changed (1990)
I stood in front of the classroom fidgeting with the ends of my uniform’s cord belt. “I don’t want to learn about Lenin, Comrade,” I told my seventh-grade History teacher.