WELCOME TO THE KOLHOZ NEW LIFE - Part 01

WELCOME TO THE KOLHOZ NEW LIFE

For the refugees this was a new place to live and work - abandoned villages in the far southeast of Poland, near the Ukrainian border.

The Greek authorities merged the two villages into one and named it “KOLHOZ NEA ZOI” (KOLHOZ NEW LIFE). The competent Polish district authorities, however, didn’t accept the new name. The old names remained as they were registered in the old land deeds and the area was renamed “Spółdzielnia Produkcyjna w Krościeńku” (Production Cooperative of Krushchenko).

The old railway wagons kept emptying. The future residents of the kolhozes were arriving and lining up on the platform, hanging on to their bags with their meager, leftover possessions which served less as a necessity and more as a reminder of home. They lined up along the platform and waited to be called. They were called by village and number.

In a similar way, those coming from Kunuv, who a year ago or so traveled on the Albanian roads single file or in groups, carrying their possessions on their backs, shoulders or under their arms, walking in mud, were now escorted over a cobblestone road to the village

Liskovate. Both on the right and left of the road they traveled were small bare hills. At the foot of the hills, at the end, a little farther from the road there was a line of low wooden houses covered with straw. The person leading the group stopped in front of the houses and, looking at his notebook, loudly yelled:

“Mitre and Mara, are they here?”

“I am Mitre,” yelled Mitre.

The person leading the group wrote their names down on a piece of paper, handed it to Mitre, pointed and said:

“Your number is thirty?”

“What?” asked Mitre

“That house, there, do you see it? It’s marked with the number thirty. We are giving you that house. Take your things and good luck.

The person leading the group then instructed the two people delivering furniture and other things as follows:

“Unload two beds, two mattresses, two pillows, four blankets, one table, two chairs, one kettle, two plates, two tablespoons and forks. Okay?” He then said to Mitre: “Sign here, be happy and live a long and healthy life...”

That was everything. That, along with their old possessions, a bag full of old items and the gium they had brought from home, constituted their entire possessions.

The house had a single floor at ground level. It was built with long pine logs and had small windows and a gable (triangle shaped) roof. Inside the house were two rooms and a kitchen with a large oven. The floor was laid with rough unfinished planks. There was a well dug in the yard that supplied the water. There were bats in the corners and long, thick cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The new

residents used wet towels to wash the floor and wipe the cobwebs. Then they removed all the junk from the yard...

They cleaned the house for a whole week and started their new life.

It was evident from the other empty houses, some without doors or windows, some with plum, apple and cherry trees growing in their yards, that people had lived here in this wide fertile plain.

About thirty metres from the house there was a Christian Orthodox church also built with thick pine logs. Standing in front of the church courtyard entrance was a large gate through which a number of men walked in. They said they had been sent there by the “Kolhoz” management to destroy the icons. And, without warning, they pulled out their knives and started cutting up the icons on the walls. Those which fell they stamped on and kicked. They then tore down the royal doors and the entire altar. The large and two smaller church bells were taken down and thrown behind the church. When they were done the Kolhoz party secretary inspected the site and praised the work. He then entered the church and collected some of the wooden icon canvases and took them with him. On his way out he ran into Mara who blocked his way and said:

“God will punish you for what you’ve done...”

The secretary stood in front of her for a moment and mockingly said:

“There is no god or devil in this wasteland... Mind your own business...”

After he left, a flock of sheep was brought inside and the church was used as a stable.

When he got home the party secretary nailed the canvases together and made a box in which he stored his officer’s uniform, his military shirt, hat, trousers and boots. Occasionally he checked to make sure that the moths hadn’t eaten them. In that box he kept the things that reminded him of the civil war which were slowly being eaten away by mold. Occasionally he opened the box just to make sure

everything was there. He needed to look at his uniform, boots, hat… to remind him of his past glory. He was confident and looked forward to the day when the party would again order him to wear them. He looked at his uniform and filled his head with coveted war victories. He touched his uniform gently and inhaled the rotting odor of mold. The crippled saints watched in amazement from inside the box with eyes wide open. They had broken heads, torn faces, cut shoulders… It seemed they had lasted for centuries hanging on those walls and now, in the new life in the Kolhoz, they were facing a new breed of Romans who had renewed their torment.

The memories of being a partisan, the hope of fighting and the great and immense faith in the party… gave him pain in his soul as he put his faded uniform back in the box... Until it was time to air it again...

There were two Christian Orthodox churches in Kroshchenko, the larger of the two villages. They too were built with pine logs. Only the hinges and locks were made of iron, everything else was built with wood. They were built by a master’s hand with passion and faith in God, with only an axe and a chisel in hand. One of the churches, the larger one, was surrounded by thick oak trunks. There was no inscription to show when this church was built. But the many rings in the uncracked logs showed that these trees were very old. The Russian Orthodox Cross and the church bell were taken down and thrown into the brook. The royal doors were removed and the altar was destroyed along with the large and small icons. They were replaced with thick supporting logs and thick and wide planks nailed on them. The altar was replaced with a stage. The front wall of the stage was covered with a red canvas and in the middle of it hung a large, colour portrait of Stalin, to the right, a smaller portrait of Beirut, and to the left a portrait of Zahariadis. The new saints were silent and sternly watching over their worshipers, except for Zahariadis who watched with a mysterious smile on his face. Many thought he seemed to be mocking them. And so the larger church was transformed by the party authorities into a Kolhoz theatre, club and cinema, which they called “Partizan”. Its name was written in Greek and Polish capital letters and high above it hung a red flag. It was a proletariat name. This is what the party committee had decided. This is what the president of the administration decided even though he had never been a partisan. He had seen a rifle but

never carried one. During the entire war he had just wandered around headquarters. And now his decision was gladly and enthusiastically accepted by those who were real partisans. And so the church was no longer a church. It became a theatre where parodies and stupid sketches were played on the stage. It was a concert hall where partisan and other fighting songs were sung. Once a week it became a cinema where Soviet films were watched, where the former partisans could admire Russian courage, forgetting their own, proven in partisan battles in the mountains of Greece and Macedonia. At the end of the film, the party secretary climbed onto the stage and, after a long and loud applause, made a long speech that was often interrupted by slogans praising the Great Stalin, the Greek party and its leader, the Greek people’s government… in that order. The applause was mixed with slogans in honour of the lesser leaders, followed by a brief speech by the party secretary, ending with the words that ‘everyone in the kolhoz should work in a self-sacrificing manner, like the Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian red armies did when they fought. But nothing was said about “their own” partisans - nothing - not a word. Maybe because now they were coachmen, dressed in grey overalls, wearing dirty rubber boots instead of military boots and away from their mountains...

The other church, the one west of the village, was converted into a shop and the third, the more spacious one, was converted into a club. Some of the icons were destroyed and some stolen. Many made boxes out of them to store their clothes and built shelves upon which they put their special plates, purchased in the neighbouring village cooperative. They gathered in their new club during the evenings and played chess, checkers and other board games, smoked cheap cigarettes and made idle conversation to pass their time and forget their troubles. The men who lived alone here, like they had back home in their villages, were used to drinking wine and rakia. Here they drank mostly vodka but also cheap beer and sour wine made from apples or potatoes...

Many left the club late, leaving behind their sweat, stink of unwashed socks and underwear. They went home feeling doped up and went straight to bed without taking off their dirty clothes or rubber boots. Often they would gather in one house and tell stories until dawn. They would boast about their superb fighting abilities

and quietly swear at their incompetent commanders, throwing poison at their political commissars and all those who didn’t tolerate them. Even those who had never touched a rifle boasted about their heroic deeds. In vodka they drowned not only their grief and pain, but also their hatred and malice.

Those who didn’t have wives washed themselves and their clothes in the river or in the brook that flowed past their houses. Some just dumped water on themselves from the wells that the previous owners had dug in their yards.

Many nights they spent giving speeches and lectures which often turned into mutual accusations and quarrels. They often spit and swore at each other with the most repulsive words. Sometimes, when they were having severe arguments, Zahariadis had to step in to calm them down, often with threats, but only when he was there. As soon as he left the yelling, cursing, spitting and swearing would begin again. But then news traveled fast. Zahariadis had his snitches everywhere. He would come back and knew exactly how to calm them down. He would divide them into Tito’s friends and enemies. Zahariadis was a very convincing liar. The best liar among them and they were accustomed to his lies and promises. He knew exactly what to say given the circumstances: “What does a blind person need?” “To be able to see!” “What does the sick person need?” “To be well!” “What does a hungry person need?” “Food to eat!” “What does a naked person need?” “Clothes to wear!” This is exactly what Zahariadis promised them with the same tone and words that they themselves spoke. He sat down among them; he hugged them and held them by their hands. And they, mystified, said:

“He is one of us... He is born of our people. He responds to us with great concern. May he live long.” They would say these things in front of him and then spend the entire night swearing at him and blaming the vodka for their drunkenness. They learned to drink vodka because they seemed to find relief in it from their bitterness...

They had left their youth in the mountains and here, in this foreign land, in a different time brought by some new winds, the thoughts of the revolution about which so much was said in the damp trenches

were slowly subsiding from their well-washed brains and faded every day. Now they weren’t of the same thoughts and convictions.

They had changed in their new environment. They had become more mature and hence were slowly being purified of their ideological plague and their partisan dreams...

They were becoming ordinary people with different thoughts...

Mara waited for Mitre at the door and when he arrived she said:

“A man from the lower village passed by here and said that you should go and see, what did he call it, the board or the committee. He didn’t say why they were looking for you.”

Mitre took off his dirty rubber boots, threw away his wet socks and said:

“Those from the leadership said that whoever wants can buy one or two and even three cows, goats, sheep, chickens and pay for them through their wages. What do you think? Should we buy something?”

“Let’s buy something, Mitre, but not a cow. Cows eat a lot, who is going to take it to graze? Let’s buy a goat, one that gives milk. It doesn’t require too much food. We’ll tie it in the yard and it can graze on the grass as much as it wants. Buy one or two or three chickens. We will have some eggs. And don’t forget we will also need a rooster... Buy a rooster. The chickens will need it and so will we, its crowing will make us happy. Make sure it’s big and young. His tail should be bushy and his shoulders large, walking proudly, and crowing so that when he crows his voice can be heard beyond the hills. It will be like back home, a proud rooster, like the one we had that was taken from us by what’s her name? Wasn’t it Vera? I am sure it was her. She was the culprit who didn’t leave a house without lies and a bed without lice... She came to our house with her comrades and they ate our rooster, the best and most proud rooster in the whole village. When it flapped its wings up and down, all the dust disappeared from the yard, when it crowed the entire village knew whose rooster was it was. That’s the way it was... I don’t want another kind of rooster. But where did those people from the

leadership find the cows, sheep, goats and chickens and why do they want to sell them to us?” asked Mara.

“E-e-e-e!” yelled Mitre with a bitter tone of voice.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Mara.

“Mara, Mara… The kind of rooster you want exists only back home...”

“That’s right... But where did they get all these animals?” asked Mara.

“They told the Poles that we are villagers and we need to do village work. The Polish authorities gave them what they asked for. They loaned them five million of their money and they, from the leadership, will use that money to buy the animals from the livestock markets. They would have to repay the loan. It won’t be a gift... And somebody, as a joke, said that what the communists took from us for the war effort, they will return to us here but we’ll have to pay for it...” said Mitre.

“Oh, yes…” exclaimed Mara. “Whatever was put in the cauldron will never come out of the cauldron… It’s gone! What was once yours will never again be yours...”

“What do you say about having a cat? The yard is full of mice and they enter the house... A cat doesn’t need much to eat… it will feed itself on the mice...” said Mitre.

A young man knocked on the door in the morning. He was carrying a bag full of tools on his shoulder and holding a small box in his hand. After he greeted Mara, he said:

“I’m here to mount this box on the wall. On which wall do you want it mounted?”

“What are those boxes for that you put in the houses?” asked Mara, then pointed at a bigger box in the corner of the room and asked the young man: “What is that box for? Tell me.”

“We put these in all the houses. Every house has one,” replied the young man.

“And what is that big box in the corner of the room? Is it an oven?” asked Mara.

“No, it’s not an oven, it’s a stove. The previous owners used it during the winter. The winters get very cold here. They are so cold that the beech tree stumps crack, saliva on the lips freezes, long icicles grow and hang from the eaves, as long as a metre, even longer. God forbid if one breaks off and hits you it will kill you on the spot. The winters here are long, cold and icy. When you go out to get water from the well you will find everything is iced up. Even the roads are closed because of the ice. The ice covers the trees, freezes the brooks and penetrates through the windows and doors. Even the water in the well freezes. And when it rains in spring or summer or fall, it can thunder and rain all day long. And the fog, it is so thick here that you can’t see your own nose. And when the sky is clear, the sun is so hot it bakes the earth. This is how it is here... As for this other box you asked about, this is a talking box that will wake you up with a song every day, first thing in the morning, then it will talk to you all day long, sing to you, speak to you, tell you things that others want you to know... And if you don’t like something, then just turn this wheel here to the left and the sounds will go away. So, the box will be with you all day and, as I told you, it will talk to you and sing to you. That’s right, this box will talk and sing and maybe you will dance when it plays a dance for you...” explained the young man.

“Young man, tell those who sent you here and made you hang these boxes, to go to hell,” said Mara and with a mocking tone of voice, said: “This box will talk and sing to me...?”

Mara didn’t like the feather-filled pillows. When spring came she took the pillows to the yard, tore them up and scattered the feathers. The wind blew and covered the entire area in white feathers.

After Mara shook the feathers off herself, she said:

“Mitre go cut the grass and spread it well so that it dries. Then go up there near the bare hill and collect some thyme. I will look for some mint and horehound. I searched yesterday but I couldn’t find any. Who knows if they even grow up here...”

“What are you going to do with the grass?” asked Mitre.

“I will stuff the pillows with it. I don’t like the feathers... Did you forget that you spent your entire life sleeping on a hay-filled pillow? Our grandmothers and mothers always put mint, horehound, marigolds, basil and thyme in our pillows along with the hay or straw. The whole house smelled nice and no animal came near. No spider, mosquito, flea, or lice. Our dreams were sweet with that sweet aroma. Have you forgotten?” replied Mara.

After stuffing the pillow with dry grass, to which she added mint, horehound, marigold, thyme and basil, she picked it up, stared at it and leaned her head on it. The feel and aroma brought fond memories from her past life back home. The smell and rustle warmed Mara’s soul. She remembered the scent and the rustling in her ear since she was very young.

She grew up sleeping on pillows like this. When she became a bride and a mother she slept on pillows like this... When she spent her days and nights on the road, sleeping on the wet ground waiting for the enemy to be defeated, she put her head on her pillow and inhaled the aroma, listening to the cannon fire in the distance dreaming

dreams flooded with blood and the pain of people being maimed... How many dreams did she have on her pillow, how many tears did she drop on it, how many sleepless nights did she lay on it... And now, here, in this old Ukrainian wooden house, she was leaning on a pillow filled with rustling hay and an aroma that reminded her of her pillow at home...

She dreamed and in her dream she only heard voices dear to her. Some called her name, others greeted her with words of happiness... This was a dream she wanted to dream every night. Only in her dreams did she have her closest friends. Her wish was for the night to be long and the dream to have no end. Her dreams seemed to be like they were part of her, part of her everyday life. All those who she carried in her dream calmed her soul, made her livelier, made her heart beat easier, but from morning till night she was tormented by the pain of separation from her family, and sleep, besides joy, also brought calm and a glimmer of hope... and pain... The days had no words of relief for her. Her dried lips could hardly speak any words. She wanted only words of good hope, words of warm prayers... Mara wanted to dream only dreams that would hold her in the circle of her loved ones. When she woke up her pillow would be soaked in tears. There were tears of joy, tears of pain...

But she wasn’t the only one. The days and nights during those times were sad for everyone around her. New letters kept arriving every day and brought bad news. They brought despair and hopelessness to many... Day and night they gathered and mourned their dearest ones who they’d lost on the battlefields... Some said this was their fate… This was the fate of those who were lost in the battlefield… This was the fate of those old men who died and were wrapped in a blanket and buried in foreign lands. This was the fate of those who died at sea and were tossed overboard into the deep, dark and cold waters. These poor people died all alone without the cries of their loved ones, without the priest and without the sad church bell ringing. Their names weren’t written on the wooden crosses marking their graves. And it didn’t take long for those crosses, the only symbols marking their graves, to be blown away by the fierce wind or to be buried under piles of overgrown grass. Those who left their bones on the Macedonian mountains, those whose bodies were thrown into the great sea and those who were buried in foreign soil

would for years be part of the great pain, sorrow and burning for those living… Those living who were exiled from their homes... They would never be able to find peace.

They would only secrete pain...

The abandoned apple and cherry trees on the hills, slopes and in the yards began to flower. The young fawns bleated inside the thick pine grove early. The snow had melted on the hilltops and the rivers and brooks were overflowing with water. This time last year it was very cold. Snow was falling in April and parts of May. It snowed during the holidays. This year it was mixed weather. The mornings were clear and the afternoons were gloomy, filled with black clouds coming from the northeast. Lightning cut through the sky and thunderstorms filled the entire valley. The sky was opening and the rain fell during the night. The nights were wet and the mornings cold. The cranes flew north late. The bird nests were still empty. Tractors didn’t plow. Ice had pressed the ground hard.

Early March announced warm weather.

From the box hanging in the corner, a sad voice said:

“Attention, attention, our great leader, Comrade Stalin is sick...”

That’s all the box said, and from that moment on no more songs, only sad, long drawn out music without words. They talked about Stalin all day long. Who he was, what he was, what he did, how he did it... only about him and him alone, and how without him there would be no... At this point Mara turned the button all the way to the left and the house became silent.

On the fifth day of the month, early in the day, it was still dark outside, Pavlevitsa knocked on Mara’s door and said:

“Mara, Mara! Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” asked Mara.

“Stalin died!” replied Pavlevitsa.

“Oh, the poor man! What illness did he have? May God bless his soul...” said Mara and crossed herself.

“Mara, today the whole world is crying and mourning…” said Pavlevitsa.

“Well, today the world is crying… Tomorrow it will be rejoicing…” replied Mara.

That day and the following days, until the funeral and after the funeral, some wept, others rejoiced.

Everyone had their own reasons for joy and regret...

Even the kolhoz committee was in mourning. They tied a wide black ribbon on the big red flag and place it in front of the small statue of Stalin that had been erected during Soviet times in front of the House of Culture, which during imperial times was a village inn. The monument disappeared the next morning. The party secretary called the city police station immediately. Two policemen and a German shepherd searched the area. They found the statue beheaded and arms broken. It was thrown into the brook. Written on the chest was the word “ZBRODNIARZ” (Criminal).

In a statement, the Kolhoz Nea Zoi party secretary said he had doubts that it was a refugee who had done that. He suspected it was one of the Polish drivers who transported pine logs to the sawmill.

In the evening neighbours Pavle and Pavlevitsa went to Mara and Mitre’s house for a visit. This was a regular thing they did during the evenings after sunset. Mara served the men vodka and she and Pavlevitsa had sweets made with plum jam. Here, too, they kept up their Macedonian custom of serving the men an alcoholic beverage and the women sweets. Mara also took away the vodka bottle after the drinks were served. She maintained that custom too.

The flame of the great candle inside the house often went out as there were many electrical brownouts and blackouts. The middle houses in Liskovate, it seems, experienced regular brownouts with the electricity increasing hour by hour and then decreasing hour by hour, causing dark shadows or no shadows on the wooden walls inside the house. The conversations were soft and often silent. Most often they communicated by silence. In their silence their thoughts collected like a swarm of bees. In their silence they felt their pain for those they had lost. The few words they exchanged felt heavy and were full of long sighs. The evil had destroyed everything in them that yesterday was theirs, was most beautiful and dearest. There was sadness in their eyes filled with the pain of their souls. They spent most of their evenings in the semi-dark room in silence. Their long moments of silence were often interrupted by heavy sighs. Their thoughts often took them back home and gave their souls a slight relief. Their hearts warmed when they thought of that distant time, the time of their youth which would never return, which they kept fresh in their memories. Their memories of back home comforted them, kept them alive under the straw roof of this wooden Ukrainian hata (a village house built of logs. Most often such houses are found in southeastern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine). Back home, there, back home, they used to say, back home, there in our home. Words which they repeated endlessly, words that became engraved in their minds, words that, every time they were mentioned, woke up their

long and heavy sighs full of pain, unbearable sadness, sorrow and hope.

Every time they said anything they repeated:

“When we were back home...” which released a river of memories unraveling the key to their life.

This home, the wooden Ukrainian hata, was never called home. It was breathing with a different soul, other hearts grieved for it, other minds thought of it. It wasn’t theirs even though they looked after it every day. There was no place in their minds, hearts, or souls for this house. They didn’t know its previous owners. They knew no name, no surname and no fate. From the churches, they figured they were Christians. But because they were gone, because their hatas became empty, the new residents figured that the previous residents had probably had some bad luck, that some evil had knocked on their door and made them leave. This home, where the refugees now lived, was home to some others; maybe uprooted, maybe evicted, maybe displaced like them, but in this home they felt alien and every day and night they wanted to return to their own home, to their hills and mountains, where they could drink water from their springs, not from the wells in the yards... This was their overwhelming love and desire, in their moments of despair. This was what they wanted, this was their light in the dark and this is what warmed their cold souls... Their thoughts during those evening visits always brought them back home... far away, far away, only there, there to their own homes... Whatever the conversation was about, it always ended with the words - back home... back in our house...

The flame of the great candle went out and so did the conversation. With wishes and prayers for a good night, the visitors said goodbye and walked out over the threshold...

Lightning flashed above the winding hillside bring momentary light to the dark and then, only a moment later, thunder.

“It will soon rain, let’s get going…” said Pavle and stepped forward.

“Come again... in good health...” said Mara and waited until her guests disappeared in the dark.

When Mara turned around to go inside, she thought she saw something. She thought she saw someone run by and disappear behind the house.

“Mitre I saw something… maybe a person... over there,” said Mara with concern.

“I don’t see anything there. You must have imagined it. Get inside, don’t stand here,” replied Mitre.

“I thought I saw a person...” Mara insisted.

Just as they started to eat dinner, Mara’s ears caught a soft, barely audible knocking sound on the window. She turned her head abruptly and noticed a raised hand on the window. She felt a sharp pain in her gut and paralysis in her legs. Barely able to take a breath, in a frightened voice, she whispered:

“Mi... Mi... Mitre... somebody is there,” and pointed her hand at the foggy window.

Mitre lit the gas lamp, raised it above his head and went around the house to check. He saw nothing and heard nothing. He came back a little angry but calmly said to his wife:

“You are imagining things. Be quiet and stop being so scared...”

“I saw a hand; it looked like a man’s hand. Don’t look at me like that… Lock the door... You don’t know what might be hiding in the dark...” replied Mara.

Mitre locked the door and checked the handle to make sure it was locked properly. At that very moment he heard a silent knock on the window. He took a step and slowly turned around but saw nothing. He returned, slammed the door open and, holding the lamp high above his head, went out and, with a resolute and confident voice, yelled:

“Who’s there!?”

“Nie bój się pan...” (Don’t be afraid, sir…) replied a pleading voice in Polish. The person raised his hands up and repeated: “Nie bój się pan...”

Mitre thought he was a beggar.

“Who are you? What are you looking for? What do you want?” asked Mitre ready for a confrontation. But as he approached the stranger and shone the lamp in his face, he saw benevolence, pity and pleading in his eyes. The stranger was begging with his face, and mostly with his eyes.

“Who are you?” Mitre asked him again.

The stranger begged Mitre in both Polish and Ukrainian to let him go inside. That much Mitre understood from the few words the stranger said.

Mara stood behind Mitre and looked at the stranger with a sympathetic look. The stranger came to the front of the door and with both arms stretched out, calmly said:

“Nie bójcie się, państwo, ja tutejszy... to mój dom... (Madam don’t be afraid, I’m from here... this is my home...). And then he knelt down and caressed the threshold with his trembling hands and kissed it... A painful tremor shook his body. The man trembled and cried with a suffocating cry directly from the heart and from his hurting soul... He then shook with great excitement and barely audibly, with a suffocating voice, said:

“To mój dom ... mój dom ... Boże dzięki Ci, stoi moja chata ... mój dom...” (This is my home... my home... Thank you God, my home is still standing... my home…).

Frightened and startled by the sight, Mitre and Mara made their way inside and invited the stranger into the house.

While crossing himself, the stranger again repeated:

“Boże dzięki Ci, stoi moja chata ... mój dom…” (Thank you God, my home is still standing... my home…) He felt immense calm and happiness filled his heart as he crossed the threshold of his hata.

This wasn’t the first time the stranger had come here but this was his first time coming so close, to touch the doorstep after so many years, and the first time to walk inside his native hata. The other times he had come here, he had come in the dark afraid of being seen. He looked at his hata from the distance clasping his face with his hands, watching it through his tearful and misty eyes, firmly convinced that it was still standing. Seeing his hata relieved some of his sadness and lessened the intrusive pain in his soul. From there he went to the cemetery, pulled the dried grass off the tombs, lit candles over the graves and prayed for the souls of his ancestors. While holding a lit candle in his hand, he kissed the crosses and tombstones and quietly waited tranquilly for the darkness to disappear. The small candle flames danced in the dark in the desolate cemetery. With his pain pressing deep into his heart and soul, somewhat relieved, the stranger in thick darkness followed paths known only to him, which took him a long way north. He secretly moved from train to train, often going on foot, hiding from people. He was returning to that sandy, flat country, to the unwanted and hateful house where the authorities had settled him. He didn’t like the walls made of red brick, neither the grey sheet roof, nor the double paned glazed windows. For him, that house was always foreign and cold. He was grieving for his wooden hata in Liskovate, where he dearly loved everything, and there in the north, everything was unwanted, meaningless, undesired and alien...

Volodimir was returning north, bringing with him mild joy and tranquility in his soul and the feeling of gratitude to God and to those strange newcomers who brought peace, warmth and light into his hata.

After Stalin died and the warmer winds began to slowly blow away the hatred and evil, and there were less restrictions on train travel, Volodimir traveled all day and night so that he could knock on the little window at dawn.

From his quiet and whispering words, Mitre and Mara could extract the words “I, from here, my home”. They understood the words and most of all they understood, the quiet, trembling, painful and uncomfortable weeping, the touching and caressing of the doorstep, the kissing of the door and the walls, and the Orthodox crossing... They understood that only those who had lost something very dear through misfortune would do something like this… Only they would travel such a long way to spend such a short time in their former home...

After dinner, consisting of bread, cheese, onions and salt, Mitre and Mara listened to the Polish and Ukrainian words, looking for words that were similar to Macedonian, and with souls squeezed by pain, wiped their tearing eyes and sighed deeply, listening to the stories the Ukrainian stranger told them who said his name was Volodimir. (We are talking about the Operation “Wisła” - a pacification military action carried out in the years 1947-1950 against the Ukrainian Uprising Army and the organization of Ukrainian Nationalists operating in the state territory of the Republic of Poland. The action involved mass forced eviction of civilian Ukrainians from southeastern Poland and resettling them in the so-called Ziemie Odzyskane (Reclaimed Lands), which until 1945 were inhabited by Germans, who according to the Treaty of Zelandia were recruited to Yalta. A total of 150,000 Ukrainians were forcibly evicted and the state permanently seized their property.)

Volodimir, with a trembling voice, began to tell his story:

“The date was April 28, 1947. It was early in the morning when the entire village was besieged by the army. The soldiers broke into the houses shouting and yelling, ordering us to pack our things. They said: ‘You only have two hours to gather everything you need and after that get out and take to the road.’ Military trucks were lined up all along the road. More soldiers came and yelled: ‘You only have twenty minutes…’ What to pick up first? We couldn’t even gather our wits in such a short time. We had belongings in the house, animals in the stables - two horses, a colt, three cows and a calf. In the yard we had a four-wheeled wagon. We could have loaded a lot of stuff onto the wagon but the military would only allow us to take

25kg of belongings from inside the house and the horses and cattle and then walk to the train station that was thirty miles away. Waiting there were freight cars loaded with belongings, people, horses, cattle, chickens, sheep, goats… We had a long journey ahead of us. We didn’t know where they were taking us. The army that guarded us provided us with some food and water when we stopped at various stations. They only gave us enough to keep us alive. We traveled for days in those freezing freight cars. Finally they unloaded us onto a plain on sandy ground in a pine forest. They put us in empty houses which they told us had belonged to Germans. Some of the houses were given to demobilized Polish soldiers. We found out that the Germans too had been expelled. We were given houses but no work. We had to work with the Poles for months just for a piece of bread. They called us enemies at every step, humiliated us and prohibited us from calling ourselves Ukrainians and from gathering for prayer. The educated among us were separated from us, the priests were removed. They even prohibited us from visiting one another. Thank God we stayed alive...” said Volodimir, sighed a heavy sigh, crossed himself three times and said: “There is a lot to be said but that is all I can say for now. Maybe some other time…”

Volodimir wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, leaned on the table and quietly said:

“I was born in this house... my roots are from here... I grew up here, I brought my bride here and my children were born here. My parents, grandparents and their parents are buried in the cemetery up there. I’m going up there to light a candle for their souls... But before I go can I just look at the house one more time? There were shelves in this room with books stacked on them. They were my dedo’ s. He constantly encouraged us to read. In Ukrainian we read the books by Ivan Franco, Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka. In Russian we read books by Mitskievich and other Russian writers. My dedo read mostly church books. They were thick, with wooden covers and handwritten... I see that there are no books here now... My dedo said they were written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which was invented by some saints called Kiril and Metodi, and that the Cyrillic alphabet came to the Ukraine from the far south...” said Volodimir and was abruptly interrupted by Mara who said:

“We found the house empty. Completely empty, desolate, moldy and cobwebs hung everywhere... We were cleaning it for days but found no books. Not one…”

Volodimir continued:

“From those books we learned many things about the Ukraine. The books said that the Ukraine was occupied by Tatars, Turks, Russians, Poles and Germans... They all hated us very much and we hated them even more... The Tatars and Turks took many of our girls for their harems. One of these Ukrainian women, I don’t remember her name, married the Turkish Sultan and gave birth to many male children. They fought each other, poisoned each other, stabbed each other with sharp daggers and even drowned each other just to become first in line for the sultan crown... So, Ukrainian soil is soaked with Russian, Tatar, Turkish, Polish, German and what not blood... Even the wide flowing Dnieper River is moaning for the Ukrainian blood it carried to the Black Sea...” said Volodimir, walked towards the window, pointed with his hand in the distance and said:

“There, up there, is my property, my fields. From the brook on the left to the other brook on the right all the way to the top of the hill. When the Bolsheviks came to power, they collected all our crops and created a great famine. Many died of starvation. Golodomor covered the Ukraine. (Golodomor in Ukrainian literally means starving. The story telling of Volodomor is about the artificial starvation by Soviet authorities at the height of forced collectivization in the Soviet Union. According to various sources, around 7 million died in the territory of Ukraine in 1932-1933, and about 3 million people in other parts of the USSR. Golodomor is considered one of the most tragic catastrophes in Ukrainian history and is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian genocide or the Ukrainian Holocaust. By decree No. 1310/98 issued by President Leonid Kuchma, Golodomor has been declared a national holiday -Day of the Dead - a Day to Remember the Victims of Golodomor.) They took my land. Then they took all the villagers and moved them into the Kolhozes. We endured hard times and great difficulties but we remained alive. The only place where we could find something

to eat was in the empty fields where we secretly collected spilled grain from the ground. We went out at night when the moon was full and the sky was clear and collected grain even though we knew it was a punishable offense (On Stalin’s order, Molotov and Kaganmovich drafted a decree on the protection of social property, often referred to as the five-class law, by which he, who would break so many classes, was sentenced to death or 10 years in prison. More than 125,000 people were fined on the basis of that decree.). When the Great War (WW II) ended, the Soviets and Poles agreed to exchange land. This is how we found ourselves in Poland. We had no peace. The Ukrainian nationalists, this is what they called those who wished to create a greater Ukraine, fought with the Soviets and Poles on one side and Czechoslovakians on the other. They lost the war. The winners crushed them and uprooted us...”

Volodimir’s voice began to wither. He covered his face with his hands. It seemed like every breath he took, every word he uttered was dripping with pain and sorrow.

There was silence in the room.

Heavy sighs in place of words.

Mitre and Mara looked sad and stared far, far, far away... There were lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes. They were reminded of their own sad fate, injured souls and open wounds that refused to heal. They sat in silence, listening to the Ukrainian speak with a desperate voice full of turmoil...

Their thoughts of what they had lost wouldn’t allow them to have peace. The deceitful slogans, to which they regularly listened, felt like a rope wrapped around their necks. And now, here, in this valley that was often submerged in fog, they were told of some new victories. Mara and Mitre and hundreds of others like them, hadn’t forgotten the many other times they were told of such victories and right after were asked, sometimes threatened, to give generously for those victories everything they had; grains, beans, lentils, flour, wine, rakia, bed covers, pillows, shirts, sweaters, gloves, wool, yarn, forks, spoons, plates, cups, three sheep for every ten owned, one or two oxen and horses. It was compulsory to donate the horse. And so