A passport in Communist Romania and a lost opportunity
Storytelling time
Hi, I’m Karina!
I write about what I know! I write about what I went through, going through. I write about what helped me carry on, what helps me carry on.
I write about historical events, the ones I ve been a witness off, participant and observer, I write about countries I lived in, about people, about books, about failed projects, about human psychology, about survival, about reclaiming my life in micro steps.
A PASSPORT IN COMMUNIST TIMES
You need to be of a certain age to remember the amount of effort and scrutiny one had to go through when planning to visit US! Correction you also need to come from Romania. I don’t know what was the system before the so called communist system collapsed at the end of 1980’s in other Eastern European countries so I will only refer to the country I am coming from.
Here we go. During the Communist years having a passport was a huge achievement. It was not something one could obtain easily and to be frank not many people applied for one as travelling abroad was a dream for the majority. Yes if you were a sportsman, musician, artist, diplomat, a securitate employer, director or various state companies you were more likely to get a passport and travel provided your “lineage” was clean. What I mean by lineage? Your closest relatives. If they were clean from the point of view of the securitate services then you were allowed to travel provided again you had the proper paperwork, invitations and so on.
Or like in my case, if you had relatives abroad. Here I am talking about having relatives in Russia.
When it was coming to the Western World … well it was even harder. It really was.
For whatever reason I never had any desire to visit the US. Don’t ask my why as I don’t have an answer but I had no opportunities anyway so probably my internal system was pretty much balanced. I had no desire and it would have been close to impossible anyway so why worry or why even think about that.
Come revolution, a few things happened. I started to work for a company who was trying to privatise the second TV national channel and I came across many business people from American tv channels, Canadian, Greek and more. So how shall I put it … America was coming closer to me.
AN INVITATION IN MY HAND
At the same time, a childhood year friend came back to Romania (immediately after the 1989 revolution) to visit after about 8 years or more of living in America. She left when she was 14, with her mother, illigaly. Brave people in those times were risking a lot to break free! Her mother and Nina (not her name but let’s call her like this) were part of that niche. Keeping in touch with fugitives (yes this is what they were considered to be) was dangerous but I kept in touch in spite of this.
Our home phone was tapped anyway because of our Russian connections, because I was going to the British and American libraries to borrow books so I kept the correspondence going. After our reunion, Nina invited me to visit her in New York. It was already 1993, 3 years after the revolution. I had the invitation in my hand and the next step was to go to the American Embassy, queue for a day and a bit (yes the queues were quite something) with a big folder full of paperwork proving that I had reasons to return to Romania and was highly unlikely to become an illigal immigrant. Well at the time I was not married, I had no property in my name, no car in my name, nothing but my job so I was in the high risk category of becoming an illigal immigrant.
One thing to add is that should one’s application be negative, this entry refusal would have been nicely stored in one’s private file and any other applications made to visit other western countries would be in jeopardy.
So I didn’t go. The invitation stayed for many years in one of the drawers, a lonely piece of paper, something which could have been …. the entry ticket to a completely different life. A lost opportunity maybe!
