The Ministry for the Future

14

We had to leave. It was too dangerous to stay.

I was a doctor, I ran a small clinic with an assistant and three nurses and a couple who ran the office. My wife taught piano and my children went to school. Then rebels from our area began fighting the government and troops moved into town, and people were being killed right on the street. Even some kids from the school my children went to. And one day our clinic was blown up. When I went to it and saw the wreckage, looked from the street right into my examination room, I knew we had to leave. Somehow we were on the wrong side.

I went to a friend who had been a journalist before the war and asked him if he could put me in touch with a smuggler who would get us on the way to someplace safe. I did not have any particular idea about where that might be. Anyplace was going to be safer than where we were. When my friend understood what I was asking him, he rounded the table and gave me a hug. I’m sorry it’s come to this, he said. I will miss you. This stuck me like a knife in the heart. He knew what it meant, this move. I didn’t know, but he did. And when I saw this, saw what he knew in his face, I sat down on my chair as if shot. My knees buckled. People say this as a figure of speech, but really it is a very accurate account of what happens when you get a big shock. It’s something in the body, a physiological thing, although I can’t explain the mechanism.

The smuggler was expensive, so much so that only those who had some considerable savings would be able to leave by using one. Most of my townspeople were stuck. But we could afford it. So I met my friend one night at our usual café, and he had a man with him. The man was polite but distant. Professional. He asked to see my money, asked about my family, when I could be ready, that sort of thing. He said he could get us into Turkey and then Bulgaria, and after that Switzerland or Germany. I went to the bank and withdrew the money, then went home and told my wife, and we told the children to pack one suitcase each, that we were going on a trip. That night at midnight a car pulled up to our apartment curb and we went downstairs and put our suitcases in the trunk and piled in the back of the car. As we drove off I looked out the car window at our apartment and realized I would never see it again. All that was over. I had had my routines, I liked to go down to the café after work or late at night when it had cooled, drink coffee and play backgammon and talk to friends. My wife and I got together with a few couples, made meals and watched their kids. We knew the people who ran the grocery and the local stores. We had all that, just like anyone. I remember what it was like. But just barely.