At Home, In the World, In the Theatre: The Mysterious Geography of University Square, Bucharest

At Home, In the World, In the Theatre The Mysterious Geography of University Square,Bucharest Oana-MariaHock Exile is part of Romanian destiny -Mircea Eliade June 1990 AS I WALK through the gates of Otopeni airport in Bucharest, I wonder if I am entering a labyrinth or exiting one. I feel inhabited by a strange awareness of stepping onto what I believe to be liberated Romanian earth. Everything in my view appears full of significance: the Romanian broken airport window, the Romanian cigarette butts on the floor, the Romanian trees outside, the Romanian horizon continuing out. While the Romanian border guard is checking my visa I fight the impulse to say something like, "Congratulations on the revolution!" or even more ridiculous, "Congratulations on Ceausescu's death!" In Romanian, all my thoughts strike me as foreign. The Romanian words stand against me like giant objects. In the car on the way home, my parents point out through the window buildings full of bullet holes and places in the streets where people died during the revolution in December. As we drive through University Square I catch a glimpse of the tents of the remaining hunger strikers in front of the National Theatre building. The Square seems nearly empty. Where are the thousands of Romanians calling and singing for freedom? I am told 78 the story of University Square and I feel like an intruder from another galaxy listening to a Romanian family's private history. In May University Square had been proclaimed a "Neo-Communism Free Zone." Thousands of people gathered there to protest "Communism with a new face" and to ask for true freedom. For days, weeks, and months University Square was a zone of catharsis different from the one experienced in the first few days of the outburst against Ceausescu the previous December. It was a nation's anamnesis, a painful but exhilarating ritual of recollection of a forgotten humanity. For the first time in 40 years, Romanians looked each other in the eyes. At night University Square was a sea of candles. In the middle of all of this, both figuratively and literally, intense work on the Greek trilogy began in the National Theatre. As the rehearsals went on, so did the hunger strikers down below in the Square. Andrei Serban had accepted the position of General Director of the Romanian National Theatre in Bucharest, with assurance from the Minister of Culture of absolute artistic freedom. The opening production will be his internationally-known Greek trilogy (Trojan Women, Electra, and Medea). The first presentation of the "cultured theatre" in Romania (and in the Romanian language) was Euripides' Hecuba in 1819. It was performed by candlelight; a painted image of Apollo holding his lyre appeared on the rough linen curtain. That same June evening I arrived in Bucharest, the police arrest the hunger strikers and clear University Square. The peaceful demonstration that had lasted for months officially ends. The crosswalks are already being repainted, the soil is turned in front of the National Theatre to plant new flowers. Tomorrow is the day of the New President's official inauguration. I remember from my history classes long ago that in the ancient past, the geography that is now Romania was referred to by antiquity's great historians as Terra Mirabilis, "The Land of Happy People." Their god was Apollo, the God of Light. Later in the night, a strange rumor circulates. The miners are coming. I dismiss this as absurd. I go to sleep in my old bed and I dream of a Byzantine liturgy. At seven o'clock in the morning my father, who is artistic director of the National Theatre, receives an urgent telephone call from his office. Hundreds of miners have arrived in Bucharest by special trains. They are dressed perfectly as prototypical miners, from their hardhats with lamps to the coal dust smeared on their arms and faces. They are armed with clubs and chains. It is almost as if they are from central casting. Bucharest becomes a "miners' republic" with its headquarters in the 79 same University Square. In the streets innocent passersby are being beaten to near death with cruelty and vengeance that sends shivers...