Publisher's Synopsis
It's December 1989 and in a remote Eastern European country, a young man is freshman in the Romanian dictator's army, when the revolution begins, with all the good and bad that violent upraises bring along. Divergent from the official history, the young man's experience is crude and exposes surprising situations and developments and unveils the simple people's way of forming their opinion about those seizing the new power. This is a story of an absurd, incompetent and abusive environment in which a bunch of boys make their way to stay safe, get feeding and resting, and live to tell the story. And the story is about beautiful and ugly, bravery and cowardliness, like this episode: "We all aligned on the plateau and then headed, in column, towards the arms storehouse. Only this time we didn't stop at the usual place, the one containing the well-known flints, but in front of a ruin, we previously considered some forgotten place. This proved to be the real thing - live ammo and weaponry, specially arranged to look like a ruin. Major Rembo was coordinating the weapons' distribution. He ordered us to get in line and pass, one by one, in front of the store's entry, from which a group of soldiers kept getting out cases with rifles and ammo. Under the poor light of two blinded gas lamps, the passage of each soldier and the handle of a greasy brand new machine-gun together with sectors and boxes of cartridges, look like an epic scene in an historical motion picture. A handful of kids, geared up in khaki, were just about to play the warriors under the command of some older uncles, none of which ever went through such situation. The Kalashnikov and ammo in possession, each soldier was entering another formation, to wait, with such a happy face as if he would be given some marvelous thing."Besides, there are also accounts you have never read in official communiques, like this one: "They all took the captain's white Dacia and left. The rest I know from accounts: It seems like the man reached his home, saw the family well and fine, changed, they all eat and with solid supplies in the trunk, headed back to the unit. It was already afternoon and fire resumed increasingly in downtown. Despite warnings from some officers from another unit, in charge with a check point, the captain decided to keep on moving. On the Antiaeriana street, a bullet stuck in the front right door. With the car in motion, the two corporals lowered the side windows, pulled out the guns and opened fire. Against whom, it's unknown and none learned. Meanwhile, the car reached pretty close to the last checkpoint at the exit from Bucharest towards Magurele. The military there saw a white Dacia, speeding up, with two men firing at large. When the captain saw the checkpoint, he begun flashing the front lights, which panicked the military there, already stressed by the psychosis of the terrorists and scared that they could be attacked from behind. So they opened fire against the car, with everything at hand: AK47 riffles and the 12.5 machine guns on the armored transporters. The Dacia was ripped apart and the three troops were shredded. They died because the captain, their superior, a career military, ignored warnings of his colleagues in the last checkpoint before the one where they all perished. They died because they were too impulsive, pulling out the guns and starting shooting ghosts. They died without understanding why, and without any point. May they rest in peace."This is not a documentary, not an investigation, not a testimony. This is a "fiction" novel, because in Eastern Europe, the former political police has evolved into becoming compliant with the democracy, action ways included. Enjoy!
