AZI NU IERI

My City Today, the Ghosts Linger

There is something beautiful about Bucharest in a rainy twilight: the north, developed and neon, unfolds before me beneath the soft azure glow of the clearing sky. The pavement still gleams dark with rain, and cars rush past, splashing muddied water onto the dwarfish sidewalks.

A few years ago, an angel in the guise of a bosketar came down through the window of my apartment on the eighth floor, bringing me the vertiginous revelation that I was higher than all my ancestors—great men and women of learning and trade, both common and noble—who watch me now, hidden in the halo of every streetlight.

"Look, you fool," the angel said, "they are with you in these streets, though they never knew them."

I nodded but did not dare look into their eyes. Instead, I saw the new hotels with their glowing golden signs, the oil company’s headquarters, an entire neighbourhood unto itself.

The angel slapped the back of my neck. "Nay," he said, his voice rough with stale cigarettes. "Don’t look down—those free-market idols are hungry for your worship."

So I raised my gaze. Across from us, only another apartment block built by the Departed dared to meet our eyes, its washed-out grandeur unchanged. I was born five years after the Age of the Departed. Yet, in my grandparents' house, his name was invoked as often as my great-grandparents—not out of reverence, but through the sheer frequency of remembrance woven into stories of hardship endured.

My grandparents took me to every new shop within a five-mile radius, indulging me with bootleg action figures while watching, amused, as I played with them. They never entirely understood superheroes—bless their memory—but Grandma still covered her old pantry door with a Spider-Man poster my mom brought home from New York.

"They are there in the golden glow, waiting for you to visit them in their apartment in New Nether York," said that wayward angel as I stared out at the rooftops of the shorter apartment blocks. As a child, these rooftops were blanketed in snow beneath bright gray mornings. In summer, they turned green, like Arrakis under Leto.

Indeed, this north of ours is the New Bucharest, of which my Pajura is the heraldic bird. This side of the capital was built on demolished houses and confiscated lands, where only the servants' homes remained, scattered far away in the wilded neighborhood of Dămăroaia.

In Pajura, my grandparents settled—not too far from where they were born—in the apartment where I grew up, surrounded by family and friends. Neighbors dropped by unannounced, and occasionally, a salesman would come knocking, swindling old folks with trades of blunt knives and gaudy garden ornaments. My grandparents lived on the first floor. I watched the seasons change from their window while throwing out various small objects to watch them fall.

The Pajura Quarter—a land of the exiled, the displaced, the newcomers. It was here that School No. 178 was built, where Ms. O, the music teacher, once forgot what year it was. We sang outdated songs about the great year 2000 and the grand deeds we would accomplish when we were grown. This was 2003. We were only in the fourth grade.

My grandmother founded this school and ran it with pride and integrity. She accepted no gifts from students or parents except for flowers on International Women’s Day, and she made my uncle take Russian because she didn’t want to be accused of favoritism in her French class. She never had to boast of how much the students loved her; they would stop her on the street—bald and gray, with beer bellies—to say hello and inquire about her health. Going with her to the shop just down the street could take more than an hour. I would miss some of my shows, but I could never be cross with her.

Sevastel’s was the name of that shop, and Sevastel had also been my grandma’s student. From there, Grandpa would buy me candy cigarettes, and as I chewed on one, he would light a real one and say, “Look, old boy, now we’re both smoking,” and chuckle.

I lit one myself, took a drag, and offered it to the bosketar angel. He took a drag, then threw it out the window, and the whole neighborhood was on fire. I asked him what kind of angel he was that he should resort to arson.

“The kind that grants wishes. Didn’t you wish to burn your past? To use those flames for fuel toward new horizons?”

And in shame, I bowed my head, for many times, I had dreamed of a new name and a new city where I could live and write. Yes, I grew up listening to stories of the world, my mind restless for distant horizons. Yet my footsteps traced the same parking lots, back alleys, and main street of my neighborhood—a bird of prey circling familiar skies.

I grew up in a neighborhood settled by my grandparents. As soon as we were allowed, we built our own church. Women donated their jewelry for its construction. Now, we take communion from the golden chalice that was once their baubles.

And in those days, no reasonable man left New Bucharest except by the 331 bus, that mystical line binding our borough to the city's heart. There was the skeleton of a railway station, and the gray en gros depot—some called it Rotten, others The Flowers—was still fresh and bustling. My grandfather took me there once to buy a toy, but the good ones always had to be purchased in bulk.

Oh, those were indeed good days to be a merchant. Kiosks sprouted on public property, selling chewing gum wrapped in temporary tattoos and croissants that came with the latest collectibles with impunity.

But proper city planning demolished the kiosks, just as it paved over the wild corners of the old neighborhood, taming the spaces where the past lingered. By then, the angel had vanished, and the sky was no longer filled with stars.

The free-market idols had their fill, and the old ways receded like footprints in the rain. Yet the ghosts remain, waiting in the glow of the streetlights, watching from the rooftops dusted with summer green or winter white. And when I walk these streets, tracing the same paths my grandparents once took, past the shops, the school, Sevastel’s counter, and the old apartment block that still dares to look me in the eye, I know they are with me, though they never knew this city as I do.

Today, not yesterday. But yesterday still lingers.