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“I said no.” His voice was firm, and as loud as I thought he would possibly dare without waking Mother.
I stared through the darkness, not understanding what had just happened, searching for that twinkle of light in his eye, angry with him, and frustrated. I wanted to sit up and argue with him, demand he tell me where that place was, if it was real.
I reached a hand out to touch him, to make him turn back round to me, but I stopped, thinking of Mother behind him. Why had he looked to her? Because he didn’t want to wake her?
I pulled the covers up to my chin. I can wait, I thought.
And I closed my eyes and brought those images back from my memory, of those people I had seen and food I had smelt and music I had heard. And I hoped they were real, somewhere here in my country, the best place in the world.
“It was a beautiful place,” I whispered across the darkness. “I wish one day we could go there. Together.”
There was no reply.
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I woke the next morning, not in wonderment at some sight my imagination had shown me, but in hunger as my stomach rumbled, and in pain as my bones creaked against the cold.
And I remembered the smells of the food.
My body shook as I pulled on my clothes under the blankets, and I padded through from the back room to the other, which served as everything from my grandparents’ room at night, to the kitchen, dining and living room during the day. I rubbed my hands down my body to try and warm up.
An image flashed in front of my eyes of tall buildings that looked like homes, comfortable, warm and welcoming.
I stood in front of the fire Father had lit, but although the troughs and holes and gaps under the floorboards allowed some heat to cross the floor, the air above was cold enough for your breath to form clouds.
I sat down at the table with my parents and grandparents and we gave thanks, as always, to our Dear Leader and His father before him, our Great Leader, for the food He’d provided for our breakfast, our maize porridge. And as we ate, a voice boomed from the speaker in the corner of the room telling us how lucky we were to have the food He provided, how we were so fortunate to live in North Korea, the country that had it so much better than any other in the world.
“Our military strength is the pride of our nation,” the voice continued. “Our farmers are proud to give their produce to the government to feed our military and keep them strong to fight off our oppressors.”
I glanced up and was shocked to see Father pressing his hands against his ears.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “You need to listen.”
“I have a headache, Yoora,” he told me. “It’s too loud.”
“But that’s so you can listen properly. That’s why there’s no volume control. Or off button, so you don’t miss anything.”
I heard his sigh, heavy and long, and I heard the words muttered under his breath. “What have we created?” But I didn’t understand them. Not then.
I watched him take his hands away, and for a moment, just a moment, he stared straight back at me. What was that I could see behind his eyes? Fear? Worry? A warning for me? Or maybe it was nothing: just my imagination seeing something that wasn’t there.
He looked away.
It was a Sunday, a day for volunteer work, our patriotic duty, and I stepped from the house into a cold winter morning, a thick mist hiding the fields and dark skeletons of trees trying to reach through.
Stillness and calm stretched over everything. Silence but for my feet on the dirt path, the air through my lungs and the squeak of the bucket swinging in my hand. I passed groups of houses just like ours: two rooms, single-storey, joined together in rows of ten with one roof stretched across their length, each like a giant harmonica, and all in straight, ordered lines.
I continued up the path, and on either side of me, the red and yellow of the small flags that lined our fields appeared from out of the mist. And people appeared too. Men and women, girls and boys, some older than me, some younger, all heading off for their day’s duty.
Mine was up on the main road leading out of the village, as it had been for the last two months. I swept the gutters, I cleaned and washed the road, I weeded the borders and dug over the soil. For a mile in one direction and a mile in the other. And on the other side. Then, when I was finished, I started again.
Mine was the cleanest stretch. And often, as I worked, I would imagine the face of our Dear Leader looking down on me, smiling at me, His hands and His Fatherly Love protecting me.
But that day, something had changed. Something intangible, a question not even formed, a shadow in my mind that disappeared when I tried to look at it, because something didn’t make sense. I stopped, sat back pigeon-style and closed my eyes.
I could see that food again, in boxes and cartons and wrappers, and I could see people eating it as they walked… and I could see those cars of shiny blue or silver or orange even… It’s real, I heard Father say again… and I saw those lights again… and those clothes… and people… and smiles… and music… thud thud thud.
No, I thought, that’s not music.
I opened my eyes. Marching towards me was our group leader, his boots like a drum on the surface of the road.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, grabbing my bucket again. But his hand smacked against my face and I was on the floor, my head spinning, the taste of blood in my mouth.
He stared down at me with empty eyes. “Is this how you repay your country for the kindness it’s shown you? You think our Dear Leader would be pleased to see you wasting time daydreaming? You’re lazy. You won’t need a full day’s rations if you haven’t done a full day’s work!”
I scurried to my feet, keeping my head down and plucking frantically at the earth, pulling out weeds and stones, so angry and disappointed with myself.
But still those words of Father’s echoed in my head, and I stole a glance up the road and back again. There were no cars. Not one. How could that place be real?
In the kitchen that evening, after twelve hours of work and while my grandparents rolled out their beds for the night, I took the white cloth from the drawer and bowed low to the only two pictures allowed to hang on the wall in our house – our Dear Leader and our Great Leader. And as I dusted their round, smiling faces with their red cheeks and glinting eyes, I muttered my apologies and asked for their forgiveness.
“Your mother says you were in trouble today.”
I turned to see Father standing next to me, his eyes flickering over the bruise on my cheek.
I nodded. “I was daydreaming.” I folded the cloth and brushed it across the top of the picture frame.
“What about?” he asked.
I ran the cloth down the edge and along the bottom, but didn’t say a word – just shrugged.
“Forget it,” he whispered to me. “It won’t do any good.” And he turned away before I could say a word.
I listened to him putting on his coat, fastening up his shoes and looking for his gloves. I rubbed the cloth across the glass over and over, up and down and round and round in circles.
“I’m going to look for firewood,” I heard him tell my mother.
I waited for the door to close. Then I turned round and smiled at her. “I’ll go and help him,” I said.
There was only one place my father could be heading, the only place to find dry wood at this time of year, and so I set off out of the house, round the back and across a field towards a small, dense copse of trees, following a dot of light from his lamp as it swung in and out of view.
The cold air burned in my lungs, and my feet and ankles buckled and turned on the frozen ground as I strode on and on. But as he reached the copse, I was right behind him, and I stretched a hand through the darkness and rested it on his shoulder.
“Father,” I said.
He jumped and turned. “Yoora, what are you doing?” The lamplight flickered up on to his face, and for a second I stepped back from this ghostly, other-worldly thing staring at me.
“I… came to help you.”
He stared at me, his breathing heavy, his face fixed. “Hold this,” he said, passing me the lamp.
I followed close behind him, waving the light over the ground as he picked up twigs and sticks. Waiting for the right moment. He stretched up high, his hand pulling tight on a branch to bring it down, the lamplight flooding his face.
Now, I thought.
“Was it really real, Father, that place in my dream?”
He stopped. His whole body stiffened and his face filled with anger as he stared at me. Then he turned away again, yanking at the branch. “Is that why you followed me down here? To ask me that?”
“No,” I lied.
The branch came away in his hands and he strode towards me, towering over me. “I told you to forget it. There’s nothing to tell. It was a dream.” He turned away.
I shook my head, following him. “That’s not right. There’s something you’re not telling me…”
He spun round, his face in mine, his finger jabbing at me. “I told you, child, to leave it.” For a second I crumbled, frightened of him. Then I took a breath and I looked up.
“I hate it when you call me child,” I spat.
“You behave like one.”
“You treat me like one. Why don’t you trust me and tell me the truth? Tell me whatever it is you’re hiding from me! I’m old enough to know!”
His lips were thin as he stared at me, his chest heaving up and down as he breathed.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” he hissed.
I didn’t move, I didn’t argue, I didn’t say a word. I just waited, watching as his face relaxed and his shoulders dropped, as his head lowered and his eyes closed.
“All right,” he whispered, lifting his head to look at me. “But you have to promise me you won’t repeat a word. Not to anyone. And that you’ll listen, really listen, to what I have to say.”
I nodded. “I promise,” I breathed, and my skin prickled and my lungs felt hot and my palms were sweaty with excitement and anticipation.
“Your dream,” he whispered with a sigh, “that place you saw in your head, it is real, it does exist.”
I stared at him open-mouthed. “It’s Pyongyang, isn’t it? I think, Father, I think, you know, if I work really hard, that maybe He would let me go there, don’t you? If I try really hard? If we all do, He’ll let us go together. Today was a mistake, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have been daydreaming. But…”
He lifted a finger to my mouth to silence me. “Listen,” he said. “If you want me to tell you, then for a minute just listen.”
I nodded again.
“It does exist, and it is just as you saw it. It has enough food for everyone, and medicine if you get ill. It has houses and apartments with bathrooms where you wash and go to the toilet. It has heating where you flick a switch and the room gets warmer.” He lowered his voice further. “And it has shops where you can buy things.”
I stared at him, and suddenly everything felt very serious.
“Clothes. And music, all different sorts. And they have televisions with programmes and channels you can choose. And books with stories, or about different countries and their leaders, who are voted for.”
“We have a leader that we vote for too,” I whispered.
He nodded. “But in other countries,” he said slowly and carefully, “there is more than one name on the slip. They have a choice.” His eyes bored into mine. “One day I’ll take you there. I hope you can live there. Have a future there. Be happy… but…” His voice drifted off and I watched as he lifted up the lamp and scanned the darkness around us, as he wiped his hand across his face and took a step towards me.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Yoora?”
I nodded, although I wasn’t sure. I thought I did, but I didn’t know if I wanted to hear this, didn’t understand how anywhere like that could exist. Didn’t know whether to believe him. Or to trust him.
He sighed, moving closer to me, looking at me so intently. “What do you think to things here, Yoora? Our country? What do you think to our Dear Leader?”
I felt my body stiffen and my back straighten.
“You think he’s fair? Looks after us?”
“Of course,” I replied without thinking.
“You think we should feel this hungry? Or this cold?”
“Why are you asking me that? We’ve got everything we need here. He provides everything. There’s nowhere any better than here, He tells us that… He tells us…” My blank eyes stared into Father’s and I quoted lines I’d known for ever:
“We grow up in the land of freedom
All the little comrades march in rows
Singing in this paradise of peace
Tell me, of what can the world envy us?”
I focused back on him.
“Freedom?” he asked. “Paradise? You think so? Really, Yoora? After what I’ve just told you? After seeing that place in your dream?” He shook his head. “Open your eyes, look around you. If this is truly how you imagine freedom and paradise, then you have no imagination.” His voice was alive with passion and anger. “Are you hungry, Yoora? He’s not, our Dear Leader. He eats Chinese dolphins and French poodles, caviar and sea urchins.”
My mouth fell open at the hatred I could hear in his voice. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, hearing words coming from Father’s mouth that I never thought he would say.
I could believe that place was real. I could believe it was in North Korea. I could believe it was somewhere only the most hardworking and loyal citizens were allowed to go. But I could not believe any more than that. Father’s words about the city had made me question him, but these… these made me worry about his sanity.
“Are you cold?” Father continued. “He’s not. He lives in his palace with fires in every room and people to make them for him. Look how thin you are. Think of what he looks like. Has he ever missed a meal? Eaten only corn for a whole week? Gone to bed hungry? No. Is that how it should be? Is that right? Should he live like that while his people are starving?”
My hands flew over my mouth then over my ears. I strode away and then back. I couldn’t believe he dared even think the words coming out of his mouth. I didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want those thoughts and words in my head, corrupting me with reactionary lies, challenging my faith in my country, our Fatherland. What he was saying was a crime against the state, an insult to the authority of the leadership that he could be arrested for. That it was my duty to report him for. That I could be arrested for if I didn’t.
“I’ve wanted to share this with you for so long, what I think, really I have. For years your grandfather’s been telling your mother that you’re old enough to understand and to know not to say anything. But how could I? You had to believe it all, as if it was all true, every word. If you repeated anything I told you at school, we could all have been killed, the whole family, you too.”
I put my hands over my ears again. “No,” I hissed. “No, I don’t want to hear it. Don’t say it. Don’t. Don’t.”
He pulled my hands away. “Think of that place from your dream, think how different it was from here. It’s real, Yoora, it’s real.”
I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see him, but still he had hold of my wrists and I couldn’t stop his words. So I sang, I recited, over and over –
“Our future and hope depend on you
The People’s fate depends on you
