The Clay Brick Man

The Clay Brick Man

We are a mere village in Europe. Every time it rains we turn to God. Help us, Almighty, to get through this! Ever since we were born we've kept on waiting to be given stuff. We are at the mercy of God, nature, ruler, foreigners.

In Romania, charity is a sacred right. It is ours. In the village with the almost providential name of Buruieneşti [a derivate of buruieni-weeds, n. tr.], the mayor welcomes the president of country in a vituperating mood ("Foreigners prove to be more helpful than Romanians"), and the latter fires back ("If foreigners help you more, maybe you should go to them then"). Two state officials debate whilst surrounded by burdock plants like two hags arguing about the dead man's cake. The first conjures the "help", as any empowered charity manager would do, a man whom we usually call the minister or the mayor. The second one, the provider of the "help", answers huffily: we give you a barrage and you dare to be brassy. This is what Mr. President tells us between the lines, that the barrage is not in any way a form of help or a sign of the truthfulness of a kind government, but that it simply has to be built.

Since the floods started, Mr. President tried to tell us a true thing: the state does not built homes for the displaced people, they should not wait for help from above, but they should help themselves. The parable of the fat man who got a house from the state, but he was too lazy to plaster it, would have been, under different circumstances, fully cashed in on by Mr. president, and I think no one would have fallen to grasp it. The trick failed now and the effect of his rubber booted visits is rather alien to his intentions: far from bestowing courage and trust, Mr. Băsescu aroused irritation. He seemed tense and feisty, as if in a party meeting where he would temper the crowd with the whip or treats. It was again obvious, similar to salary cuts situation, that Mr. President lacks the credibility needed to deliver serious and painful truths. Moreover, there is the time-inadequacy issue: you cannot continuously assist people and suddenly come up and say you carve it up. Telling people off for submitting demands after you had them used to it for decades - this is what made most of those tin pots believe that the benevolent Băsescu is heartless.

• The worse it went for Mr. Băsescu, the better these floods proved to be for Mrs. Udrea whom a TV network ironically and tenderly called "the mother of the nation" (Elena Ceauşescu previously bore the same name - n.tr.). Misery with glitter - this is how România looks like in the images of lady Udrea carrying ball shoes to the distressed women. The gesture was so absurd, that only the lady minister's explanations make sense. "Women in Săuceşti, especially the young ones, are elegant too, and they stopped wearing gum shoes long ago ", she supports Mr. Băsescu in the codices of the great truths uttered at the floods. So we were talking about being fashionable. Sausages with strasses! Yep, and Săuceşti needs to make its debut, to get integrated into Europe and even dance at the Great Viennese Ball, but it first needs to wash its feet, auntie!

• We left behind the People Party, the only real thing we're going to have following these floods. The billionaire mouse that for years has chewed on the book of populism along with the grand maestri C.V.Tudor and Gigi Becali goes into politics through long crowd surfing, plus "a few scores of lorries with aids ". Judging on the look of the people, Mr. Diaconescu's crowd surfing is truly a mud bath: a flock of beggars, noisy, aggressive, shrewd, that, instead of taking the water out of their homes, make political talk-shows, night after night, at TV.

• A few years ago, in a village somewhere. "Well, folks, why don't you do something about this road? Can't you see the mud is up to your necks?" One of the clay brick men: "No worries, the sun will shine and it will run dry …" I wonder now as I did then: what do I and this people have in common?!

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