Cold War 2.0

By Gloria

My first thought after he hit me was “What did I do wrong?”

The blow came suddenly, powerfully, and shook my entire being. Before I knew what had happened, the assailant had run away in the opposite direction. It happened last Sunday on a busy jogging path where I run 3 — 4 times a week. I attempted an 8-mile run from 42nd Street to around 100th street and back. This was my second attempt, the last time I ended up returning early because it was snowing and the path was slippery.

I took up running during the first weeks of the pandemic when all the gyms were closed, and we were on complete lockdown. It wasn’t easy at first, but I found enough motivation to get out there after a few attempts. I would listen to the news, podcasts, audiobooks, and run-walk, run-walk at least three times a week. At first, I did it for the exercise, but eventually, I realized that the runs became part of my routine, and I missed them when I could not go.

Up until the blow, I can say that gradually I fell in love with running. I am one of the slowest runners out there, but I still go. I love connecting to nature, running in the cold, and watching how the park changes during various seasons. In the spring, there are the ducklings, then the tulips, the narcissus, hyacinths, and cherry blossoms. In the summer — roses and lilacs. I enjoy looking at the spectacular views of ships in fall and winter, the city skyline, the park sculptures, the ice in the river. But most of all, I love the movement. I enjoy the ability to spend an hour or so outdoors, a true miracle for someone who sits all day long.

But last Sunday, all of this joy was punched out of me.

Of course, the man who attacked me couldn’t have known all that. He couldn’t have realized that by punching me in the face, unprovoked, he hurt me not only physically but also destroyed my right to run without fear.

When I got home, I looked at my face and didn’t see much damage. It took a day or two for my cheek to get swollen and another day before the right side of my face became black and blue. Reading the paper, I see that such attacks happen in the city all the time. Random, crazy, violent people, attacking Asians, attacking children, attacking anyone they can. Violence in its ugliest form is all around us.

Speaking to friends about this, I hear various points of view. Those who are conservative believe that all of these people need to be locked up, severely punished, and kept away from society. My liberal friends blame the educational system, the lack of funding for the mentally ill, and proper care. We are all looking for an answer, for a solution. So far, we are not finding it.

I grew up in a society where violence was everywhere but more hidden than here. You wouldn’t read about it in the paper. Parents, grandparents, and teachers beat their children regularly. Boys hit each other. Men hit their wives. People who dared to protest or make jokes about the regime got arrested and tortured. I witnessed how my first-grade teacher hit two boys because they misbehaved. A friend came to school with her cheeks similar to what mine looks today — blue and swollen. Her mother had hit her with a hairbrush because she refused to brush her curly, thick hair. We were probably nine years old.

I remember watching an episode of the Spanish television series for teenagers, “Blue Summer.” The title was “The slap,” It was about a boy whose father hit him on the face. The boy ran away from home, cried, whined, complained, the father cried, whined, and complained. In the end, the father found his son, apologized, and all was well. I couldn’t understand what the big deal was. I got hit in the face all the time. So did all my friends. If parents apologized every time they hit their children, there wouldn’t be much time for anything else. We even talk about slaps like they are nothing at all. A joke in Bulgaria goes something like this — “Do you want to visit the slap factory?” Trust me. No one does.

Even though I was slapped often as a child, I usually had a logical explanation about the violence — I had done something wrong. Sometimes several bad things. Whenever someone hit me, my first thought always was, “What did they find out?”

Yes, I did bad things all the time. I read books that I was not supposed to. I wore pretty dresses to school under my uniform. I stole coins from my grandparents’ coin jar. I was loud and obnoxious. I talked too much in class. I lied.

But this time … the only thing wrong I did was not to pay attention. If I had been more alert, I could have anticipated the attack somehow. I could have noticed a strange man leaping at me dressed in black with a hood. I could have ducked, screamed, protected myself. I could have kept running faster.

Strangely, the physical violence I experienced on my person mimicked what the whole world is experiencing right now with the war in Ukraine. We were all attacked out of nowhere. We were all not paying attention.

And we are all afraid this is only the beginning.

Having lived during the Cold War, I shiver at the thought of dividing the world again and living in fear of Nuclear war because World War Three will not be anything like the other two great wars. Instead, World War Three will be the end of us all. It will be the end of all our little political disputes, the end of all our class, gender, and race divisions, the end of the fights about the one and most true God, the end of plastic and petroleum, the end of civilization.

When I grew up in the 80s, there was a lot of talk about nuclear war. At school, I was constantly told that Reagan would nuke us, that he is evil, that America is the worst country on Earth, and the West wants to destroy us and would have killed us long ago if it weren’t for our Soviet Big Brother.

Sounds familiar?

Today the Kremlin is using similar propaganda like that of my youth. Putin might be isolated, but he is not acting alone. His regime is the resurrection of all that we fear, all that we thought we defeated and left behind in the history books — they want total control of the mind and soul of the people.

What do they say these days, but the words they implanted in our heads growing up. Everything is the fault of the West. The Russian army is fighting and protecting us from the evil nazis; the USA wants to take over and destroy everyone. All of this psychotic, paranoid, and frightening language has been around for decades now. It is embedded in people’s brains like the 5G chips they fear so vehemently. Today’s regime is capitalizing on years of brainwashing and targeted propaganda. The Kremlin blames the victims of the war for the violence it is inflicting on them, just like a drunk alcoholic and delusional husband blames his battered wife for provoking him to beat her to death.

What about the other wars? What about the other refugees? What about Afghanistan and Iraq? There is a whole list of conflicts circulating in social media with the words “What about these wars?” As if somehow one evil or a hundred evils could serve as an excuse for what is happening as we speak. As if one lie and one propaganda make all lies an acceptable form of communication. As if one refugee crisis means that there can be another, and then another. As if the hit I sustained in the park gives me an excuse to go and attack the person sitting next to me at this cafe.

The current war in Ukraine has brought the Iron Curtain back down, and the people on the wrong side of it will be living in fear, on their knees, for the foreseeable future. Of course, there will be food shortages, gas shortages, and other economic disruptions to our comfortable lives here in the West, but nothing like what will happen to those trapped in Russia today and certainly nothing like what awaits Ukraine and possibly many other countries.

I remember too well what it was like to stand in line for bread in Bulgaria. I remember too well what it was like to live in fear that at any moment, a man in uniform can knock on your door and ask you to go to the militzia station.

You start thinking immediately, “What did they find out?” Just like when your parents or teachers hit you. “What did they find out?”

Except for this time, they will question you and question you and threaten you and beat you until they get everything out, all of the things you are hiding. All the secrets and little things you did that you thought you would get away with — like having dollars, which you exchanged in the black market 2 for 1. Or reading a forbidden book like The Godfather, listening to the Beatles, paying someone to smuggle diapers for your baby from Germany, looking at Ikea catalogs, or making jokes about Stalin. Then, when they are done with you, you would have told them your whole story and more. The Bulgarian saying goes, “You will give them even your mother’s milk.”

Because make no mistake, this is the life that we lived, and this is exactly why all the Eastern European countries, especially Bulgaria, are still a mess. The ultra-nationalism, which the Soviets propagated, the lack of common understanding of history, the bribing and the mafia-like “governing,” the absolute lack of accountability and total incompetence of today, are all directly linked to the totalitarian regime in which we lived for 45 years.

All people did behind the Iron Curtain was to spy on each other, officially and unofficially. Or hide from one another and try to get ahead in the line for bread, cheese, cars, apartments, foreign trips, and books.

For the last 20 days, I can’t stop thinking of those horrible days, but also of the violence, the hidden violence, which is infecting our lives today, just the way it infected my childhood. My cheek will recover, but it will be a while before I experience real joy again. Maybe never again.