Day 151 - Rumor Has It

Rumor image by brookenovac, via Flickr.com

In contrast to my understanding that Iran is a shame-based society, I came to think of Romania as a rumor-based society.  One of the greatest sources of amusement and frustration for me in Romania was dealing with the fact that communication wasn't straightforward. I always thought of myself as saying what I meant and meaning what I said, but no one else seemed to follow that pattern in Romania.

More than once I went to conduct my class and discovered no one in the classroom. But later in the day, I would run into one of the students from that class. When I asked why no one had come to the class, the reply was most often, "We heard you went to Bucharest." My reply, "Yes, I went to Bucharest -- last weekend. But I came back to Iași in time for the class today."

I guess when most people traveled to Bucharest, they made a long trip out of it. The idea of flying - or taking the train - to Bucharest for a weekend was so beyond what was normal for my students that they assumed I wouldn't be back in just a few days.

Then there was that big book in the English Department where the teachers left notes for one another. I didn't leave notes in it often, but when I had a message I wanted more than one teacher to get, I wrote it down. I found it humorous - and also a bit on the annoying end of curious - that my British lecturer colleague Chris would end up telling me that the other staff members would ask him what I meant by what I had written. It seemed so clear to me  - I meant what I wrote. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Then there was the occasion of the death of the husband of one of our colleagues. The details of the funeral service were written in the book in the Department, for everyone to read. I planned to attend and as I was heading to the Casa Universitarilor for lunch, I ran into one of my Romanian colleagues who asked me if I was going to the funeral. When I told him I was, he told me the time had changed. It was an hour earlier. And that meant I was going to have to skip lunch in order to attend the funeral.

I reached the church where the funeral would be held in time for the hour earlier changed time, but I found the number of people in attendance to be very small. But I didn't know if that meant anything because this was Romania during the time of Nicolai Ceaucescu and the Communist party, so I didn't have much to go on regarding the number of people who would feel comfortable attending a funeral in a church. So I waited.

Churches in Romania didn't have plush pews to sit in. In fact, I don't remember any pews, plush or otherwise, to sit in. I recall standing while I waited. And I waited. And I waited. People trickled in throughout the time I waited. I felt a little conspicuous because I didn't know anyone else in the church. And I felt as though everyone was looking at me, wondering who I was and why I was there.

candle image by juliadeb, via Flickr.com

The service eventually got started about the time I had initially been told it would start. I recall feeling safe enough thinking I would just watch those around me to figure out what I was supposed to do since I didn't understand any of the service. It might have been in Romanian, but for all I understood it might have been in Latin or "Old Romanian" a variant of the language I assumed existed just as the King James' version of English was still read at times in modern church services in the West. Watching others was a good strategy for most of the event, but when we were all given candles that we held during the service, I noticed that mine was burning down much more quickly than those around me. As the flame got closer and closer to my fingers, I had to blow it out, not knowing if this was acceptable. Others kept theirs, still burning, until the service ended.

When I got back to the university, I realized another lesson about rumors: in a rumor-based society, everyone believes what they heard last, even if what they heard last happened earlier. The time of the funeral had been changed. But the time in the book at the Department was the time it had been changed to, not from. That explained the sparse group of mourners when I arrived at the church. It also explained the long wait before the funeral began. And it probably also explained why I felt people watching me, wondering why I, a stranger, had arrived so early, at the time close family members of the deceased arrived.

On reflection, it wasn't difficult to understand why Romania was a rumor-based society. It was a society where discretion, the need to protect your own privacy as well as the privacy of others, could be a matter of "freedom" or imprisonment, of life or death. In such a society, it is often important not to speak freely and directly but rather to speak in riddles or by leaving certain ideas unspoken. And that explained why the question of what I really meant by what I wrote was a normal response.