Since December arrived and winter truly set in, the nights have become a torment in the underground cell, with the dampness crystallizing on the earthen walls and the icy wind whistling as it sneaks in through the skylight. Yet still, dawn is the worst time, when even our insides feel frozen from the unbearable cold. Not that the hours of the day are much better. Hunger and deprivation, anxiety and fear, these are our companions, this is what we live with, sometimes making our hearts race and other times numbing us. But in this way, we grew closer during the hard days and even harder nights, bound together by our shared tragic fates, by persecution, blood, and orphanhood. We share the little food we have, giving more to whoever needs it most from illness or exhaustion, we share the tattered blankets and mats, and in the worst cold, we press our thin, tormented bodies together so they can take warmth from one another.
From time to time, the guards come down and take me for interrogation, looking to learn something, more often they take Milios, since he is a boy, and most times they return us beaten, with our hands and faces swollen, our backs wounded, our bellies bloated. Then Vasilka comes to us, even though she is a Bulgarian girl, even though my brother once furiously grabbed her by the neck, nearly strangling her in revenge for what we suffered from her people. She rolls up her thin little sleeves as soon as she sees our wounds and bruises, always cleaning our faces, always dripping water drop by drop onto our swollen lips, rubbing dry bread in a rusty bowl to soften it so she can feed us. We are strangers, but she cares for us; that is how this little one’s soul was shaped by God—she even felt sorry for the lizards, even for the ants she stepped on in her uncle’s barn.