Politically Unreliable

In many ways we were an ordinary family. Like most people, we lived in a medium-sized apartment in a medium-sized city. Our parents worked. We children went to school. But in one way we were not the same. No matter what we applied for, whether a job, advanced schooling, or permission to travel, our application was always stamped with these words: "politically unreliable." That's how we were classified. And that classification affected our whole existence.

There was one political party in our country. Everybody was supposed to believe its teachings. These teachings dealt not only with government and politics, but with philosophy, morality, religion, history, science, and the fine arts. My father had once been asked to join the Party, and had been offered money and a position if he would do so. But because some of the Party teachings conflicted with my father's religious beliefs, he refused to join. My father was well-educated, and had received recognition for the research he had done in his field. Even though his area of specialization had nothing to do with politics or religion, he was dismissed from his teaching position because, he was told, his religious ideas would corrupt the students. He was further warned that he must give up these ideas and accept the Party's beliefs.

I was very young when all this occurred, and didn't find out about it until years later. I grew up knowing only that no matter what, I must never say anything about my father and what we were taught at home.

I had to learn when I was very young how to answer questions at school. At first my mother told me what to say when the teacher quizzed me about my family, but soon I could make up my own answers—ones that would satisfy the teacher, and yet would not compromise my family in any way. The teachers and youth leaders worked hard to get us to believe the Party teachings. It was a constant struggle to resist their persuasions without revealing that I was being taught something different at home. I tried to avoid all discussions and situations in which I would have to express an opinion.

But it was not easy, being quiet all the time. Often I felt cut off from my friends. I could never talk about anything, not even little things, such as what time my father came home from work, or whether any friends visited us. "They use everything against us," my father told me, "even innocent, harmless things that we think wouldn't matter at all."

In our country nobody knew what was really happening. The newspapers, radio, and TV stations all said the same thing, but we didn't believe that. We knew they were only saying what the government wanted us to hear. Many things in our country were, expensive, but not TV sets. The government wanted everybody to have TV, so they would listen to the Party's messages I think we were the only family in the whole neighborhood who didn't have a set. But we couldn't avoid their messages, even without TV. They were on huge signs in the streets. We memorized them in school.

I don't know when I learned that people were watching us. It seemed I had known this all my life. I knew that the minute I left our apartment I must be careful. We weren't supposed to know we were being watched, but we always did. Once we counted fifteen people watching our family, all at the same time.

We always knew, too, that our mail was being read and our telephone calls listened to. But though we expected our mail to be read, it used to make me angry when the most innocent letter wouldn't reach its destination. That happened when the people opening the mail were careless and tore the envelope. Then they'd have to throw the letter away, because nobody was supposed to know that the mail had been tampered with. Postcards were the best things. They'd usually always get through. The people reading mail really liked postcards because they didn't have to go to all that trouble of unsealing an envelope.

The secret police were part of our life, too. I don't remember when I didn't know about them, or when I didn't hate and fear them. Father wasn't father when he came home from the secret police. He had always been a strong man, but he wasn't strong then. He could scarcely climb the stairs to our apartment. He had trouble talking. He was so exhausted he could hardly eat the food my mother gave him. He was completely drained—physically, mentally, emotionally.

He had to go after work, so that he would already be tired from the events of the day. Then they would question him, usually for many hours. Those questioning sessions were specifically designed to break people, to get them to say things they normally would never say and do things they normally would never do. My father never knew when he would be called, how they would question him, or how long it would last. Sometimes they'd call him night after night, for many nights in a row. I'd wonder then that he could do it, that in spite of everything he could still hold out. Not everybody did hold out. The secret police changed people. They changed them from individuals who would think and feel and have sympathy into robots who would mouth the Party slogans, carry out the Party's tasks, and destroy their Mends and their own family.

Though my father never said much about the secret police, he did tell me one thing. I must never criticize his best friend, he said, for reporting us, even though it caused us so much trouble. They had taken this friend into a special room. It was a little room, less than two feet square. It was so little he couldn't turn, he couldn't move, he couldn't sit down. He could only stand there. He had to stand in the same position, without moving. He had to stand that way for thirty-six hours. Then they questioned him, over and over in a room where he had to stare into blinding white lights.

Those are some of the things I remember growing up in our country. Everything—the teachings at school, the government messages, the constant supervision, the secret police—was planned to change people's thinking and make them conform. But though I remember those things, I also remember good times, when our family was home all together, with no one else to hear us or to tell us what to do. We would be happy then. We would talk to one another freely, about anything we wanted to, and it didn't matter if we said the wrong thing. My father would talk to us about his beliefs, and teach us all those things that meant so much to him and that the Party was working so hard to destroy. Though our life was difficult, times like that made it all worthwhile.