‘Have you travelled back to your hometown?’

I had to put up with nightmares for a long time. When I was married and had children, I dreamed at night that I was in Sighet, and that my family was still in Stockholm. I thought that I would never dare to go back there.

But time passed and my children grew, and when they became aware of what was special about our family, they asked questions. After all, they had no maternal or paternal grandparents, no aunts on their father’s side, no extended family with whom they could spend the school breaks as their classmates did. No special occasions where the entire family got together. When they entered their teens, I decided that we would travel to Sighet, so that they would feel closer to their roots and understand our situation a bit better.

During the journey, it was a very difficult task to tell my own children about our family who had been lost. I did not want them to see that I was sad, so I talked as if I was a tourist in a foreign city, turning the pages of a book written by someone else. I did not let myself feel anything. I did not yet understand that listing facts yields only intellectual knowledge, which reaches one’s mind. For emotional understanding, the story must reach one’s heart. My children got the answers to their questions, but I did not know what they really thought. I was left with no real experience of having revisited my childhood home. That is why I decided to travel there again, to go on a pilgrimage with my sister, visit all the places that were important to us, let the emotions wash over us, let ourselves cry. And the following summer, we did.

Our first excursion was to the central parts, where the park was lined with shops. It was like going to the theatre, watching a play I had already seen. The scenery was the same, but the actors had all changed. The music pavilion in the park was still there, but newly rebuilt. The signs outside the shops had changed; instead of the Jewish names, they now flaunted Romanian ones. I went into the shop that had previously been owned by my uncle, where an unknown owner sold the same kinds of fabrics that I used to choose from. I walked around town and saw my aunt round a street corner, but when I caught up with her it was a complete stranger.

Our old house was still there. The owners looked at us a bit suspiciously when we said that we had lived there as children. They were afraid that we wanted to reclaim it, but they let us go inside and look around. Inside, I did not see what was in front of me. Instead, I saw my parents’ bedroom as it had been furnished back then. In my room I saw my most cherished possessions, the piano and the books. I could almost hear our dog Bodri barking out in the yard. Both Livi and I shed many tears. We felt like children from a storybook who had left home without permission, and were now getting a taste of the consequences — although we knew rationally, of course, that we had not been to blame.

Both of these trips brought something positive. The nightmares loosened their grip. They did not cease, but with time I stopped waking up sweaty, with a feeling that my children were still in Sweden and I was far away, that I would never see them again. It made me understand that one’s fears must be confronted. Only then can you force the monsters out from under the bed.