I remembered the smells of the food.
My body shook as I pulled on my clothes under the blankets, and I padded through from the back room to the other, which served as everything from my grandparents’ room at night, to the kitchen, dining and living room during the day. I rubbed my hands down my body to try and warm up.
An image flashed in front of my eyes of tall buildings that looked like homes, comfortable, warm and welcoming.
I stood in front of the fire Father had lit, but although the troughs and holes and gaps under the floorboards allowed some heat to cross the floor, the air above was cold enough for your breath to form clouds.
I sat down at the table with my parents and grandparents and we gave thanks, as always, to our Dear Leader and His father before him, our Great Leader, for the food He’d provided for our breakfast, our maize porridge. And as we ate, a voice boomed from the speaker in the corner of the room telling us how lucky we were to have the food He provided, how we were so fortunate to live in North Korea, the country that had it so much better than any other in the world.
“Our military strength is the pride of our nation,” the voice continued. “Our farmers are proud to give their produce to the government to feed our military and keep them strong to fight off our oppressors.”
I glanced up and was shocked to see Father pressing his hands against his ears.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “You need to listen.”
“I have a headache, Yoora,” he told me. “It’s too loud.”
“But that’s so you can listen properly. That’s why there’s no volume control. Or off button, so you don’t miss anything.”
I heard his sigh, heavy and long, and I heard the words muttered under his breath. “What have we created?” But I didn’t understand them. Not then.
I watched him take his hands away, and for a moment, just a moment, he stared straight back at me. What was that I could see behind his eyes? Fear? Worry? A warning for me? Or maybe it was nothing: just my imagination seeing something that wasn’t there.
He looked away.
It was a Sunday, a day for volunteer work, our patriotic duty, and I stepped from the house into a cold winter morning, a thick mist hiding the fields and dark skeletons of trees trying to reach through.
Stillness and calm stretched over everything. Silence but for my feet on the dirt path, the air through my lungs and the squeak of the bucket swinging in my hand. I passed groups of houses just like ours: two rooms, single-storey, joined together in rows of ten with one roof stretched across their length, each like a giant harmonica, and all in straight, ordered lines.
I continued up the path, and on either side of me, the red and yellow of the small flags that lined our fields appeared from out of the mist. And people appeared too. Men and women, girls and boys, some older than me, some younger, all heading off for their day’s duty.
Mine was up on the main road leading out of the village, as it had been for the last two months. I swept the gutters, I cleaned and washed the road, I weeded the borders and dug over the soil. For a mile in one direction and a mile in the other. And on the other side. Then, when I was finished, I started again.
Mine was the cleanest stretch. And often, as I worked, I would imagine the face of our Dear Leader looking down on me, smiling at me, His hands and His Fatherly Love protecting me.
But that day, something had changed. Something intangible, a question not even formed, a shadow in my mind that disappeared when I tried to look at it, because something didn’t make sense. I stopped, sat back pigeon-style and closed my eyes.
I could see that food again, in boxes and cartons and wrappers, and I could see people eating it as they walked… and I could see those cars of shiny blue or silver or orange even… It’s real, I heard Father say again… and I saw those lights again… and those clothes… and people… and smiles… and music… thud thud thud.
No, I thought, that’s not music.
I opened my eyes. Marching towards me was our group leader, his boots like a drum on the surface of the road.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, grabbing my bucket again. But his hand smacked against my face and I was on the floor, my head spinning, the taste of blood in my mouth.
He stared down at me with empty eyes. “Is this how you repay your country for the kindness it’s shown you? You think our Dear Leader would be pleased to see you wasting time daydreaming? You’re lazy. You won’t need a full day’s rations if you haven’t done a full day’s work!”
I scurried to my feet, keeping my head down and plucking frantically at the earth, pulling out weeds and stones, so angry and disappointed with myself.
But still those words of Father’s echoed in my head, and I stole a glance up the road and back again. There were no cars. Not one. How could that place be real?
In the kitchen that evening, after twelve hours of work and while my grandparents rolled out their beds for the night, I took the white cloth from the drawer and bowed low to the only two pictures allowed to hang on the wall in our house – our Dear Leader and our Great Leader. And as I dusted their round, smiling faces with their red cheeks and glinting eyes, I muttered my apologies and asked for their forgiveness.
“Your mother says you were in trouble today.”
I turned to see Father standing next to me, his eyes flickering over the bruise on my cheek.
I nodded. “I was daydreaming.” I folded the cloth and brushed it across the top of the picture frame.
“What about?” he asked.
I ran the cloth down the edge and along the bottom, but didn’t say a word – just shrugged.
“Forget it,” he whispered to me. “It won’t do any good.” And he turned away before I could say a word.
I listened to him putting on his coat, fastening up his shoes and looking for his gloves. I rubbed the cloth across the glass over and over, up and down and round and round in circles.
“I’m going to look for firewood,” I heard him tell my mother.
I waited for the door to close. Then I turned round and smiled at her. “I’ll go and help him,” I said.
There was only one place my father could be heading, the only place to find dry wood at this time of year, and so I set off out of the house, round the back and across a field towards a small, dense copse of trees, following a dot of light from his lamp as it swung in and out of view.
The cold air burned in my lungs, and my feet and ankles buckled and turned on the frozen ground as I strode on and on. But as he reached the copse, I was right behind him, and I stretched a hand through the darkness and rested it on his shoulder.
“Father,” I said.
He jumped and turned. “Yoora, what are you doing?” The lamplight flickered up on to his face, and for a second I stepped back from this ghostly, other-worldly thing staring at me.
“I… came
