On
Sunday, November 16th, I queued longer than I had ever queued in my
life. When I got to the Romanian Cultural Institute in Vienna there were around
850 people in front of me. It took me precisely five hours to get to vote in
the runoff for the next Romanian president. For the first elections, two weeks
ago, I queued for four and a half hours and I didn’t get to vote. But neither
then, nor this Sunday, have I ever thought for one second to leave the queue and, as far as I could see around me, nobody else left either. My Austrian
boyfriend told me two weeks ago that nobody in Austria would bother to queue
anywhere for more than 10 minutes. In the runoff, he stood five full hours next
to me, carrying sandwiches and hot tea in his backpack, for moral support. He
experienced the five long hours but he was still puzzled as to our motivation:
why wait for so long, in the cold, only to exercise a right that does not bring
you much satisfaction anyway? And so I explained him the theory of the Romanian
Queue.
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| The queue of Romanians waiting to vote was too long to capture in one picture. Now... |
For
us, the queue is an institution. It
exists everywhere and nowhere, it has a will of its own and very strict rules.
It is formed anywhere something interesting is happening, something of some (or
very high) value: some “goodies” are sold (donuts; kebab; mici[1]);
something is given away for free (perfume samples; bits of bacon in a toothpick
in supermarkets; mici); there is a
possibility of doing something against the will of “the powers that be”
(praying to miraculous remains of saints; voting) – in the latter category I
would like to include the queue in front of the doctor’s office, taking into
consideration the commonly accepted idea that disease is given to you by God
and can only be cured by God plus some good will and help from a doctor.
I am
sure others experience this kind of events too; but nowhere are they of such
importance as in Romania. Because the average Romanian is very determined,
ambitious, unstoppable when pursuing their
desire. If those fatty, spicy mici
are sizzling on the grill right in front of our eyes, we want them now. If those miraculous remains of a
saint came to visit our local church for a few days, we need to go there, queue
and touch them, so we can get our miracle from above here and now. There is no triumph of rationality of the necessity
over greedy cravings. Others may analyze the effort-profit curve, calculate the
waiting time and decide against the queue if the latter value seems over
proportional to the gain. The Romanian sees, wants, stands in the queue. The
very expression for starting to queue can be translated as “to lay down in the
queue”; there is an extensive verb there, suggesting not a point in time, but a
whole segment of time. It is, in fact, the same verb we use for snow flakes
starting to cover the ground in winter, denoting an all-covering, long term
action: queuing, as determined for mici as we do for voting.
Let’s
think about it: during communism, for so many years, we didn’t have things. We
couldn’t do things. Things didn’t exist.
No books, no TV, no food, no voting. Whenever there would be a rumor that there
would be something, somewhere, Romanians wanted it, whatever it was. Hope “laid
them down” in the queue and wouldn’t set them free to leave until it was clear
there was nothing left, whatever it had been. We have queued without knowing
what is for sale, hoping we would get something
– and we wanted anything. So now,
when everything is laying around on
display in shop windows, on grills and on supermarket shelves or - going one
step further – it’s being given away for free, what is the effort of queuing
compared to the mere fact that these things exist?
Between us and them there is now only a thin human barrier, easily breakable if
we nudge the people in front us a bit more so they move faster or – even more
inspired – we make an alternative queue to our target that may just move faster
than the original one. Maybe for an Austrian this is a lot of effort for
nothing – but for us, it is nothing compared to the thought that, at the end of
it all, we will have something.
 | ||
| ...and then. Original capture of this picture I found on the internet: "Food line. Sometimes, people would queue up in front of the grocery stores simply waiting for merchandise to be delivered without evenn knowing what they might end up buying or even if there would be a delivery that day". (http://quotidianwonders.com/2013/08/14/romanias-passion-for-masochism/) |
And all
of this, only for mici or kebab. What about for the right to vote? People have
taken to the streets, formed not queues, but rows and crowds and died for
others to have the right to vote; they died so something changes – they called
this something “freedom”, whatever that meant. So now, when we, the people,
have the chance to vote, to cast an opinion and – with a bit of luck – be heard
from “above”, what is the effort of queuing for a while compared to the
possibility of making ourselves heard? Of having something which does not feed our stomach, but is infinitely more
important: an idea, freedom, a voice. What are standing in the cold for a few
hours, sour muscles, hunger and boredom, compared to what we could gain:
something we haven’t had in so many years? Others might not have had to fight
for things as much, they haven’t developed their ambition and endurance to
queue for so long – but we have.
What
amazed me about the queue that Sunday was not that people did it, but how they
did it. Quiet, smiling, optimistic, up to the last moment. Dignified. You might
say “resigned”, but I am bothered by the negative meaning of this word. If I
think about it, as a child, I was waiting for Santa Claus already in late
summer, but I was not crying with impatience; I knew it would take a while, but
eventually he would arrive: I was waiting wisely. And this is exactly how
Romanian were queuing to vote on Sunday: wisely. I was wondering if it is a
gift that is learned or transmitted. It is not the gift of patience, which may
be a personal trait of individuals: there were so many people in that queue, it
is statistically very improbable that they all possessed the quality known as
patience. It is something else: a patience learned and exercised, a proficient
patience, or one which was transmitted from parents and grandparents. It is the
wise waiting deeply rooted in the collective sub consciousness which knows
that, after such a long time of not having something, it is now worth the
effort to fight for it; that hope will keep you standing; and that if, by some
injustice, you will not get to have what you were convinced you would get, you
will stay there and not move a muscle, asking for what is rightfully yours. And
all of this because, if, once, this collective sub consciousness accepted that
things didn’t exist, now it refuses
to accept that things do exist, but cannot
be obtained.
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