´óÏó´«Ã½

I'll start with an anecdote from my youth. I was in the Soviet Army. We had got back to our barracks after the summer holidays, and the osobist (the KGB officer looking after us) secretly searched all of our luggage that had been left in the storage room. He found a radio set, belonging to a private Burkov was tuned to the ´óÏó´«Ã½. Next day Burkov was punished with three days' of chores in the kitchen which catered for 1000 people.

It was a petty punishment. Especially in the context of more serious freedom of speech stories such as the missing China lawyer Gao Zhisheng or Arundhati Roy being threatened for arrest for sedition, but it shows the depth that institutions and governments have taken to prevent access to an impartial media.

I have a book in front of me, which we have published for the 10th anniversary of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Uzbek

The volumne is full of the listeners' stories about what the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service means for them. Uzbek poet Yusuf Juma, wrote the following light-hearted poem:

Every evening it shows where
What's what to dictators.
My dark people,
Listen to ´óÏó´«Ã½!

It removes rust of
Lies and gossips.
It opens your blind eyes,
Listen to ´óÏó´«Ã½!

It aspires to educate
Uneducated mobs.
Those who are shown where what's what,
Listen to ´óÏó´«Ã½!

Yusuf Juma is now in prison in Uzbekistan for expressing his opinion about a further term of rule for President Karimov, who has been ruling Uzbekistan for the last 21 years.

Another Uzbek listener famously said: "The ´óÏó´«Ã½ broadcasts are the one hour of Truth in the 24x7 sea of propaganda of lies". This access to truth in the media is not just about the Uzbek listeners.

In Azerbaijan the oppositional figure known as S.J-o told us in an interview after his release from prison that inmates used to listen to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ on a smuggled small radio, which they hid during the day in a piece of soap.

Truth is addictive, especially in closed societies and people will go the extra mile to get a gulp of the fresh air it provides. I've seen printouts on scraps of paper in Uzbekistan of our ´óÏó´«Ã½ blogs. They had been printed out and handed around on the streets.

A journalist from Turkmenistan Olgusapar Muradova died in custody in 2006. She had been imprisoned for working with Western media outlets, including the ´óÏó´«Ã½. Thanks to her undercover work with the ´óÏó´«Ã½, journalists have reported for example .

Other reporters have been killed for reporting for ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service: such as Afghan reporters Mirwais Jalil and were killed for their reporting to the World Service.

The examples above are from the region of concern to me in my day to day work, but I'm sure that any of my colleagues, be they Burmese or Chinese, Russian or Brazilian, Bengali or Sri Lankan could tell you how much the truth costs in their respective areas.

Now that every penny which is spent by ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service is counted and recounted, when the mission of the World Service is laid against scarce money available for it, when all the talk is about cost efficiency and value for money, the ancedotes above serve as a reminder that in many cases, what the World Service does has much higher price. Sometimes the cost is human life.

I would like to finish with another anecdote which shows the extent to which the ´óÏó´«Ã½ permeates even the world's most remote regions.

A ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service Editor was in a distant mountainous area of Kyrgyzstan on a mission to find "an innocent person, who has no idea of the media".

In between of sky-scraping summits, she was brought to a jayloo - an alpine pasture, where a simple shepherd appeared in front of her.

The Editor explained her mission, but as soon as she introduced herself as a ´óÏó´«Ã½ journalist, the shepherd clasped his hands and started to recite excitedly the names of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Kyrgyz presenters and reporters along with other correspondents, appearing in the programmes and added: "They are like my family in my solitude!"

With this in mind, the question I'd like to ask you is what is your most memorable encounter with the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service?

At our latest editorial meeting, which in ´óÏó´«Ã½ slang is called a "post-mortem", we discussed the big stories we had covered last week.

Naturally the main focus was on the Chilean miners story.

One by one journalists around the table described aspects of the story that made it relevant to millions of listeners, viewers and readers.

It's a human story, which has economic and business angles. It was also about the race against time, pitting the engineering effort against nature's deadlines. The rescue operation brought not just the whole nation, but the world together, and it became a truly global story. It changed the image of Chile to the world.

What I think made this amazing story relevant - not even to millions - but billions of people, is its 'salvation' element/archetype.

Salvation is one of the most ancient and deepest archetypes of the human psyche. It is reflected in the oldest myths and poems like the Epic of Gilgamesh or Hades, and placed in the very core of many world religions, particularly Abrahamic ones.

Look at the story of rescuing Chilean miners and it has all the elements of 'salvation': caught in the underworld by a deadly disaster, they find themselves at an obscure border between life and death. After a month they receive a message of hope, they are there for another 40 days in purgatory, not knowing if there is a Hereafter or what their fate is. Finally there is a happy end.

For some of people it's just an efficient engineering and rescue operation, for others - a mystical miracle with lots of symbolic signs, like those 40 days, and the 33 miners. Here's an excerpt from the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and his fairy tale King Saltan:

Once home again, he told the swan about old Chernomor and the 33 knights, and lamented that he had never seen such a wonder. "These knights are from the great waters that I know," the swan said. "Don't be sad, for these knights are my brothers and they will come to you."

Later, the prince went back and climbed a tower of his palace and gazed at the sea. Suddenly, a giant wave rose high and deep onto the shore, and when it receded, 33 knights in armour, led by old Chernomor, emerged, ready to serve Prince Gvidon. They promised that they would come out of the sea each day to protect the city.

I have even read that some churches of different denominations are claiming their part in the miraculous outcome, but for me the rescue of Chilean miners has now set a benchmark against which other rescue efforts will be measured, be it Chinese miners or Russian submarine crew.

What are the stories - real or fictional - that resonate with you?

We had a season or rather a day of programmes here at the World Service devoted to old age. See Affording Old Age and Growing Old in Africa

But what I'd like to discuss this week is not the longevity as such, rather a prolonged youthfulness. Recently in a gym I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen

"First sign of ageing? It's when what's dropped out of your pocket is not a condom, but Kleenex tissue."
"Yes, it flows."

In one of my novellas an ageing character says:

You call yourself an old man, but there used to be a time when it was only ancient wise men with white beards who were called "old men". Now, though, you can't tell the old men from the young ones, not from the way they look or the way they behave. At 60 they look almost the same as when they were 40. They don't age - they just become obsolete and worn out. Yes, that's it, that's the trouble.

It's embarrassing to call yourself an old man.

And further:

It's as if the world has rejected seriousness. Everything in it seems false, fake, artificial. The empty-headed old men don't have any hair on their faces, but the lads who used to come and visit them have beards as large as spades. This makes their faces look like the palm of a hand. They'd taken charge of his old friend's funeral; they'd given orders to everyone in the neighbourhood. And the people with the worn-out faces, the ones who call themselves old men, had just crowded into a bus, walked to the cemetery in a file, and lined up to get their funeral meal.

Had the earth flown off its axis?

I also remember several stories (by Thomas Mann and Vasily Shukshin among others), where so called 'old' men dance with young girls and the authors abhor the oddness, unnaturality, freakiness of that act. What would those classicists say - when they see our aged rockstars, turned from playboys into 'play-granddads'.

But ageing myself I discover that even at 56, when I am asked my age, without thinking I find my first response would be to say: "28!" One's attitude remains the same too. You remain competitive - with your teenager son doing pull-ups or push-ups for example.

Though there's another side to the youthfoolness (let's keep that spelling intentionally) of the oldies: younger generations treat them with no extra piety or respect. "You wanted it, you got it!"

What's the first sign of ageing? When you don't shut up not because you don't want to, but because you can't. It flows...

Therefore I'll shut up here and leave the discussions to you.

I don't know whether we can claim our place in the Guinness Book of World records, but this short story is written with the contribution from people living on five continents. An amazing achievement!

The work in progress can be found here, and here, and here, and here. I would like to thank everyone who took part in our project and particularly Roo and Veronica, who apart from contributing with ideas, wrote up some scenes. (I personally believe that everyone has got a story to tell, but the step from the intention to its execution may be as big as the whole life.)

Here's the first draft of our short story, so what do you think about it? Does it work? What should we polish further?

But in the meantime, please enjoy our common creation.

--

"We're brothers, men are all brothers. Got it, you, bastard?"
- Georgi Markov

Dimitar did not sleep that night. Whether the long way home to Burgas did not tire him, but rather made him over-agitated, or because his thoughts and feelings were stirred up by seeing his old apartment... whatever. He hadn't been here for last 16 years, not since the fall of the Iron Curtain. His mother, Proyka, died without seeing back her prodigal son, her darling Mitko, who was wandering the world - from Turkey to Canada and to all those places where men only know the offices of the ubiquitous Western Union as home. Yet now he was back, in the predawn darkness, creaking in the old chair, among age-old dust. If not for this dust, it would be as if nothing had changed here, the same chairs, the same bow-legged table, the same cotton curtains, the same books on the shelves - all the same, nothing new - except that half of his life was gone in between.

He looked out the window across the rooftops spiked with aerials and chimneys: the yellow glow of the refinery's exhaust plume punctuated the Burgas skyline. Fire rose in the distance, carving the sky like the pupil of a cat's eye, and grudgingly pulling from his memory the street-scenes of countless Western cities where his fortune had burned with the ferocity of a candle. Now alone, he gazed into the distant and that unattainable fire. He was lost in the very soul of his homeland.

A fly was buzzing near the window, at the neighbours' downstairs a radio started to speak. "Dinov's sect" - Mitko thought irritably, - "they'll be dancing in their white robes next." Despite the roaring fire in his head, Dimitar started to make out some of what was being said. The language made no sense. Then suddenly a crisp accent smothered the unknown words. "To be welcomed back from work is much better than staying at home and welcoming others back from work," it said, before the presenter cut in, and the report continued.

"Damn it!" - in response Dimitar swore. As if that voice had ever known a day out of work.

When he went outside, it was only just beginning to get light. His heart was as dull and gray as the dawn. The walls and the fences were covered with photocopies of the dead - he had long forgotten this particular Bulgarian habit of mourning. He stopped and stared as he recognised some of the faces on the wall. They had been alive when he left, and it seemed to Mitko now that he was walking among shadows. Past the Turkish consulate, where his globetrottering had begun, he went through the city park, then walked along the strip of beach. In some cafes sleepy music was still playing, leftover from the night, while local and visiting dinovtsy were walking in groups, searching for the sunrise to worship.

Mitko went left, where he used to go with his mother - far from idle people and tourists - in the direction of Lugo - a dead salt lake. Many years ago Proyka healed her aching bones there, lying afloat in the super-salty water. Two little gipsy boys ran up to him at this moment. "What time is it mister?" Dunno. "What time is it on your phone?" they giggled and he shrugged, showing his mobile to them. "That's a great phone you have," they said, their eyes shining. Dimitar glanced at it. It was a particularly nice one. He had bought it last year and spent a lot on it. "Enough to buy a ticket home" - he said to them bitterly.

Some force led Dimitar towards the lake; as if he thought there he would find his mother still lying in rusty water; water in which one doesn't drown. He saw people smearing their bodies and faces with black medicinally-sulphuric clay. In the water he saw the bodies of old men and women swaying, all eyes staring at this stranger.

Dimitar stripped off and eased himself onto his back across the salty surface. He bobbed around for a while but couldn't relax. The style of his trunks accentuated his girth and it irritated him. Or was it the thoughts about his mother? He had come home to see her here. He had come home for forgiveness and support. He had come home to find her gone, departed, done with this world, with this bloody salty water, which burned all his body, all his thoughts.

He didn't wear a watch and his mobile phone was in the pocket of his trousers. Enough is enough! Mitko looked around for an arm sporting a timepiece. He drifted towards it and without looking at its owner said "What time is it?"

"It's half past nine already" - came the reply. "I'm glad you asked, I must be going soon. God's time is precious."

Dimitar was drawn to the voice and its strange accent. "You're not from here" - he said to him in English. There was no response. After a while Dimitar tried again. "I used to live in England. I've just come back and there are so many changes here".
"Oh yes", said the voice "Things have changed all right".

He said his name was Reverend Alfred. He looked about mid-50s, with brown eyes hiding behind thick glasses. While they were smearing the sulphuric black mud on their backs Dimitar noticed a scar on his back. The Reverend noticed Mitko's stare and explained that a fire had destroyed his church. Got off lightly, he said. Lots of people - migrants from Eastern Europe who were sleeping in the church hall rather than rough on the streets - had been hurt worse. And his daughter. She was badly burned. The Reverend said nothing more, but Mitko had a feeling he was carrying on the conversation - maybe the argument - with his God.

With their bodies and faces blackened with mud, they looked at each other. Dimitar once again turned his face away towards the fields behind the salt mining site. The yellow glow of the refinery's exhaust plume punctuated the Burgas skyline.
"Funny thing about it all," Father Alfred continued suddenly. "When the smoke alarm started I ran out of my office. But I grabbed my Bible from my desk, you know, as an instinct. It was only when I got outside and saw the fire, all the flames, and the people who were fleeing - I looked in my hands and do you know, it wasn't the Bible at all. It was a science fiction novel I had borrowed from the library."

Mitko nodded indefinably. The Reverend continued. "Do you like sci-fi stories? This one was about the Earth in the year 2500. There was a war; a war that had lasted 90 years. A secluded colony of 200 people was living in the highlands, in one of the last remaining fertile areas on earth. All knowledge of the colony's existence has been kept secret. No stranger ever welcomed and no-one ever allowed to leave. Leaders of the colony have ordered the slaughter of all newborn babies because food has been scarce. Anyway, the story goes on and there is a man called Malachi who chooses to harbour a stranger, Trouan, for almost a year unknown to the colony. Malachi found him severely wounded and maimed on the periphery of the colony and chooses not to let him die."

Dimitar flinched. "Are you cold?" - asked Father Alfred interrupting his story. "No, I'm going back in the water." - replied Mitko as he stood up and walked away from the old man. He was still speaking. "So ironic I took that book, given what happened to my daughter..."

Mitko wanted to wash off not only the black mud, but some vague sense of unease the Reverend had placed in him. Senile, Mitko thought, or with some kind of incontinence of speech. But as soon as the wave swept over his black body, completely different thoughts, different memories rushed at him, a forgotten line from a song of the late Emil Dimitrov 'Ta chayki beli' - 'those white seagulls' spun in his head, and Mitko immersed himself into the sea like into a forgotten childhood, his pure youth.

Half an hour later, refreshed and strong, he returned to the shore to see that Father Alfred had not left yet. He was dressed and sitting on the black sand, dozing.
"Are you sleeping?" - asked Mitko. "No, meditating" - replied Father Alfred. "God works in mysterious ways. Look at the Lugo. Sometimes you want to be drowned either in your past, or in your...sins, or... But something keeps you afloat... Or take the mud of Lugo... Here we are easily washing away the mud from our bodies. But how difficult it is to wash off the stains of the past from your soul. You're cleaning, cleaning, cleaning - wave after wave, wave after wave, and every day as at the seashore you can find either these plastic bottles, or a dirty a rag, or just simply - dirty foam..."

Mitko said nothing. The old man was annoying him now.

"Have you ever tried meditation?"

Suddenly Mitko understood the nature of his irritation. It was his own congeniality - no, his servility - the fact that Mitko himself had started this conversation, he encouraged the doddering Englishman, played up to him, as he used to do for years and years in the West, and now this itinerant missionary was trying to teach him how to live on his own land!

A dark expression crossed Dimitar's face.

"I don't want to know about meditation, Holy Father, I just want a job and a girlfriend".

Mitko was hungry after the sea. He had a snack at a cafe - Shopska salad and a piece of fried 'przhenny' chicken - and drowned everything in local beer. Rather than wandering under the midday sun in search of employment agencies, he decided to go to an internet cafe located in the basement of a building in a pedestrian street. He paid a couple of Euros and sat down at a computer in the far corner.

He thought about what he said to Father Alfred, about wanting a girlfriend. There were lots of teenagers in the café, hanging around hoping the paying customers like him would finish before their money ran out. He couldn't very well look for an escort girl with them looking over his shoulder. He said "shoo" (which they didn't), so he typed in the first serious and dull word which came to his mind: 'Lukoil'. The familiar picture of the gas plant appeared on the screen. The kids lost interest and began to drift off.
He logged into a Bulgarian-based chat room that he'd used in the past and scrolled down when he noticed an English name. Alice Cooper. Wait. Not the Alice Cooper?! Or someone with a sense of humour.

So blow me a kiss cuz I'm lonely
Blow me a kiss cuz I'm afraid
Blow me a kiss cuz you don't know me
Say goodnight then blow me away
Blow me away
Blow me away

He hummed the song and hit the return key to discover that Alice Cooper said she was a scientist campaigning against the Russian pipeline for the preservation of endangered species in the Black Sea. His interest was aroused. He swiftly registered himself under a typical local name, Boris, and joined the chat.

"Well we got no choice all the girls and boys making all that noise, err?" - typed he frantically a couple of lines from the famous song of that true Alice Cooper. For a moment he regretted what he wrote, but when a second later a line from the same song appeared on the screen: "Cause they found new toys" - he jumped on his chair: "Yes!!!" This girl had a good sense of humour! But in order not to frighten her off Mitko seasoned his otherwise quite frivolous chat with some 'serious stuff' on the pipeline, on ever-burning chimneys of gas, on the ecology of the Black Sea. He even used his French to impress her more with a line a la Verlaine: 'il brulait dans mon couer comme il brule sur la ville...' While steering the conversation in a more personal direction, he felt that his correspondent was responding well. 'The fish has swallowed the bait!' - he thought with some satisfaction. "Your mouth, so hot, your web, I'm caught, your skin, so wet, black lace on sweat..." - he hummed another song of Alice Cooper to himself, but typed in something different: "And anyway, I told the truth, but I'm afraid I told a lie". And then added all in capital: "ALICE COOPER, GIVE ME YOUR PHONE NUMBER!!!"

Father Alfred came back home in the afternoon. Making a cup of tea he muttered about someone he met a few hours ago at Lugo and who he can't get out of his mind. "I have a feeling that I saw him before somewhere, a long time ago, I just can't place him" - said he to his daughter, who was as ever sitting in front of her computer.

"Oh, Dad you're always going on about someone," - she said impatiently. She was busy with her online campaign chats and visibly annoyed by her father's interruption. Everything to do with her father was irritating her now: the way he owned her, the way he sips his tea, the way he always concentrated on himself... She carried on playing her nervous staccatos on the keyboard, while her father sipped his tea with an unbearable noise. Then she hurriedly logged out, snatched her crutch from the side of the desk and made for the door.

"Where are you going?" said her father with his most godly voice.

"To meet a boy," she snapped.

Father Alfred's shoulders slumped. She was a good looking girl. No one noticed the prosthesis on her leg when she had trousers on and she always made light of her crutch when she was in company. The boys liked her and made a fuss of her when she was around.

"They aren't boys; they're men!" he shouted.

She stopped in her tracks. She turned to face him.

"Alice," he said, trying to keep his voice steady - "They're not for you. None of them will ever make anything of themselves. You have your career, a great future..."

"And a crutch to go with it" - she flung back at him. She didn't want this, she wanted to be online talking to this strange chap Boris who entered her skies like a meteor.

"Oh Alice"- her father said pleadingly. He hated these confrontations. He loved his work among the down-and-outs yet it pained him to think that Alice would always be close just to them.

"How do you know they're not for me" - Alice continued defiantly. "They were there for me when I needed them once".

"What do you mean" - said Father Alfred.

"It was one of your down-and-outs who dragged me out of the fire. Have you forgotten" - she blazed.

"Oh the fire. That wretched fire."

"Those people saved my life" - she said quietly. "Or one of them did, whoever he was. No one ever found any trace of him. He must be somewhere, I can't be the only one left alive".

Alice was on the pier when her mobile rang. She half wished she hadn't given Boris her phone number. It was a silly thing to do. He had been pressing her to meet him HERE AND NOW! - as he wrote after receiving the number of her switched off mobile. "But why spoil a good thing" - she said to herself, coming to the pier. "Once he sees me he won't be interested. He'll find an excuse".

Before pressing the green button of answer, she quickly glanced at the screen, "Unknown Number" was written on it. "Hello!" - she said in somehow doomed voice. "Alice Cooper ..." - a velvety voice asked semi-inquiringly, semi-bravuraly. And without waiting for her reply, suddenly began to sing:

Sometimes I drink more than I need
Until the TV's dead and gone
I may be lonely but I'm never alone
and the night may pass me by
but I'll never cry...

Here Alice unexpectedly for herself joined and sang:

Take away take away my eyes
Sometimes I'd rather be blind
Break a heart break a heart of stone
Open it up but don't you leave it alone

They quickly found a common language. Alice suddenly felt surprised that she did not look around with a usual excuse towards the wandering couples of mostly young people. It seemed that nothing could interfere in their conversation, which was as normal as any of these pairs kept in the open sea air without any look around.

She felt a strange connection to that person she has never seen in her life. The man seems to understand her weird world, but who is he? He was funny. The whole thing gave her a nice kind of frisson and she didn't want to lose it. But at the same time she was quite confused as she was not ready or even able to tell him now about her disability. One part of her wanted to meet him and another one - was feeling fear of being not accepted since many people hurt her before. So when he said "Let me have your phone number, then at least I can hear your voice" she did just that.

They chatted about everything and nothing at the same time, he told her many stories about his own country, and also about his life abroad. But when he told her that once he witnessed a church fire and said: "I couldn't help but wonder as I watched the church burning at midday, how much more dramatic to would have been had this been midnight" - she all of a sudden interrupted him and saying: "I can't talk..." - abruptly switched off the telephone.

She cried the rest of that day, coming back home. Her father or rather her Father went to his group for the evening service. She didn't switch on either her computer, or the common TV set. Unconsciously switching on her mobile, she put the phone on her dressing table, went over to the bed, slipped off her trousers, sat down and began to take the brace off her left leg.

And the phone rang.

With the brace dangling from her calf, she threw herself onto her bottom, sped across the floor backwards and reached up for it.

"Hi there, how are things this evening" - said Boris's voice cheerfully.

"Same as usual" she said, equally cheerfully.

"When are we going to meet?" said Boris.

Alice looked down at herself. She was without her trousers. Her legs were bent sideways at the knees. The right leg looked okay, you couldn't see that there was anything wrong with it unless you looked closely. With the new pin they'd put in and physio it had improved tremendously, and she hardly ever used her second crutch now. But the left. That was another matter. The brace hung lifelessly at an angle beside it. Would there every be a solution to that scarred and withered ankle?

"Would you like to come over tonight?" she heard herself saying.

She couldn't remember the rest of the conversation only something along the lines: "I would like to see you too, but what if you become disappointed in my world? I live in totally different conditions than you", and giving him the address - or hear Boris whisper to himself as he hung up "Yeah, I'm flying there, babe".

Alice spent all evening wondering how she was going to meet Boris. Would she sit on the patio and invite him to join her? Should she just come clean and open the door to him leaning on her crutch? Finally she decided she'd leave the door open, sit at the table in the living room surrounded by papers, say "come in" when he knocked, and then pretend to be busy putting the papers in order. She switched on the radio to distract herself from her thoughts. "E kabo dara ju e kule lo" - an African man was talking in a language she didn't understand, typical World Service. Then a voiceover translated it for her. "To be welcomed back from work is much better than staying at home and welcoming others back from work". The English voice continued to explain that the expression was from the Yoruba. "What a wonderful thought!" - she thought listening to it, and then she looked out the window across the rooftops spiked with aerials and chimneys; the yellow glow of the refinery's exhaust plume punctuated the Burgas skyline. Fire rose in the distance, carving the sky like the pupil of a cat's eye, the distant and that unattainable fire, burning with the ferocity of a candle...