Parallel Worlds :: Charter'97 :: News

Sometimes you ride in a trolley-bus, peering through the window… What you see there is an ordinary boring sight – gray with some rare red dots from Coca-Cola advertisement stands. You feel exhausted and next to you there stands a tired woman. You don’t really feel like turning your face away from the window and fear catching her glance for you’ll have to stand and invite her to sit in your place. But you have not the least desire to stand. Then there comes the thought that the woman is less tired than you are and this makes you feel not guilty and continue to sit still. Then you start thinking of her life, assuring yourself that there’s less gray colors in it than in yours…

All of a sudden your eyes come across an unusual sight – you see people across the street with raised portraits in hands. For a moment trolley-bus’ windows turn into TV screens, where they televise on-line news from the place of incident. There are numerous journalists and TV cameraman scattered all around the place… Law-enforcers in camouflaged uniforms avert their eyes from shame… Boy of some ten years of age is holding a young man’s portrait. Their faces resemble one another. Their lives are painted in black. The one, who shot at the man, isn’t there with him. He hides from fear.

You also tremble. You fear to tell yourself the truth, erase gray colors and look into the eyes of the woman, standing next to you. Now, you also fear to even look into the window of the trolley-bus…

Sometimes you stand on the square in camouflage and avert your eyes from shame… You stand behind their back for you don’t have enough courage to look those people straight into the eyes. Once you look there you’ll see your own guilt in them. To cast a glance on the portrait is to look into a bottomless abyss.

Then you try thinking of something different. About your new uniforms – gray but not so easily soiled; tiny flat, which they promised you’d have in the future; your sweetheart, whom this life changed so much for the worse. When you hear the hissing out of your walkie-talkie and shudder from fear that they would now command you to get them arrested. And once again you are scared that one day you might share the destiny of those, who shot them. And again you try to deceive yourself by thinking that “you simply obeyed the order”. The words, which bring no comfort to the soul… The words, which can’t save you at God’s Final Judgment…

Sometimes, you stand on the square with portraits in hands… And wonder whether those, who pass by so indifferently care at all for this life? Or you, looking out of the trolley-bus’ windows, what do you think of the faces on the portraits? And you, who stand behind in camouflaged clothes, do you realize there’s different life, painted in all different colors, rather than just this dirty gray? Or you, who open fire, don’t you know that the day of judgment is near?

And you realize that you got to keep standing… So that others could see you from trolley-bus and from behind your backs. So that they could know that you are there…

Sometimes, they get you killed… Simply because some guys wanted you dead. They shot you in the back and proceeded on their way to the hell…

And now you look from above at those with your portraits, those, who travel in a trolley-bus and those, who stroll behind their backs… And you think: stop the trolley-bus, stand beside, feel that people you are and see all life’s colors from the parallel world…

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