THE BANANA INSTITUTION

Romania, the 1980s. Shops with shelves, display counters and, more often than not, nothing to put on them. Shopping was largely a matter of hope — hope that something had come in. You never knew what it was, when it had arrived, or which shop had it. But once the word got around, you went. You joined the queue and hoped for the best. In a country where shortages were a fact of everyday life, Romanians had another kind of currency: PCR. Not just the Partidul Comunist Român — the Romanian Communist Party — but, more importantly, 'Pile, Cunoștințe și Relații' (in original Romanian): connections, favours and people you knew. When it came to meat, coffee, oranges or a bar of foreign chocolate, PCR could mean the difference between going home with an empty bag and coming home with a little something to celebrate. This series is about those little victories of growing up in communist Romania. Not about communism — there is nothing to romanticise about a system built on shortages, fear and control — but about the way we, as children, somehow managed to turn scarcity into excitement and the ordinary into something magical. Looking back, there is an absurdity to those times that is almost impossible not to laugh at, although the laughter often comes with a bitter smile. We don't miss communism. We miss being children. And the first story is about one of the most important institutions of our childhood. We don't miss communism. We miss being children. And the first story is about one of the most important institutions of our childhood.

THE ANNUAL BANANA

Under communism, a banana was not a fruit. Let's be serious. A banana was an institution. It had a status, a protocol, a waiting period, an approval process and, depending on the circumstances, could even become a matter of national importance. We, the children of the 1980s, never said we fancied a banana. That would have been a completely unrealistic statement, almost as fanciful as saying we wanted a Rolls-Royce. A banana wasn't something you simply wanted to eat. It was something you heard existed. Sometimes.

Somewhere. Maybe. In general, we ate one banana a year. One. Usually around Christmas. Christmas meant carols, the tree, oranges and, if God, foreign trade and the Five-Year Plan happened to be on our side, bananas. For a Western child, a banana was a snack. For us, it was an astronomical event. If two appeared, the family had entered a period of suspicious prosperity. If three appeared, you started wondering whether Dad had secretly been recruited by the CIA.

THE TAXI DRIVER AND BANANA DIPLOMACY

Dad was a taxi driver. Towards the end of the year, he often drove passengers to and from the airport — foreigners, or Romanians returning home for the holidays. And this was where one of the great economic miracles of communism came into play: you had a salary, but money wasn't always terribly useful. So some passengers paid him with goods. And Dad considered himself lucky when that happened. Today, it sounds absurd. Back then, it made perfect sense. Money could buy whatever was available. The problem was that what you wanted to buy usually wasn't available. So a taxi driver could consider himself incredibly fortunate if he came home with a bar of foreign chocolate. Or a few mandarins. Or an orange. Or even a lemon. Yes. A lemon. In a normal economy, a lemon is something you slice over your tea. Under communism, a lemon could have the status of a strategic commodity. But then came the moment. Dad would open the shopping bag. We would be there. Our eyes followed every object. A bar of foreign chocolate. Now that was something. We stared at it longingly. The packaging was so beautiful that you almost felt guilty about eating it. Then came a mandarin. An orange. Perhaps a lemon. And if fate decided to play the greatest practical joke in our family's history, there they were... Bananas. Two. Three.

Green. Completely green. So green they didn't even look like fruit. They looked like decorative objects confiscated at customs. And that was when the real adventure began.

THE RIPENING COMMITTEE

The bananas were put away somewhere safe. You were not allowed to touch them. You were not allowed to eat them. You weren't even allowed to stare at them for too long. They were reserved for the moment when they finally ripened. And so the Banana Monitoring Committee was formed. Every morning, at lunchtime, and in the evening, the ripening process was carefully monitored. Never had we paid such close attention to the maturation of a plant. The bananas were treated with more care than some relatives. We inspected them. We smelled them. We studied their colour. We compared them. One was slightly yellower than the other. And if a suspicious spot appeared, it was nothing short of a full-blown cabinet crisis. And so, for several days, our home became the stage for a geopolitical event of major importance: the ripening of three bananas.

THE BIG DAY

When the banana finally turned yellow, we had the feeling that we had won something. We weren't quite sure what. But we had definitely won. We peeled it carefully. We looked at it. We smelled it. And we ate it slowly. Because the experience had to last. You never knew when another one would come along. Maybe next year. Maybe at Christmas. Maybe not even then. So the banana had to be savoured with the seriousness of a condemned man contemplating his last meal. Except we weren't condemned. We were children. Condemned only to socialism. And that was quite enough. In our childhood imagination, the West had become almost mythical. We didn't really know what life was like there. But we knew one thing: They had bananas. Probably lots of them. Probably in every home. Maybe they grew on trees. Perhaps people woke up in the morning and simply ate a banana without having to wait for Christmas. Maybe even two. And if they wanted another one, they went to a shop and bought it. The idea was almost impossible to comprehend. In Romania, if someone had permanent access to bananas, we would have looked at them with deep suspicion. Either they were a millionaire, they had come from the West, or they had a very special relationship with the people responsible for keeping the shops supplied.

TODAY

Today I walk into a supermarket and see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bananas. Yellow. Perfect. Available whenever I want them. I pick them up without giving it a second thought. There are no queues anymore. No whispered, “They've got some in.” No waiting for Christmas. No monitoring the ripening process as though we were supervising a nuclear reactor. And yet, whenever I pick up a banana, its smell takes me instantly back to childhood: to Dad coming home from the airport with his shopping bag; to the foreign chocolate; to the mandarins and oranges; and, above all, to those two or three green bananas which, to us, were worth their weight in gold. Today I understand that the banana itself was nothing extraordinary. Its rarity made it extraordinary. Scarcity had taught us to turn small things into major events: a bar of chocolate into a celebration, an orange into a trophy, two bananas into a fortune. Perhaps this is one of the saddest things I understand now: We weren't happy because the system gave us so little. We were happy because, as children, we knew how to turn that little into something enormous. Today, we have everything. And yet I still respect every banana. It may sound ridiculous, but to me it isn't.

When I peel one, for a few seconds I am back in that house, in that childhood, in that Romania where an ordinary piece of fruit could feel like a miracle. I don't choose a banana.

I choose a memory.