We are beyond the outskirts, beyond endless rows of public housing, beyond the highway. The paved road ends in front of the gates of a factory, with the highest chimney I ever saw. The high embankments of the Sava to the right, a wild and damp green growing over heaps of waste, to the left barbed wire marking off a railway line, and below us, holes in the mud as large as lakes. We go on through thorns and brush to two houses in the middle of a swamp. Sunset is still about two hours away.
Children come running out.
A girl about six, the very image of Reska as a child, stares at us. Yet this child has never seen her aunt, all she knows is that this impossible dream of liberation exists. Throughout the evening, the child clings to her aunt's neck. We enter the house. Against all the rules, I keep my shoes on.