The Human Heart

Now we begin

I was married... Once. I suppose I still am, as I only ever married once in my life. To the most incredible woman one could ever imagine. She was and still is the love of my life.

If only she were alive today, I would be a happier man.

But I am old. 94 years old to be exact, and I believe that I won't have to wait much longer to see her again. 

As I type in this typewriter, the parchment in which I write looks to me as if it were pure white. By the time you read it, it might be a soft tinge of aging yellow.

The year is now 2011 whereas I was born in 1917. Let us hope that I reach my hundred in 2017, shall we? I believe that having reached this far, one hundred years is a good time to die. But if I don't reach that ripe old age of a nice even number, fear not, for I assure you that my dead body will not care how old it is; and I will die knowing that my Raakhi is waiting for me.

But before I pass, it has been asked of me to write down my experiences in paper, so that the world never forgets.

I was born in the outskirts of Petrograd, a city you all now know as Saint Petersburg in Russia, or the former Soviet Union. There, I grew up with my mama, my dedushku (my mother's father), and my elder sister Deborah until I was five years old. But from that moment on, the turbulence within our country and within our own family has changed our lives forever.