… A red enclosure, its wall are high, wire netting adorns the top, two large, black iron doors forever closed, the opening is a window that looks very much like a small iron door, armed sentinels march back and forth, they ask for identification from whoever they see. When I was small, I and the other children would steal out of the compound and into the mountain. Standing outside the iron gates, we’d watch as the grown-ups would walk up to the doors and disappear inside. We thought we’d take a look inside the grounds, but none of us were permitted inside and no one told us why. Once I’d grown up, I understood. I knew that my father dealt in secrets, and so what was behind those red walls was also a secret: no ID meant no admittance.

Even to this day we’re still not sure what the actual nature and content of our father’s work was, but considering the amount of respect everyone in the organization accorded him, I believe that the work he did was vital, and no doubt very arduous, very exhausting. When my mother was still alive, she used to nag him to retire early because she could see how the work was draining him of life. As every year passed he looked older and more feeble. I often used to wonder when my father would be able to stop working, when he would be able to leave those red walls behind, to be a normal man and live a normal life. The year after you were transferred, 1984 it would’ve been, that day finally came. He was already sixty-five years old; he should have retired years earlier.