Ten years ago, sometime during these days, the cyclone-like heavy rain that lasted for days began up in Bavaria, in the Danube basin area... and the big water came, the highest flood of all time on the Danube. Since then, I've been talking to anyone who was there or participated in it, and everyone remembers a strange duality: on the one hand, the memory of fear and the gigantic struggle, and on the other hand, the fact that they were still wonderful days, a life-long, elementary experience! And one more thing: a kind of conversion for many of us.
I wrote it this way in 2013, and I would still write it this way today:
Although the slow subsidence has started, the water is still very high, the danger has not yet passed, we cannot rest easy... perhaps we should not even write about it, because it is not over yet, it is not really over, except here in the area around Győr and the Szigetköz we can relax a bit, it seems that the dam is holding, the water is going down, and at the right pace, not too fast, so that the suction effect of the receding price does not bite off another piece of the dam, i.e. there is no more shrinkage...
If I hadn't seen all this live, "officially", I would have thought it was an American disaster movie in 4D, the best kind, with helicopters, ptsz (tracked floating vehicle) and other combat vehicles, soldiers, TEK, disaster managers, firefighters, police officers, paramedics, water managers, public passengers, members of the County Defense Committee, thousands of volunteers from all over the country, and everyone else...
I saw the despair, the almost hopeless struggle, the bewilderment, the terror, when the dam rippled beneath us as if we were walking on a quilt, the penultimate moments, when the water was already leaking from everywhere, the staring eyes, the sandbags an endless and tireless line of loaders, carriers, and dam builders, and I was able to follow lightning-fast, decisive and smart decisions, real expertise...
I heard the helicopters buzzing non-stop, the rumble of the military convoy, the sirens screeching in the city as if there was a state of war, but I also heard the unreal silence outside on the Szigetköz, on the closed, deserted national road, when, next to the sandbag wall built for kilometers along the dividing line on the national road, you walked as if you were walking next to a gigantic bathtub full to overflowing, and I couldn't understand how you could keep the approx. half a meter high wall of sandbags this sea of water, and I couldn't imagine what would happen if a mentally ill person broke down this wall or just kicked a few sandbags away.... and all the while wild ducks were swimming peacefully in this surreal landscape...
I watched the exhausted, yet many, many smiling people on the defense lines, in the affected villages, comrades joking with each other in the middle of the apocalypse, lots of young people, students, but at least as many old people as well, lovely girls full of love, women with food and drink, coffee, with cookies, and I saw real men, Dobó's late defenders of the castle, who gathered from all over the country to fight the problem, and I was convinced again and again: "not a crowd, but a soul..."
Yes, the soul, the spirit of the Hungarian people, did wonderful things again... Fortunately, this is still in our collective consciousness, it has been passed down... Because this unity cannot be downloaded as an application, and it was not enough to like shoveling, just as the Danube flowed in virtual space, but very real... Just as this people did not give up either the castle or the grounds, they did not give up the fight against the tide either, because somewhere deep in our hearts we always protect the country.
I know exactly: at Győrújfalu, all this was not in the hands of the earthlings. Neither man nor machine would have been able to hold the dam there, which was just like an overflowing, punctured sponge, from which water was already leaking from everywhere on the saved side, and from which all the volunteers were ordered down on the night of the summit, and the village was evacuated... Just the menacing, sea-like water became dark, only the lights of the lamps shone, only hope remained...
And then!
"And then - by itself - the sky will open,
which was not open to curses, prayer,
Strength, will, despair,
Repentance - they besieged it to no avail.
Then the sky opens by itself,
and a tiny star walks towards you,
and comes so close, smiling beautifully,
that you think it's falling into your palm.Then - by itself - the storm will stop,
Then - by itself - everything will be quiet,
Then - by itself - hope will live.
Every golden branch of your dream tree
grows fresh fruit just by itself.This is from itself: this is Grace.”
Sándor Reményik
Yes, since then I know even more that someone else was indeed here with us... who had mercy on us, who took pity on the Hungarians and ordered the water to stop.
"Someone walked on top of the trees..."
Sándor Kányádi
Amen.
Author: Ködszürkáló
Photo source: GYMS county press photos
