¹³ Transcript from a discussion along train tracks to the border.
[...]
ANJA
Did you help ?
ARON
I often tried. I asked information in Hungarian from locals, I shared the little food I had, I helped with maps. Sometimes, they joked, saying that I must be a smuggler. I didn't really find it funny and stopped saying that I was from Hungary.
ANJA
What did you say ?
ARON
Saying my dad's American or that I was Jewish sounded like a bad idea and I didn't really feel like mentioning Switzerland. So I'd often say something random - Italy, Spain.
ANJA
You were expecting honest answers without –
ARON
I did to people I got to know better. Honesty, I think - it's context related.
ANJA
It just seems like a general journalist behavior. It's easy not to tell the truth when the story's not being written about you.
ARON
Are you talking about me ?
ANJA
Maybe.
ARON
I don't agree. I'm not a journalist. And I don't think this is –
ANJA
Not now. But maybe later. Not to be a journalist...but to have this attitude. You wrote me from Presevo camp saying that you were bored.
ARON
You have to place that into context !
ANJA
Everything can be placed into context.
That's too easy. You were in a refugee camp, seeing hundreds of refugees every day and you wrote me that you were bored.
ARON
You're being unjust. I could've been in Venice or New York and write that I was bored. Lots of my time at the Syrian border was spent in tea houses, chilling or playing backgammon. I could've written you from there to say that I was having a nice time. Feelings have their own lives. You're the psychotherapist –
ANJA
You're right of course. As always. But I'm not trying to convince you. It's not a debate. I'm talking about emotions.
ARON
I wrote you because this boredom...worried me. I'm afraid of becoming too much like them.
ANJA
It's good you're worried. That's reassuring.
ARON
You're not convinced.
ANJA
I'm also worried about you.
[...]