"The mines take your breath," she said softly, "but they cannot take your voice. Sing, Nicolae. Sing so the walls don't feel so close."
He began to hum a doina, a song of longing. It started as a thin thread of sound, but as he thought about the shoes he didn't have and the bread they couldn't buy, the melody thickened. He sang about the dusty roads of Hunedoara and the bitter taste of poverty. He sang for the children who played with rocks instead of toys and for the fathers who forgot the color of the sun. Nicolae Guta - Biata mea copilarie
She stopped her needle and looked at him. Her eyes were tired, reflecting a lifetime of "biata mea copilarie"—her own poor childhood—but she saw something in Nicolae that wasn't grey like the coal dust. "The mines take your breath," she said softly,
Nicolae grew up in a house where the walls seemed to lean inward, held together by his mother’s prayers and his father’s sweat. There was never enough of anything—except for the cold and the music that lived in his bones. It started as a thin thread of sound,