Raivo opened his eyes as he roused himself from another deep sleep and gazed at the place where the window used to be. Nothing. Just as the day before, and the day before that. He tried hard not to let himself lose control. He had to be strong. For the sake of the family, he must surely be strong.

It wasn't enough, he thought to himself, that there was a war on and times had gotten hard, but now this...this...nightmare. Or was it? There was simply no way to know. The last any of the family knew, it was August, 1939. The Soviets were marching into Tallinn, and things were not looking good. And what had he, Raivo, done? Merely wished with all his might that things could be different. So perhaps he was responsible. Perhaps he was the reason they were now trapped in their house, a house that they had awoken one morning to find no longer had doors or windows.

It had been...what? three months now, since they had last seen the light of day? A chill passed through him as he remembered how they had panicked when they could find no way out, and had no way of knowing what had happened. No doors, no windows, the phone had disappeared, they were well and truly cut off from the outside world, if indeed it even still existed.

Gradually they had become resigned. They discovered that they would not starve, for somehow they had only to imagine what they would like to eat and it would magically appear on the kitchen table! There was no accounting it. Any of it. It simply was what it was. There was no way out. They had tried to break through the walls, but nothing they used made the least bit of difference.

Raivo heard his brother Andres moving about, so he got up and went to greet him. "Good morning, Andres", he said. Andres looked at him blankly. "Is it?", he asked. "please Andres, we must try..." Andres cut him off with a look as his sister Leida entered the room. She gazed at her brothers and then cast her eyes downward. She couldn't bear to look at the others anymore. All of them had gradually changed since they had been cut off from the world. Their faces had become unrecognizable, all of them with oddly round eyes and a rictus grin.

"Are the others up yet?", Raivo asked Leida in as light a tone as he could muster. "Yes", she replied simply. "Then what shall we have for breakfast?" he asked. Leida thought for moment and then said, "Strawberries, Raivo. I should like to have some strawberries."

Raivo nodded and they proceeded to the kitchen, knowing full well what would be waiting for them on the table. Life must go on, he thought to himself, but he wondered how and when he would confess to the others that it was his simple innocent wish that they could be spared the misery that would surely ensue with the coming of the Soviet soldiers that had probably led to the twilight zone they now found themselves in.

One must always be careful what one wishes for, Raivo thought to himself as he contemplated the strawberry he was about to bite into, but the alternative was something he could not bring himself to contemplate.

[The painting I based this story on is called Strawberry Eaters. It is a Naivist painting by noted Estonian artist Paul Kondas, and hangs in the KUMU Arts Center in Tallinn, Estonia, where I took the photo.]

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.

~Jean Jacques Rousseau

We all talk about freedom and wanting to be free. If asked, there are few if any who would deny that to be free is very high on their list of desires in life. But what is freedom? If ever we were to find ourselves in the position of literally having nothing to lose, and to be cast adrift, free to do as we may, go where we wish, would we be happy?

I submit that we would not. we have a deep and abiding need to feel connected, and that sense of connection extends to property as much as to the people we care about.

Some primitive tribes have been exceptions to the rule. The Aboriginal people of Australia were completely unable to comprehend what was happening when the first white settlers began putting up fences to corral cattle. For them, the land belonged to no one and the concept of restricting it in any way was bizarre. As a result they were considered dangerous and anti-social and were driven into the Outback.

We too run the risk of censure and isolation if ever we were to take up the life of the hobo or wanderer. Few would ever choose such a life. But at the other end of the spectrum we have the likes of the photo you see on this post. It is a shot of what awaits anyone unfortunate enough to step off a ship in Suva, the capitol of Fiji , a country in the grip of of political upheaval after a bloodless coup by a military commander who now calls himself interim President. The presence of iron fences and barbed wire go hand in hand with the censure of the press and heavy handed tactics against anyone who disagrees with the president.

There are two sides to every story told by a picture, especially when a fence is involved. Especially when that fence is topped with barbed wire.