A refugee from a war-torn country is interviewed.

  The following is an archived interview from Krenish National Television (KVT).

  by User:New Curonian

  SPECIAL INTERVIEW

  Knut S?rqvist, in an exclusive interview with KVT: “You can’t tell me that divinity didn’t intervene here”

  Interviewer: Linda Hauge

  Editor: Bodil Poulssen

  30 Sithtre 2002

  WARNING: The following article contains descriptions of violence and death. Viewer discretion is advised.

  The famous writer and escapee from Arvend Knut S?rqvist tells the story of his life, on occasion of the recent unch of his book “A Pce Worse Than Hell”, in an exclusive interview with Linda Hauge, reporter of KVT.

  A young man sits on the chair facing me. He’s blonde, has eyes blue as the sky, and is so thin, that you wonder where his otherwise remarkable physical strength even comes from. He has a look in his eye of both absolute calm and complete chaos. The wrinkles on his face make him seem like he’s in his mid-40’s – almost two decades older than he actually is. He is visibly shaking – he knows that this day might be the most difficult one in the st two years for him.

  Up until two years ago, Knut S?rqvist lived – or rather, survived – on an isnd in the middle of the ocean, which most people in the world only know now because of its political and social situation, that is so horrifying, it is beyond any imagination – Arvend.

  This former colony, the crown jewel of Krennd’s former colonial possessions, has been in a ruthless, sadistic civil war for a decade and a half now, the second one in 50 years. The ten million inhabitants of this isnd face the horrors of this war and their far-reaching consequences every single day. And these come in various forms: poverty, disease, ultranationalism, and above all, a complete ck of stability, combined with the existence of various militias that violently loot, rape and kill, sadistically and indiscriminately, everyone in their path.

  For Knut, these things were a daily reality for the first 24 years of his life. But adapting to life in peace and prosperity, after his escape to Krennd, has been a time in his life equally as difficult and confusing. In his new book – “A Pce Worse Than Hell” – he explores all the intricacies of the hell on earth that Arvend has become in the past decades, while also seeking for hope, with the help of writing, as well as people – in particur, his beloved sister – with whom he has managed to escape to Krennd – and his fiancée, who has taught him how to adapt to life that is not a constant state of war and desperation.

  Linda Hauge: Mr. S?rqvist, thank you so much for being here. I know it isn’t easy for you to get back, mentally, to Arvend for this interview.

  Knut S?rqvist: Thank you for the invitation, Mrs. Hauge. It is hard, yes, but I just want to make the story of my people known, so that maybe other countries in the future don’t have to go what mine is going through.

  LH: First and foremost, I would like to congratute you on your new book, “A Pce Worse Than Hell”. It is now your second book, after your best-seller “Peace”. Your book is already announcing itself to be a bestseller too.

  KS: Yes, it is astounding that so many people want to read about… a guy. Who just tells stories about himself. And I don’t even get killed for it (chuckles), instead, I’m loved. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this.

  LH: And it is a book you’re writing about Arvend itself.

  KS: Yes, the first book I wrote was simply about how it’s like to live in a nation of peace and wealth. As well as learning how to live, in general. Only that, unlike that book – which my now-fiancée Hanna wrote in my name partially, because I was still somewhat illiterate – this book is written all by myself. I don’t know how I found the power to do it, but I did. This book is the story of my life and, at the same time, the story of a nation which is choking to death right now. Some people, even my own soon-to-be wife, tell me I speak much too lightly about death – I hope that they will understand, from this book, why that’s so.

  LH: We cannot wait to review this book on Ektosdag, when it will be presented on our TV show “Krens Who Bring Books”.

  For now, though, let us begin with your story, Mr. S?rqvist. Tell us about your family and childhood, as much as you remember them.

  KS: Well, I was born in 1976, in Landsbo… it is a city on the eastern coast of Arvend, the jungle part of the country. Just three years before, the First Civil War had ended. I had three brothers and one sister. I would say we were a happy family, but, by the standards of Krennd, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  LH: How come?

  KS: My father had been on the loser side in the war. He only escaped with his life because he hid for about a year. After that, he met my mother – who had lost her entire family in the war and was living on the streets. For that, she went to prison for a short time, and my father – who was a guard there – was smitten. She was set free; on condition she would marry my father. And so, she did.

  LH: Did you get along well with your parents? How did you manage to get by?

  KS: In retrospect, I don’t think I could’ve had a better family than I had. When your parents are forced to marry and pump out five children because the government says so, no family can work, at least not like here in Krennd. My brothers would get beaten up all the time by my dad, who was drinking the first thing as he got home. Then my dad would hit my mother, while my brothers would hit me. From a young age I learned how to fight back and even fought against my dad when he wanted to break my head. In retrospect, were it not for the domestic violence in our family, I don’t think I could’ve survived my first 24 years in the world.

  LH: That is incredible to hear.

  KS: It’s crazy how you can adapt to so many things just to keep on breathing. I was always envious of Ingeborg, my little sister – because no one would do anything to her. She was the little “princess” of our homely kingdom. My Dad would come home and the first smile he had was when he saw Ingeborg…

  LH: You were 10 years old when the Second Arveish Civil War began. How did you perceive that event at the time?

  KS: I knew that something bad was happening. In fact, my dad – I now know that he was savvy about politics – knew trouble was going to come. When I was 7, we moved to the vilge of H?lsing, about 25 km innd from Landsbo, on the edge of the mountains. I ter learned we did that to better live off better on our own, since the cities were unsafe, as well as to get crops to eat for ourselves, because government rations were insufficient for a family of seven. Then, when I was 9, my Dad left one day and never came home. I found out – many years ter – that he had shot himself in a room in the prison where he was working. That was the worst thing he could’ve done.

  LH: So, in retrospect, you knew that something was coming.

  KS: Yes. When the war began, it was just an ordinary day. My Mom came to us five and said, “We now have war”. That was it. Only Ingeborg asked, after a while, “What’s war?”. Life went on, for about two years… We went more and more hungry by the day. We now had crops of our own, but the awful weather and the floods which were destroying our crops every month stopped us from being well-nourished.

  LH: And then, the Bck Army showed up.

  KS: Yes. One day, when I was 12, the Bck Army came to our vilge and demanded to recruit my two older brothers. My mother was powerless to stop this – besides, we were hoping we could at least get more food. Which we didn’t. Somehow, one of my brothers – my second-oldest one – ran away from the militia and came back to us after two days.

  LH: So now you were five.

  KS: We were five and starving to death. Living in a shack with water dripping from the roof, getting rats and almost dying from the pgue once... This went on for a year, until, after a brutal fight with my mom, who wouldn’t let me eat one more portion of tapioca, despite us finally having enough of it after so long, I ran away from home. I thought, in my stupid teenager head, that I could… what’s the expression…? live off the nd.

  LH: And so, you ended up living off the nd for three years.

  KS: Yes. First, I tried to live in the jungle. But the mucky water there almost killed me because of cholera, and I almost got captured by the Haganists twice. After that, while running away from some Harbingers, I ended up in the mountains. Now I had no one on my back – in fact, no one at all. And worst of all, it was terribly cold – like a freezer, compared to the jungle – and I had nothing to eat. After four days of wandering, and in hypothermia, I y down to die. And I woke up in a really hot shack – this time, in the middle of the desert, near Hapartuna. I had been captured by the Bck Army.

  LH: And you managed to escape them again.

  KS: I escaped them yet again. I ran away and survived for about a year in the desert. Do you know how nutritious bugs can be?

  LH: I have never tried eating a bug myself (chuckles).

  KS: Knowing which bugs are edible and which are poisonous makes or breaks you, especially if you’re an Arveish desert dweller. Besides. They feast on the carcasses of dead fighters, which in turn kill people to eat them. It’s inevitable that they become a food supply too.

  LH: Unbelievable... Anyway, at 16 you eventually came back to your vilge of H?lsing.

  KS: Yes, after three years in the wild, I started wondering how my family is doing. I was hoping, quite frankly, to finally get a warm meal, after eating only beetles and drinking rainwater for so long, while also running away from all sorts of Haganists who were roaming the nd here and there, killing innocent people wherever they could.

  LH: And so, you came home.

  KS: When I came home, only my younger brother, Benjamin, greeted me. I think seeing me again was probably the happiest moment in his miserable life. He expined to me that our Mom had died of hunger, about a year after my run from home. All the way until the end she had insisted she wasn’t hungry… Not long after that, my second-eldest brother – who was now head of the family – got the pgue and died. Then, about six months before I came home, Benjamin and Ingeborg – now the st two members of the family – were visited by some well-dressed men from Chevaho. They took Ingeborg – and it took me a long time to find out what for, but I’ll get there too. And… (silence, gestures with his hand) Just… what could you want from an 11-year-old girl? Except maybe have her help out with cooking?!

  LH: Your entire family was gone, apart from Benjamin.

  KS: Benjamin became my best friend. Or, well, the closest thing I had ever to a best friend until that point. Together, we gathered enough food to stay alive. But… all that changed after less than a year... We were going through the bushes, and Benjamin was leading the way. Suddenly, I see him go up in the air, with a bang that made me deaf for a good minute. (cps) And there you go. No more Benjamin. Just like that. And so, the worst seven years of my life began.

  LH: I’m terribly sorry.

  KS: No, I’m sorry for ... (tries to cry, but holds back) When you’re all alone and your stomach hurts all the time, you stop being a human anymore. I became an animal – who foraged and subsisted off human bodies (LH gasps), beetles, wildlife, pnts, anything at all. And then burrowed into the shack where the rest of my pack used to live. Only one member of the pack was still alive, but she was out of reach, and I took her for dead too. So yeah. This was how I went for seven years.

  LH: We thus come to your escape from Arvend. What started it?

  KS: One evening in Ungergull 1999 the Bck Army, in conjunction with the Berserker’s Front, invaded H?lsing. The Berserkers would have liked to sughter the entire vilge, but the Bck Army explicitly forbade them from doing so. They compromised by letting the vilge subsist on condition that every day a random person would be sacrificed to the gods. Gods in which, by the way, I had stopped believing. No gods would allow such things to happen. Every once in a while, for the next year, I would see people getting sacrificed. Men, women, children, elders, babies, it didn’t matter. They would kill anything. The worst moment was when, at one point, I saw a five-year-old girl being torn from the arms of her mother. The mother insisted on getting sacrificed instead of her daughter, but instead, they just shot her in front of the little girl and afterwards burned her at the stake anyways.

  LH: Oh, my gods…

  KS: The gods that you’re invoking probably liked seeing this thing happen before their eyes.

  LH: Mr. S?rqvist, with all due respect, please, let’s not turn this into a religious debate.

  KS: Alright, sorry. Anyways. I lived my days foraging and hoping I wouldn’t be the next sacrifice to the gods. And then, the day of 11 Ungertre 2000 came.

  LH: When the Haganists picked you to be sacrificed.

  KS: The reason – among others – why I am here today to tell you the tale is because, somehow, the Berserkers had run out of petrol. It wouldn’t be until the next day that they’d get some. So, they told me – “well, you cockatoo, you’re not even doing your godly duty until tomorrow. Pathetic. Go say goodbye to whoever you want.”. And I did. Night fell, and I was thinking, well, I might as well die now than die of hunger, since I hadn’t eaten anything properly in like a week. I couldn’t escape an isnd in the middle of the ocean anyway, right? (LH nods) And then, I saw an ocelot. My first true meal in a week, yay! (LH chuckles) And I followed it. It escaped from my grasp, but, by following it, I had infiltrated out of H?lsing.

  LH: And so you saved your own life.

  KS: I figured, let me try to get to Vanershal. At least I wanna die in a prison, less painfully, than burned at a stake. So, I spent about a month criss-crossing through the foothills, feeding off wildlife and carcasses of Bck Army fighters…

  LH: UGHHH!

  KS: Yeah, that’s how people react when I tell them. Anyway, sometime by the end of Ungertre – the 31st I think? – I had reached the foothills just north of Jontuna, when the government forces found me and pointed their machine guns at me. They took me, interrogated me, on my family, life and everything, and, instead of putting me in prison, they offered me a job in Los Picos, where I could spy on Chevahoan military corporation members for allowing Arveish people to be “rescued” by the government. They probably thought I was really keen and capable, since I had lived off the nd for so long and fended off any Haganists I’d come across.

  LH: So you went to Los Picos?

  KS: Yes, to Narbel. It was the first time in 14 years when, for one, I had enough food to eat, and then, I was no longer in mortal peril! I was even given the chance to get some education – because I had given up school at the age of 12 to help my family gather food. In those two months, I discovered a new reality – one far more peaceful. Although, in retrospect, I was still not free. I was forbidden from reading anything apart from the Arveish regime approved books, I was forbidden from interacting with any Los Picoans, and I was forbidden from abandoning my job, all under threat of death.

  LH: How did you end up leaving to Krennd?

  KS: I still remember the day, it was 6 Ungerbruni. I was doing my rounds near the touristic port of Narbel, when I see a gorgeous redheaded woman, dressed in very skimpy clothing. I think that was the first time in my life that I ever felt, what’s it called? Sexual attraction. I just couldn’t take my eyes off her. And then she calls my name. Only after a few seconds I realise – it was Ingeborg.

  LH: You met your sister again, after more than a decade of not seeing her and 8 years of not knowing her whereabouts.

  KS: Indeed. This was the first thing that gave me back my faith in divinity – only that not in the Hagan one. You can’t tell me that divinity didn’t intervene here. Meeting your sister again, after 11 years? Just… (gestures with his hands)

  LH: Indeed, we cannot. Or maybe we can say you had a great luck.

  KS: But I swear to Kyrie (more hand gestures), I did not even recognize her! Anyway, before I could utter a word to her, she shouted at me to run. As if she barked. “RUN!!”. And at that moment I suddenly knew, if I didn’t do the right thing then, I would never see Ingeborg again in my life and I would rue it for the rest of my days.

  LH: And you ran away with her.

  KS: We ran away for a kilometer, with her pimp chasing us. It must have been the longest kilometer of both our lives. And then, divinity… showed up at the right time for us. A cruise ship bound for Krennd was just leaving, and we shouted at them to let us on. If we were to arrive even a few seconds ter, Ingeborg’s pimp would have caught us. And we’d not be here to tell the tale. On the cruise ship, as soon as we told the staff and the passengers on the hallway we were Arveish, everyone stopped and looked at us with an enormous amount of pity. I will always, ALWAYS remember the pity and the sadness on their faces… followed by the chief officer saying “Wow. You guys are the luckiest Sapients to ever live on the face of Chron”.

  LH: And indeed, chance has smiled to you multiple times throughout this escape. Which we are all very thankful for.

  KS: And on the entire way to Krennd – which, honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from this new country we were headed, and about which I only knew it was the former owner of Arvend – Ingeborg and I just talked on, and on, and on. I think both of us cried more on that damn boat than we had cried our entire lives before or since.

  LH: You guys had both been through very different paths, but both involved a lot of suffering.

  KS: Ingeborg told me all about her eight years as a sexual sve, during which thousands of men… went, through her, for ck of a better word. I admit, at first I didn’t understand even 1% of the torture she endured. You gotta remember, up until that point, I hadn’t had sex in my life even once. I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. But the way she cried, and expressed her disgust at any man who was even looking at her – even at me sometimes – made me understand that she hadn’t been well.

  LH: What was Ingeborg’s reaction when you told her about your life?

  KS: Phhhaaaahh!! I think you could have filled her mouth with bowls upon bowls of tapioca and there would still be room left (LH ughs), that’s how wide open her mouth was for the duration of the cruise. She actually admired me, I was a sort of superhero (LH ughs on) with the special powers to evade all Haganists and eat the craziest stuff to keep myself alive!

  LH: Sorry for ughing, Mr. S?rqvist, but…

  KS: Nah, nah. We need to ugh every once in a while. Anyway, I became my sister’s superhero, and I stayed so until this day. In retrospect, my little sister is probably the first ever person that truly loved me.

  LH: That is actually immensely beautiful. Two siblings bonding on a cruise ship, escaping from the hell on earth they’d known for their entire lives.

  KS: Yes, Mrs. Hauge.

  LH: So what was it like when you two finally docked in Krennd, towards the end of Ungerbruni 2000?

  KS: I think the very first thing I’ve learned in Krennd was the concept of “meant to be”.

  LH: Interesting! What happened?

  KS: The captain of the ship took me and Ingeborg to the local Social Services Direction of Skehammer – the city where we docked. And we were greeted (hand gestures)… by Hanna.

  LH: Wow!

  KS: She was the very first person I met here, on my very first day in Krennd. You cannot say that divinity – Kyrie, to me – hasn’t intervened in this.

  LH: What a beautiful story!

  KS: I still don’t know how, from the position of a dumbass refugee like me, and respectively the one of a social worker interacting with ten cases like mine every day, we ended up having a retionship. Hell, I didn’t even know what a retionship was! I thought people just get matched by the government and pump out 5 children. It was all I knew.

  LH: You have now had almost two years to live and adapt to Krennd. What are the things that surprise you the most here?

  KS: What doesn’t surprise me? Again, I did not know you could just have a romantic retionship – as in, be like friends, but with kisses. I did not know that you can opt to not have any children at all! Hanna and I don’t know whether we wanna have children. Maybe sometime in a few years, when I’ll do better in life. Anyway. I didn’t know that people from Arvend are looked upon like a sort of… museum artefacts.

  LH: Refugees from Arvend are very few, and very lucky…

  KS: I cannot believe that out here, food is not a main concern! And also, not to mention, the Sapients that there are here…!

  LH: Arvend is only inhabited by Andrans…

  KS: I didn’t even know there really are other kinds of Sapients! I thought they were just fairytale creatures. And I didn’t even know you can have retionships – and marry – with people of the same gender as you. Ingeborg – who herself has written a successful, and shocking, book about the disgusting things she went through in Chevaho – has now recently entered in a retionship with an Avisian woman from Penia. Can you believe that?

  LH: Amazing. Both of you found peace, love, and happiness, in the end!

  KS: We did, but it came at the cost of a very confusing 2001. It was the craziest year of my life, even crazier than foraging for bugs in Arvend while evading Haganists. Imagine surviving like that, and then coming to terms with the fact that you don’t need to marry to be with a romantic partner, you don’t need to have children, you can have sex just for fun – and it’s astoundingly beautiful with your lover – food is everywhere, you can do whatever you want, you can love whoever you want, you can believe in whichever gods you want – Kyrie made me discover a love and care I didn’t think was possible… and people from all sorts of countries are here! Some of my best friends are Jashans…

  LH: Wow. They themselves are facing a big civil war right now…

  KS: Yes, and it’s so crazy that, despite having completely different histories and life philosophies, we all suffer the same. It just makes you realize what the core of Sapient existence is. Also, another good friend I have – and the one who encouraged me to write in the first pce and surpass my condition of a refugee – is a Jenensavezin. He has lived all his life in peace and prosperity and has taught me a lot about how the civilized world works.

  LH: Amazing. Before we end this interview, I would like to ask you two more things. What are your pns for the future?

  KS: Well, not much. This year, quite frankly, has been by far the quietest in my life. I have successfully gotten over the culture shock. Hanna and I want to get married towards the end of this year and move to Tornstad, where Ingeborg and her girlfriend are waiting for us. We want to buy a house for all four of us – a real, beautiful house, better than any pce I’ve ever lived in. Maybe we can also turn this house into a café for artistic people. I’ve been getting a lot into arts and crafts tely, and besides, I really enjoy being with people and around them. I hate nature. Hanna is confused whenever we go to a forest or to a ke and I shrug and puff…

  LH: It’s probably not that pleasant to be in the wilderness, is it?

  KS: No. Enough of it. I want the city life and to be surrounded by amazing people. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel like real life.

  LH: And finally, are there any words you would like to address to anyone, to the nation, to loved ones, or to people who may be in your situation?

  KS: Definitely. Firstly, I want to profess my deepest love for Hanna, Ingeborg, and all of my friends for making my life a fairy tale. To whoever lives in Krennd and may be upset at the struggles of day-to-day life – be grateful for what you have here. Everything is going to work out for you and you needn’t despair, nor what to throw away what you have here. And finally, to whoever is in my position and can hear me, even from Arvend. Do not ever give up the fight for your life. Someday, better days will come, and you have the power to write your own destiny.

  LH: Some very well-chosen and stirring words to end the interview. Thank you, Mr. S?rqvist, for coming here. It was a great pleasure to talk to you.

  KS: Thank you as well, and have fun reading my book.