Quoted from Aura Imbarus, in Out of the Transylvania Night: A Story of Tyranny, Freedom, Love and Identity:

The government had blacklisted our family, tapped our phone, and checked our mail. Spies were always listening, opening and checking every piece of mail. Every other neighbor became a secret agent and informant for Securitate. If your face registered all the pessimism, sadness and pain you felt, nobody thought anything of it, but if you squinted in defiance or spilled over with excitement or laughed in merriment, someone would notice you and wonder why.

Aura goes on to describing Sibiu’s main square:

Originally a grain market that began in the early 1400s, the site of beheadings, hangings, and even cages for “crazy people,” the square gave rise to a unique architecture. Its buildings featured attic windows, which peeped out of a smooth rise in the roof – instead of a gable – forming an uncanny “eyelid” that hung over dark, recessed panes. It looked as if black, unblinking human eyes, sometimes five to a single stretch of tiled roof, were always watching. With Ceauşescu in power, this felt especially disturbing and eerie. They saw you, but you had no idea what or who was hiding behind those haunting windows.

We stayed for a couple weeks in this sleepy Romanian city. We both felt comfortable and at ease here. We looked back at some of the other Romanian and Transylvanian towns we visited and saw some similar eyes peering from buildings, but none like those in Sibiu.

As I shot photos of these eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder about the days gone past, when someone might have actually been shooting back.