We lived under constant surveillance so stifling you couldn’t breathe. But on the tractor, I was strangely free. It was one of the only times I was entirely in my own world, and I could survey things, unobserved. I can’t tell you what pleasure that gave me. People ridiculed me. “What on earth are you doing?” they asked. “Why are you working so hard?” They didn’t understand that driving that tractor was the only freedom I had, my only respite from the orders and insults that assaulted us day in and day out. So no, I wasn’t crazy. Work was my only refuge. And I just enjoyed driving that tractor.
