<p>The line for bread in Constanța, Romania, could stretch for two hours. Anastasia Soare knew exactly how long it took because she had stood in it hundreds of times — a young woman in a country where the electricity cut out at six o'clock every evening, where toilet paper was bartered like currency, where the government decided when you could leave and when you had to stay.</p>
<p>In 1986, her husband Victor found a way out. His shipping route took him to Italy, where he walked into an American embassy and asked for asylum. He made it to Los Angeles. She did not. She stayed behind with their daughter, waiting, for two and a half years, to find out if the regime would ever let her follow.</p>