Madness For The Sake Of Madness
31- Iryna Khalip
- 26.01.2024, 21:49
- 38,756
PHOTO: NASHA NIVA
The enforcers have become a flat noise.
If anyone thought that ghouls in uniforms and civilian clothes would not visit Tatstsiana Seviarynets, Maryna Adamovich, Illia Mironau's mother, then this anyone retained an infantile naivety. After Darya Losik's arrest, the absence of any boundaries became clear. They came without shame and did not even suffer from insomnia or lack of appetite afterwards. They didn't talk in the smoking room, as if it were embarrassing; a poor woman with a small child, her husband in prison, and why did they send us there?
No, they ate well and slept well. They didn't worry, they didn't doubt, they didn't use their brains. So they came to Maryna Adamovich's house, where she had been waiting for years - not for the first time - for her husband to be released from prison, comforted only by the soft purr of a cat, because the road had long since been paved. And for Tatstsiana Seviarynets, who ended up in hospital after spending the night in a temporary detention centre, it is also quite safe, the address is well known, so why not visit. Illia Mironau, who had time to leave, went mad for almost two days, not knowing what had happened to his mother when he lost contact with her during the "khapun".
The police probably wanted something spectacular, but they failed. It's their own fault. The surprise effect is no longer available to them, because every day they mutter sadly in their obscene telegram channels and other lavatory places: we will come to everyone, don't relax, don't sleep, get ready. We will find and punish everyone. And the effect is quite the opposite.
If there is shooting in your backyard every day, one day you stop flinching because it becomes routine. If your city is bombed for two years, you stop running for cover. My Kyiv colleague Olya told me how she, like most Kyiv citizens, used to run to the basement at the first air raid alarm in the beginning. Then the shelter's inhabitants gradually decreased in number. And not because the citizens were leaving Kyiv. They just got used to the bombing.
Now, like many of her compatriots, Olya keeps a bag with her belongings and a carrier for her cat near the front door. But when the siren goes off, she doesn't run, she just opens the door and takes the cat into the bathroom, the safest place in the flat. They stay there until it ends. She says that's almost everyone acts that way.
It is the same with the Belarusians. When they come and arrest you every day, people stop listening to the silence of the night - whether the door has been slammed, whether the enemy has come to the door - and just leave a bag of things they might need in case of arrest at the door and go to bed. Just like Bulgakov, remember?
"Do you hear those footsteps outside? - Koroviev asked, playing with a spoon in a cup of black coffee.
- They are coming to arrest us," Azazello replied, drinking a shot of brandy.
- Ah, well, well," replied Koroviev.
The law enforcers, with all their punitive methods, have become something like flat noise for Belarusians. And no one tries to make sense of their actions. No one asks, 'Why now?' or 'Why this? Everyone understands that madness is for madness' sake, and that their actions are not a campaign of intimidation, but simply a pastime because they don't know how else to spend their time. Not helping people, not reading, not thinking - nothing. Meaningless, flat noise.
Ukrainians have already begun to perceive Russian missiles flying towards their cities in this way. And for Belarusians, the law enforcers with their house-to-house campaigns look exactly like those Russian missiles. More precisely, like a Russian warship on a corresponding course.
Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org
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