We Are Everywhere. They Are Nowhere

The whole world will raise glasses for the freedom of Belarus on New Year's Eve.

Last New Year, making my way following my husband and son through the celebrating crowd at a square in the city of Herceg Novi, I suddenly heard: "Irka, you?" I turn around – Slauka Maksimau, an old friend and colleague, with whom we worked together in the Name newspaper.

He left in the late nineties: first to Moscow to engage in business journalism, which flourished there at that time, and then, when it became impossible to live and work in Russia, to Montenegro. It had to happen that we encountered him right on New Year's Eve at a city festive concert. It was as if I suddenly found my brother lost since my childhood.

Literally in a couple of months, already in another city in Montenegro, there was another unexpected meeting: Vadzim Vezhnavets, a unique personality, in the past the Editor-in-Chief of Ranak, the independent Svetlahorsk TV channel, and now, as usual, an extremist and an emigrant. For me, Ranak has always been something anomalous, refuting the law of universal gravitation: an independent TV channel in the district center that provided residents of the district with uncensored content and alternative information. At the same time legally broadcasting for so many years. Residents of Svetlahorsk were lucky: for many years they had independent television, which the residents of the capital and large cities could not boast of. Then Vadzim, like other employees, had to flee urgently, abandoning a successful and important case, which was recognized as an extremist formation. Vezhnavets and I met by chance in Budva and rejoiced it.

Emigration is a difficult and sometimes hopeless thing. Especially before the New Year, because each of us at this time begins to choke memories of a home Christmas tree in childhood, about a box with Christmas toys, shifted silver cascades and cotton wool, about calls to our friends ("So, we all meet midnight at home, and then quickly to the city center, let's meet at the square at one o'clock!"), about the frosty air of the first New Year's morning, about a wooden table abandoned in a hurry at home. Everyone celebrates the New Year in different scenery now. Someone has a palm tree on the seashore instead of a Christmas tree, someone has a snow-covered village in a European province instead of a big city, someone has a scoreboard in Times Square, and someone has a completely foreign capital that is still so alien.

We're everywhere now. It is not for nothing that I described two random meetings in a short period of time with good friends: in Montenegro, according to last year's census, there were only 738 Belarusians. Not too much at a country's level. But they find each other in some amazing way. The last years of repression and mass exodus from the country have led to the fact that we will now find each other anywhere in the world. Compatriots publish photos of their Christmas and New Year decorations on social media pages. Sometimes you wonder: from Ecuador to Australia, from Canada to Laos, from Indonesia to Portugal. In the most seemingly atypical land for Belarusians, where they were not and should not be, you will still meet.

We are everywhere. And they're nowhere. Yes, it was they kicked us out of the house, they are breathing down our necks trying to catch us up, it was they who ruined our lives. But they sit on their Drazdy housings, afraid to go outside so that passers-by do not spit in the face. If they do, they go either to the Arab harems or to the African jungle. Moreover, even there they feel uncomfortable: it is impossible to relax, there are vigilant glances of the same kind around, with forms of denunciations at the ready. One awkward movement, one careless word, one dirty look – and you go from Drazdy to raise agriculture somewhere in the Khatimski district. So no rest, no holidays, no tranquillity – just vigilance. Native walls, like the African jungle, become a prison for them: you can't escape from there, you can only hate the walls.

Emigration is difficult. However, when you know that anywhere in the world you have a chance to meet the same person – not just a compatriot, but also a like-minded person - it becomes easier. It is almost completely joyful to think that on this New Year's Eve the wish "For Free Belarus!" will be heard all over the world. On all continents, in almost all countries, we will raise our glasses for the freedom of our country, recognize our own by the "Long Live Belarus!" accidentally heard at the next table! and to know that on New Year's Eve Belarus is everywhere. Which means we're home.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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