Strange deep-sea fish, with flashlights above their heads, have risen from the depths following an underwater disaster and are being washed ashore. All over the world, people have been encountering them. This, to me, mirrors the increasing number of my compatriots abroad in recent years, driven out by the political crisis in Belarus.

‘Yesterday, I met Belarusians!’ my Berlin flatmate, a German named Matze, announces one morning as I enter the shared kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee.

Last night, Matze was drinking vodka with friends at home before heading to a bar, where he made this anthropological discovery.

‘They were two women. Sitting in the corner! I went up to them and asked, “Why are you sitting here in the corner?” They looked like spies!’

‘Why did you think that?’

Matze ponders, ‘Hmm...’ After a pause, he says, ‘They were too perfect!’

‘A Lithuanian woman, whom I know, and who has been having a Belarusian girl-friend for ten years, says Belarusians are very self-controlled.’

‘Exactly. They somehow felt... tense.’

‘They’ve become used to living that way. I don’t think Belarusians abroad find it easy to relax. But they were open to chatting with you, right?’

‘Yes!’

I often experience distant past events as if they had happened yesterday, and the present as a repetition. Time has looped since the usurper's last claimed election victory. It felt harder than before—probably because, at one point, a ray of hope for change had shone, only to fade again. I stopped seeing a way out of time. We are supposed to learn from the past, but it feels like we don’t. People today seem unaware of the experiences of those who came before them. We merely stand and watch as the wall of the future, that we read about in old books, looms closer, obscuring half the sky: here come repressions, here comes war, here are pathological authorities, and here lies the impossibility of returning home.

First in Lithuania, and then in Germany. My Lithuanian and German friends tell me that another world war is on the horizon. My female friends in Belarus, however, say nothing. When we chat via video calls, we avoid discussing frightening topics. War and prison are almost absent from our conversations. The skin is too thin; don’t touch it. Don’t mention what you cannot change. It’s like when I wrote letters to political prisoners—I could only talk about everyday things and always avoided mentioning food.

In the evening, I feel low. While riding the S-Bahn, I read some news on my phone, including grim forecasts for our region's future. But I bite my tongue and say, ‘Let’s read.’ My friends in Minsk and I have a tradition of reading aloud together. Being able to continue this tradition via video makes enduring our circumstances a little easier. It also offers a kind of jab from the past. My friend opens a book she borrowed from the library, and I’m in Berlin, listening. Together, we are in the early autumn of 1915. Maksim Harecki, from Vilnius Communards, writes:

‘I hear that criminals have been released from prison. And the political ones were all taken somewhere—no one knows when or how. They were removed very secretly, in small groups, and in the dead of night. They were sent somewhere far from the front, deep into Russia, perhaps to Siberia, so my father could amuse himself in larger company.’

Piles of items at the station: boxes, baskets, suitcases, flowers, Russian icons… Important officials and wealthy people occupy separate compartments. They eat and drink, as if preparing for famine. Cheering each other up:
"Not for long!"
"Back soon!"
"We’ll have many strolls in beautiful Vilnius!"
And the dull cannonade could already be heard at night... They said it was the Germans taking Kaunas...

If everything was written in advance, why can’t anything be changed? I want a different future. More precisely, I just want a future, rather than participating in sketches from the past. My Belarusian grandmother survived World War II only because she escaped through a hole in the barn wall. I grew up with the feeling that every person of my generation in Belarus has such a grandmother who survived by a miracle—this was my norm.
I was lucky; I left Belarus at the end of last year. Grandma, I’m saving myself in Germany! I slipped away from the state’s fingers which reached out to grab me. They didn’t have time to do anything to me. But people in Belarus are unprotected in every way. A sword hangs over everyone, though it’s not obvious to the occasional visiting guest, they say. The Belarus they have heard about—usually terrible things—surprises them. Restaurants are open, there’s no shortage of food products in the shops, people are well-dressed, they can smile and even laugh. It looks like life goes on there as in any typical European country—though many people have no idea of its existence. Only at the level of power has something broken down. At any moment, the state can snatch any person from their life, break them, keep them in inhumane conditions, bully them and their loved ones, deprive them of work, property, freedom, communication, health, and even life. That person will disappear, and the water will close over them. No one is safe in Belarus. Visiting foreigners are no exception. I remember what it’s like. You live with a stone in your heart.

The door is closed. If something happens, the majority won’t be able to escape. It’s almost impossible to get a Schengen visa with a Belarusian passport. So far, multiple-entry visas are still issued by Germany and Italy. Germany and Italy. But you need to register for a German visa appointment almost a year in advance. People stand in a long queue to sign up in the notebook for an Italian visa application. It’s called ‘Oleg’s Notebook,’ after the name of the Embassy employee who keeps it. The name sounds like something from a fantasy novel.

In terrible times, there’s an overwhelming amount of literature. I used to wonder how Belarusian writers who were executed during the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s managed to write so many great works when they were so young. My favourite novelist, Lukaš Kaliuha, known for his particularly rich language, was arrested and sent to the labor camp when he was only twenty-three and shot at the age of twenty-eight. When I think about him, I can cry as though for someone I knew personally. It was so much fun when we read his work. Maksim Harecki was arrested at the age of thirty-seven and shot at forty-five. Reading his works is like travelling back in time.

‘I have a theory,’ the Polish poet Natalia, told me, ‘that authors who experience a lot of hardship early on mature as writers early too.’
It hadn’t occurred to me.

A week before the Migration Department of Lithuania deported me to Germany, I went to find the exact spot in Vilnius where the Russian Empire’s authorities hanged Kastuś Kalinoŭski, a revolutionary whose figure embodies the idea of national independence for Belarusians. Next to the place in Lukiškės Square where the gallows once stood, there is now a conservatory and the Museum of Genocide Victims, formerly the KGB building. I sit on a bench and stare. If changes don’t come, then time doesn’t make much difference: one hundred and sixty years ago is yesterday. Before being hanged, Kalinoŭski was called a nobleman, to which he objected: ‘We don’t have noblemen; everyone is equal!’ Such an idealist. He was only twenty-six years old at the time of his death. He got his difficult experience early.

I recently came to Lukiškės Square for a concert, to see and listen to the Lithuanian singer Silvester Belt. This year, in my view, Lithuania had the most elegant performance at the Eurovision Song Contest. I love Silvester’s outfit, the way he moves his shoulders, his thin face, and especially his Lithuanian language. It’s so beautiful. He sings about a life on hold. The narrator is asked to wait a little, and a little more, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Another day passes, then another, but nothing changes.

Silvester is the first openly LGBTQ+ singer in history for whom Lithuania voted in the national Eurovision selections, although he had to endure bullying too. ‘I am proof that Lithuania is progressive,’ he protests when in an interview he’s told that his homeland is not the most progressive country in Europe. ‘I am here to support you,’ he addresses the people in Lithuania whom he represents. ‘Don’t think that you are any worse than others.’ I look up his age. The chap is twenty-six. In his red stage costume, he burns like a flame of courage.

Classical music plays from the window of the Vilnius Conservatory. From classical music to the protests of ‘For our and your freedom!’ there’s only one step.

In 2017, Lithuanian archaeologists found the remains of the 1863 Uprising’s participants, including Kalinoŭski. His hands were tied behind his back, his body covered with lime. The Russian authorities decided not to take the bodies far, burying them secretly in the heart of Vilnius on Gediminas’ Hill. They were discovered by accident when a landslide occurred on the mountain. The reburial took place two years later. It was attended by official representatives from all the states for whom the history of the uprising was significant. Poland and Lithuania were represented by their Presidents, Belarus was represented by the Deputy Prime Minister, effectively a nobody. The inscriptions on the insurgents' tombstones were supposed to be only in Polish and Lithuanian, but not in Belarusian, because the Belarusian state didn’t submit an official request for this. That’s how it works. Nevertheless, Belarusian activists, whose white-red-white flags at the reburial ceremony outnumbered all others, managed to have the inscriptions made in Belarusian as well. ‘We wrote letters!’ my colleague from Vilnius, Uladzislaŭ, confirmed.

And the Lithuanian state listened to them, while the Belarusian state has not shown any interest in our and our neighbors' common history of this uprising for national independence. Instead, it uses its own narrative to scare them. Ideally, Belarusian politicians should engage in diplomacy and, together with their Lithuanian colleagues, build a narrative acceptable to both sides based on our shared past, so we can live side by side as friendly neighbours and friends in mutual respect. The only problem is that there are no Belarusian politicians in the Belarusian state.

One of the things I feel most acutely outside Belarus is the sense of national orphanhood.

‘What do you know about Belarus?’ a Slovak writer, Pavol, asks Miriam, a playwright from Austria.

I became friends with Pavol and Miriam during a scholarship at the Literary Colloquium Berlin, and we often spend time talking.

‘Forgive me, but the only thing I know is that there’s a dictatorship there. I’ve never met anyone from Belarus before.’

‘You know, there are memes with a map of Europe where they joke about countries,’ I say. ‘Well, I used to see those jokes about other countries, but never about Belarus. Its outline would simply be painted grey. In other words, nothing was known about the country outside its borders, to the point where even a joke couldn’t be made. We are the orphans of Europe. We don’t have national pro-Belarusian state authorities to represent the country and communicate the Belarusian narrative globally. I see no other explanation for why the country is so unknown to the world.

I believe that the main reason Belarus remains terra incognita is the dysfunction of its state as a national representative. States interact as institutions, exchanging official requests, asserting their culture and history, making the country present and visible at the international level. If this doesn’t happen, the country ‘loses its bearing.’

In the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, the building where the Nazis adopted the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ in 1942, I had a subjective sense that Belarus was represented there only as a territory. I heard the ‘voices’ of Israel, Poland, and Germany, but not Belarus. And it’s so strange to me. Before World War II, we had an extremely high Jewish population. Yiddish was one of the official languages of Belarus. Belarusian towns are filled with stories of murdered Jews. I remember standing at the site of one of the mass graves. A local resident told me that when they began digging there to lay the foundation for the monument to the deceased, the workers refused, horrified, because it was impossible to dig: decades after the murders, instead of earth, the excavator scooped up undecayed bodies. So, they didn’t lay the foundation and simply placed a concrete slab on top.

Who will speak for Belarus in this story? Without official representation, it’s very difficult. Pro-Belarusian proto-state structures, such as Tsikhanouskaya's Office, remain in exile abroad in Lithuania, suspended in limbo. Civil society is held hostage by the ‘armed criminal organisation’ that relies on the financial, military, and ideological support of Putin's regime.

As recent history has shown, Belarusian society is far from infantile. During the Covid pandemic and the 2020 protests, people demonstrated a remarkable capacity for self-organisation. However, at the macro level, it’s not activists who should represent the interests of a country.

National orphanhood is the reason Belarus was forgotten during the recent prisoner exchange between the West and Russia. It left many of us feeling shocked. Belarusian political prisoners suffer and die in isolation. We are transparent. Tsikhanouskaya's Office was ignored. For international actors, a government in exile isn’t sufficient representation. Likewise, a dictator reliant on a neighbouring country cannot serve as an adequate representative either. This is why the setback occurred. Other states don’t have a clear idea of where to send their requests for cooperation regarding our country.

In my view, the outcome of the 2020 protests in Belarus—an outcome that remains under-reflected—is that the country, briefly centre-stage in global news, was suddenly able to view itself through the eyes of ‘the other,’ an external observer. ‘Who are you?’ The question hung in the air.

And we began to answer it, not only to others, but also to ourselves. In answering, we came to understand ourselves better. Belarusians continue to answer this question, scattered across the world as political refugees and labour migrants, comparing themselves to the cultures in which they have found themselves. They continue to answer this question while staying in Belarus.

A friend recently witnessed a scene in Minsk: a group of young people stood at a crosswalk. There were no cars. Two impatient ones crossed the road at a red light.
‘Lads, you aren’t Belarusians!’ their comrades, who were waiting for the green light, shouted at them.

Until recently, Belarusians hadn’t really known how they differed from others, for example what their characteristic patterns of behaviour were. And now, they have found out.

In 2020, Maria Kalesnikava, one of the leaders of the protests against the dictatorship, made a statement that has since become well-known, but, in my opinion, still underestimated: ‘Belarusians, you are incredible!’ Later, I encountered sarcastic criticism of these words as self-indulgence, but I disagree. I consider this statement—and the reaction to it—a crucial turning point in the country’s history. The people of Belarus had never considered themselves cool. Perhaps, for the first time in history, they saw themselves that way. Doesn’t that matter?

We are sitting on the terrace of the Berlin Literary Colloquium with colleagues from different countries. A strip of the setting sun passes over Lake Wannsee, which we are gazing at. Soon, I will have to return to my Berlin apartment.

‘How do they say “cheers” in Belarusian?’ Bojana from Serbia asks me.
‘We often say “Budzma!” But I like another version: “Šanujmasia!”’
‘What does the former mean, and what does the latter mean?’
‘The former means “Let’s be!” and the latter stands for “Let’s respect ourselves!”’
‘I like both!’

Sounds like a plan.