Never Forget.
I was twelve. I don’t remember much. I remember we were having our living room renovated. I came back from school and my parents were sitting on the couch, watching TVN24, in the middle of half-painted walls, newspapers on the floor to protect it, dust everywhere. I remember standing by the couch, because there was so much clutter all around that I couldn’t get through to sit. So I stood there for the most part of the afternoon. I don’t remember what was being said or what I thought about all this.
I remember the image, it’s stuck in my brain, of the second airplane hitting the tower. I wasn’t there when the first one hit, but this one image of the second airplane, of the tower smoking, crumbling down, will always be there, before my eyes.
I remember this was the first time in my life that I saw pure shock in people’s eyes. I don’t remember if they cried, I just remember those eyes, wide open, not understanding, not grasping what just happened. They were Poles, just presenting the news, but I think they realized something I’ve learnt years later, when I was older: it was the end of an era. The beginning of a new one.
And I remember fear. And sadness. I remember it was the first time in my life I went to school wearing a black ribbon, the next day. I did that again when Pope John Paul II died (although the ribbon this time was white). And I did it after Smoleńsk plane crash. In some ways, Smoleńsk was our own, Polish 9/11, even though it was not an attack of enemy forces.
And the sadness is still here. And the fear is even bigger. Maybe now no one is safe. And you know what? Being aware that Osama ben Laden is dead doesn’t make it any better or easier, it doesn’t bring any relief. At least to me.
I wish I could remember more, but I don’t.
But there’s one thing I am sure of: I know I will never forget.
The victims, their families and friends, all the American people and frankly – everyone in the world who has been directly or indirectly affected – you are in my prayer tonight.
I wish people wouldn’t think Poland is hidden somewhere in the Russian tundra.
Why do I have to live in such a nowhere?
I was talking to @WeAreSBNN on Twitter, asking if they had any t-shirts for people who are neither straight, nor narrow ;) you know, to support the cause. They said they’re planning on making a suitable t-shirt. I said cool, do you ship overseas? Yeah, sure, to all major countries. The list is on their site. And of course it doesn’t include Poland… so I’ll have to ship to a friend in UK or Ireland instead and they will have to ship it to me next. Twice the price.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole campaign, I support it wholeheartedly, I love the guy (or gal?) behind their Twitter account, so nice and kind, and I really get why they don’t ship to Poland – no point if there’s only me wanting it or even knowing about the campaign, right? I get it, really.
I just wish Poland wasn’t such far end of the world. I just wish we were recognized as one of the biggest (both by area and population) country in EU, with strong economy (the only one in EU holding steady without negative GDP during recent world crisis and recession) and awesome culture, worth looking into.
I wish people at least knew where Poland is. The number of times when I had to point it on the map or explain to people where it is and that no, we don’t have grizzly bears walking on streets and we do have TV and Internet and everything (I’m exaggerating only a little), is alarming, really.
I wish we weren’t ignored. But I know it’s not gonna change anytime soon. So I just have to get used to being ignored.
April 10th.
It was Saturday. I stayed in Krakow for the weekend. I was asleep. I usually catch up with sleeping during weekends. I was waking up. I heard a low buzz. SMS. My eyelids seemed heavy when I lifted them to see who’s that. Ireth, of course. I hardly ever get texts from someone lese, at least in comparison. If they come very early or very late, I usually push reading them until later. But not this time. This time I was already waking up, so I opened the message.
“Zabiło nam prezydenta!”, said the message. “It killed our president”. I distinctly remember thinking: What the hell? April Fools was ten days ago. (I hate April Fools. Someone fooled me once into believing that a close friend died. I was just a kid. I don’t like that day since then.) I thought about ignoring it and going back to sleep, but something inside told me to check it out, just to be sure. So I got up and turned on Hotch. (Hotch is the name of my PC. I am that person. I give names to inanimate objects.) I sat in my chair, in nothing but the pajamas, and opened onet.pl. I usually don’t use it, because since few years ago it’s similar more to a cheap tabloid than a real journal or news service. But for the quick search it’s not that bad.
It wasn’t black yet. They changed the colours to black and white later. But it was there. The news. A plane crash in Smoleńsk. President’s dead. Or is he? How many victims? Did the plane burn? How many people were on board? Who was there? Someone we knew? Are there any survivors? Is it really one hundred dead? Or maybe fifty? Or eighty? The information contradicted one another. It was all very chaotic. I don’t remember what was happening, not in the chronological order anyway. I remember commenting it all on Twitter. I remember sending an SMS to pay for a day streaming of TVN24, Polish version of CNN. I remember news presenters in tears, their voices rough, eyes wide with disbelief. I didn’t blame them. I couldn’t believe it myself.
I remember the then speaker of the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Parliament) giving his statement, his voice stiff, angular, husky. The commenters thought he was emotionless. I thought he was just shocked, like we all were. Suddenly all has changed. He had to take a great responsibility on his shoulders and not after long campaign and elections, but right there, right now. He just coped with it a little differently than we’d expect. Doesn’t make him compassionless.
I remember the sirens. I remember the minute of silence, when all the trams and buses and ordinary cars stopped and just stood there.
I remember people whispering on the streets, eyes wide opened, tears. White and red flags with black ribbons. I wore a black ribbon too. All week.
I remember my mom saying over the phone that she has met Mrs. Bochenek on occasions. I remember staring at the victim’s list. Mrs. Jaruga-Nowacka, the woman who had done so much for the feminist and LGTB situation. Former President Kaczorowski. Military people. Members of Parliament. Senators. The Russian interpreter (this touched me a lot, since I want to be an interpreter myself). Officers of BOR, the government’s protection bureau. Even Lech and Maria Kaczynska, though I didn’t vote for him and did not support him. He wasn’t the best president, but didn’t deserve to die. No one deserved to die. Why did they? We may never find out. But one thing I know: I don’t believe in any conspiracy theory. Everything else I’ll accept.
Sunday. The day after the crash. I had a meeting with friends planned for weeks. We didn’t cancel. We went to the cafe called Cieplarnia, it’s on the Bracka Street. We didn’t know… there were some people at the nearest table. We weren’t very quiet. It’s impossible to be sad or quiet if you’re in such jolly company. We didn’t know… A very pale, sad-looking woman, that one of my friends categorized as “some politician”, though she didn’t even know if she was local or national, asked us to turn it down a little. We didn’t want to disturb them, so we left. It wasn’t until then that we realized. The cafe was directly beneath the parliamentary bureau of late Zbigniew Wasserman. One of the Smoleńsk victims.
I remember that we were to have a test with Madame K., our French lecturer. She didn’t do it. She said she understood that nobody felt like studying this weekend. She was really great about that. I think she experienced it almost as much as any of us. After all, she’s lived in Poland for years.
I remember when all different heads of state were promising to get there for the funeral. Somehow, I found it soothing. Just a little. But then, the volcano. You remember that, right? And now, there’s a crack. Why Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, though he came late, was able to get there and Obama or Sarkozy or Merkel weren’t? They were all in US for the summit. So how was it that Saakashvili managed to do it and almost nobody else did? Was it security issues? Or… simply an excuse? I don’t know. I don’t think it matters now. I’m just wondering.
I remember that despite the fact that I thought – and still think – that burying Kaczynkis on Wawel was wrong on many levels, I went there the day of the funeral. It was raining. It was cold. We stood there, at the foot of the Wawel Hill, on a square where the cross is. The cross was erected years ago in commemoration of Katyń victims. Since that day, it’s never going to be only Katyń massacre anymore. It’ll be also the Smoleńsk tragedy. The double meaning will always be there from now on.
We stood there, by the cross, in rain. There was a big screen nearby, so we could watch the ceremony. I don’t remember much of it. It was cold and wet. And sad.
This is what I want to remember. This is what I want to mourn. It was a tragedy that shouldn’t happen. It should have stayed in the safe imagination of writers. (Did I mention I wrote something very similar not long before it happened? It still gives me the chills…) But it did happen. What I don’t understand is how this week of tragedy, a week of national mourning turned into this year… this year of bartering, politicizing every aspect of it, this year of egoism, inflated self-esteem, lost values, fights, partial, partisan tricks, media wars. It was awful. We have enough. We don’t want it anymore. I don’t even want to write about it. ENOUGH! Let us mourn our lost compatriots in peace. And then let us get back to our lives. Let’s start to live our lives, to prepare our future. Let us remember the past and not live it!
Let us move on. Please.
I had to write about Egypt sooner or later.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King was a wise man, even though he didn’t discover anything new by saying that. This is still true and we who had been long oppressed know it very well. I am of the first generation of Poles born into free country. (Even though, technically, I was born in communist era, on April 23rd. We say the communism in Poland ended on June 4th. I missed it by a little over six weeks.) And before the communism, there was World War II. And before that – World War I. And before that – 123 years of partitions of Poland executed by Germany, Russia and Austria. And before that – constant wars, constant threat from our neighbors.
We’re still here.
What I’m trying to say is, freedom is possible, even if it seems unlikely. Believe me, we know. Freedom is also hard to both achieve and perpetuate. We fought for it for centuries. We never gave up, even though everyone said our attempts were useless. Well, maybe they were. But we’re still freaking here. And we are free. And safer than at any given moment in our history.
Nie możemy się dzielić na ludzi, którzy o wolność walczą i którzy na wywalczoną wolność z założonymi rękami oczekują.
(We cannot be divided into people who fight for freedom and who wait for it doing nothing.)
Jerzy Popiełuszko
This is why we’re so proactive about Belarus. We believe in freedom above all. Freedom of oppression, freedom of mind, freedom of speech. Belarus is near, it’s our neighbor. There is a large Polish ethnic minority there. No one should be surprised that we support the opposition’s efforts of overthrowing Lukashenko, often dubbed the last dictator in Europe.
The thing is, there are many other dictators in the world.
And of course we care. We support every democratic attempt. But with distance, grows also our powerlessness. We can’t really do much about Cuba or China. No one can.
The newly unleashed strikes for the democracy and freedom in Arab countries please me and stuns me at the same time. It is something I certainly hoped for, but never expected it to happen so soon. But I guess it was bound to happen. These aren’t, after all, the pro-western rallies. Nor anti-western. People in those countries simply demand what they have a right to have: a truly democratic government that would reform the old and rigid law, so that they wouldn’t be so poor. And man, they are poor.
I haven’t realized the extent of the poverty of an average Arab man until I’ve been to Egypt. This was only few months ago and I could see the people’s frustration about all of that.
View from one of the roofs in the Nubian Village near Aswan.
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The thing that you immediately grasp when you enter Egypt are the contrasts, the eternal social paradox: rich vs poor. Sadly, the latter makes the largest social class. Everywhere you turn, you see people in jellabiyas smoking sheeshas, sittings on the doorsteps and following you with their eyes, because you’re well-clothed, blonde girl, obviously a tourist, a potential baksheesh donor. Everywhere you hear hoots, you see little cars that almost fall apart, the carts and carriages pulled by skinny, tired horses; the garbage is lying all around, people are always trying to sell you something, there is noise, there is life. But what kind of life is it? I found out that a policeman in Luxor makes 300 egyptian pounds a month, which is equivalent of about $60. A month. And he has a wife and children to provide for. On the other hand, when you’re in Egypt, you might see something like I saw: a poor Bedouin drive-in raided with at least twelve shiny new Harley Davidsons with their owners all in black leather and mirror sun-glasses. The contrast is so obvious that it’s almost terrifying, as if you just stepped into the other world.
A villa on the Nile's riverside, near Aswan.
This is different reality, different culture; but people are people everywhere in the world and I can’t blame them for their desire of a change, of a better, more fulfilled life. In fact, I appraise them for what they’re doing. It might destabilise the region. So what? It’s not like the Middle East wasn’t a barrel of gunpowder before. And maybe, maybe, maybe with a stable, truly democratic government, our international relations will change as well? Will improve? Maybe this is the first step to something bigger, a transformation we all are waiting for. Maybe it’s the little pebble that will move the avalanche.
Mother with her child, Bedouin tourist village near Hurghada.
Or maybe not. Maybe this won’t change a thing in a big scheme. But if the life of an ordinary Egyptian improves only a little bit, it’s worth it. Mubarak was in power for too long. Did you know that in Egypt there is martial law, imposed in 1981 and never lifted? This means that military can take anyone out from the streets, court-martial them and throw them in jail or even kill without so much of a fair trial.
It’s not surprising that a little spark like the riots in Tunisia started the fire like the one we see on Tahrir Square tonight. After Tunisia, Egypt believed that it’s possible for a muslim, for an arab country to be free of oppression. And now, maybe, just maybe, since this already worked on Egypt and Yemen, maybe others will se it too. I see hope there. For the sake of those people – our brothers and sisters, after all. Not every muslim is a terrorist. In fact, most of them are very peaceful people who mind their own business, just like we do. And if they can reach out for democracy, if they can start on the social change, maybe the civil rights for everyone aren’t the impossible dream… even in our times. Maybe I will see peace in the Middle East before I die.
So yes, I support Egypt (and Tunisia and Yemen and any other willing country) in the battle for freedom. It’s a noble cause. And the hell with dictatorship!
I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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