Day 600 of the Russian invasion on Ukraine. Exactly one year after the death of Mahsa Amini in Teheran, tortured to death by the same regime that arms Hamas. Today, just over a week after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, Netanyahu’s troops marched into Gaza.
It feels like the last time the news was so violent was sometime in the nineties. I was in primary school, and Communism had just fallen. My mother remembers the declaration of martial law in 1981. My grandma was nine when nearly three-quarters of Warsaw was reduced to rubble. Seeing pictures of houses that were shelled to oblivion this week – or today – the division between their inhabitants and me feels both shockingly thin and impossible to cross. As I take a cake out of the oven, they search the debris for their loved ones, but perhaps not much earlier, they were not expecting it any more than I would.
Yesterday, M. and I took the train to Paris to vote in the Polish general election. It seems that standing for two hours in a queue for the voting booth paid off, and the conservatives lost the majority, although most of Polish society still sees little difference between the communists and the contemporary left. With oppression still vivid in their memory, by definition they are compelled to vote right.
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