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A Holiday In Waiting For a Holiday

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A Holiday In Waiting For a Holiday
ZUBR MOVEMENT STICKER

March 25 is a day that is to unite everyone.

Many years ago a friend of mine found herself in prison on New Year’s Eve. Later, in January, she received a letter from her husband. Her husband wrote that he had not celebrated the New Year. There couldn’t be a holiday without her, – “just another day off.” I stole that phrase right away.

I tried to explain my child that he won’t attend school on November 7: it’s just another day off. On July 3 friends won’t gather in the park, they go to the country with their parents: it’s just another day off. And so on, one after another: just a day off. But we want a real holiday, don’t we? It turns out that we had been deprived of not elections and civil freedoms only, not of money and careers, of the past, present and future only. We have been even deprived of holidays.

Once we had an Independence Day, July 27. But thugs who do not understand what independence is, didn’t like this holiday. However as long as every country should have some formal independence day, thugs with a pea-sized brain decided to move it to the day known to every Minsk dweller, the day of liberation of the city from the Nazi. They could not understand it was quite a different holiday, which had a right to exist. They cancelled it and replaced by a formal independence day. And our Minsk remains not liberated from the Nazi now!

Besides, we had the Constitution Day, March 15. But thugs have disfigured our Constitution in such a way that nothing at all is left of it. And could there be a holiday of a thing that does not exist? They didn’t even have to move the Constitution Day, it just died following the Constitution itself. But old-timers still remember about it. And they even try to tell new generations about the Constitution. But young people are perplexed and just frown at them: what do you mean, what is a constitution?.. Have you gone gaga, old man?

Nevertheless, the new generations know perfectly well when the country has state holidays, as they are just additional day offs. And if they are lucky, they have a company party. Yet, there is a holiday that united us all.

It’s a Freedom Day. The day when Belarus challenged Bolsheviks, and the whole world to be exact, as the whole world considered us just a territory. This challenge which took place almost one hundred years ago, has become especially important for us after we gained much-awaited-for independence, inaptitude to use this independence, a new yoke of the eastern neighbour, and finally emerging of the leader who makes the world feel a wave of nausea. March 25 is a symbol, a memory, honour and respect to oneself and fellow countrymen, it means confidence that everything could be changed still. It’s a day that unites the lefts and rights, centrists and radicals, nerds and bodybuilders, political radicals, students and pensioners. It is the day that should repeat and finally end in a victory, as historical memory prompts.

And exactly this day, March 25, the Freedom Day, is to become one of the main holidays of Belarus finally. We would not have to invent something, we would not have to enter new dates to the calendar (except for some like the day of the dictatorship downfall). We already have our state holiday. Freedom Day. The day when we would be able to take a walk around our free city with children, friends and loved ones, exchange words of congratulation with passers-by – as it is our common holiday.

Do you remember a wonderful book by Fazil Iskander, A Holiday In Waiting For a Holiday? There was The Story About the Sea. And depicting an old wall Iskander wrote: “It seems to me that if a person who had never seen a sea is taken to the ancient fortress wall, he would be able to guess that something mighty and wonderful lives behind the wall, and that man could not until he touched it.”

And we cannot rest as well, as we do not guess, we know for sure that something mighty and wonderful lives behind the wall. Freedom. Belarus. Happiness.

And let us agree that March 25 is going to be a day off in a new free Belarus. Let is replace November 7 at least. Then we would have enough time to meet and celebrate without haste, recall the past and dream about the future. Agreed?

Bella Shaevich, exclusively for Charter’97

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