"And then I'm already losing consciousness on the toilet"

"Hello everyone, gentlemen! What beauty! Oh, it's lovely! I've curtained the windows, I'm sitting at home, I've devoured half a pot of cold borscht like a lord and I'm content. And in the fridge, half a watermelon is chilling to the right temperature. Once I've recovered from the cold borscht, I'll devour it whole. All by myself. With a spoon.

Well, yesterday I drove to the lake for a swim. The air conditioning in the car works like a seasoned Stakhanovite, so that I, my dear, don't sweat. And then my family and I went to a restaurant where they brought me a liter of ice-cold mango margarita. Cool, right, gentlemen? Cool. But not so long ago, to put it mildly, it was different.

In the summer of 2025, for example, I was sitting in Grodno prison in a cell with eight other men.

Everyone smoking, making tea, breathing and functioning with all their physiology, with such an exhaust that it's astonishing. Good thing my sense of smell there was almost completely atrophied.

And, as if all this wasn't enough, we also got lice: we sit, we sweat, we scratch.

— Hey! Administration! Get rid of the lice!

— Please wait. Your call is very important to us…

And in the summer of 2024, I somehow went to relieve myself. Well, something went wrong, and then I'm already losing consciousness on the toilet.

— Administration! Hello! Open the feeding hatches (small window for passing food into the cell) so that air can at least circulate somehow!

— Please wait. Your call is very important to us…

The administration of Grodno Prison No. 1 knows best when to open the feeding hatches. Everything is clear for them: no feeding hatches until one of the prisoners kicks the bucket. And so it goes every year.

I spent summer 2023 in the isolation ward of the Vaukavysk zone. And you know what? The climate there was much more comfortable than in the detachment. The walls finally dried out. No condensation flowing down the pipes. No checks three times a day in the scorching sun, no work in the dirty, stinking industrial zone. You go crazy, of course, but at least in a comfortable temperature regime.

In the summer of 2022, I was hanging out in the Baranavichy pre-trial detention center. Old building. A former stable under the tsar. The population density per square meter is like on a Mumbai-Kolkata electric train. Pipes leak, walls leak, ceiling leaks, people leak.

— Tuberculosis, how are you doing there?

— Everything's great! Look, I've already settled in the author of this text!

Well, and how are you, gentlemen? Sweating, probably? And imagine what it's like for those for whom the prospect of drinking a mango margarita is roughly equal in probability to flying into space.

They'll get through it, of course. They got through it before – and they'll manage now. And there's no need, gentlemen, to despair, to get depressed, to wring your hands and sprinkle ashes on your head. Just remember that political prisoners exist. And that means our task is to ensure they come out alive and as healthy as possible."

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