The Rest Of Us

• Irina Khalip
• 13.02.2026, 14:59

Thank you for waiting for us to come home.

"I have a question for the rest of you," is how a longtime colleague and good friend of mine used to start her Facebook posts when she was looking for a loader, hairdresser, tattoo artist, or whatever. For her, it was important that the person was "from us". It was important to support with her order, with her wallet, with her google maps review not just someone's small business, but exactly ours, white-red-white, protest. She didn't argue pathetically about patriotism, but said she wouldn't leave for one reason only: she just couldn't go somewhere else.

I'm writing this in the past tense, since I don't know what she's thinking now. Since May last year, my colleague has been sitting in a pre-trial detention center with her own daughter, who also could not be there somewhere. The daughter was studying at university and was glad that the teachers were understanding, sympathetic, "ours", no propaganda with ideology to torment the students. There are actually a lot of us, they both said, those who stayed behind. It's just our choice, and we don't regret it.

Of course, they knew that they could be followed. Everyone who stayed knows that. Even if you keep this annoying thought away from yourself, it is still there, bursting with a sharp sense of fear at night before dawn, when suddenly the tires rustle under the window, or in the evening, when you set the alarm clock, but do not know whether it will wake you up, or in the morning, when you leave the house and see an unfamiliar tinted minibus. You get used to this fear, you live with it as with a chronic disease: sometimes there are exacerbations, but in general you can live, not every day it bothers you. But it is impossible to overcome it to the end. Nevertheless, Belarusians remain.

Everybody has different reasons. Some, like my colleague, simply feel that they cannot do it somewhere else. It's not doubt in their abilities or fear of change, they just really feel that way. Others - I have met many of them - stay because they don't want to miss the revolution. Yes, that's what they say: "What if it starts and I miss it? By the time I go, by the time I break through the border, everything will be over, people will be celebrating, and I will only be there for the banquet? And the revolution will be made by others? No, I don't want it that way. There is an acquaintance who has never been to the city center since 2021 - just in case. He works in his neighborhood (it's a ten-minute walk from home to work) and reassures himself that cameras in large numbers are only in the city center, and there are far fewer of them on the outskirts, and there are more chances of not being identified there. He is also waiting for the moment when he can finally rush to the center to participate in the revolution. There are many of them - those who now observe the utmost caution, who do not give themselves away by word or gesture, but are ready to jump.

And there are those for whom the impossibility of leaving is neither a choice, nor a conviction, nor a position. They just have such factory settings. For example, Nikolai Statkevich. He might be glad, but the construction does not allow it. And if in that situation at the border, when they tried to throw him out of Belarus, Nikolai couldn't run out of the bus and go back, he would probably fly out the window or teleport: it's just the way he's built. And there's nothing you can do about it. No one knows where, behind what bars, in what zone Statkevich is now. But one thing is certain: he has never once thought that maybe he should have crossed that border and drink espresso in the morning in a cozy Vilnius coffee shop with his beloved wife. We don't think about how to put our feet correctly when taking a step forward - we step automatically. And for Nikolai, being in Belarus is an automatic, instinctive process, provided by his anatomical structure.

Of course, it is equally bad for those who stayed and those who left. Still, I want to say thank you to those who stayed. It doesn't matter for what reason you stayed. What matters is that you breathe life into our bleeding cities, do not let the country die under occupation, keep traditions and memories, laugh at propaganda, come out of prisons, decorate Christmas trees and wait for us to come home. We will, of course, come back and celebrate the victory together. Please take our place at the table.

Irina Khalip, specially for Charter97.org.