Between fear and horror

On the eve of the next New Year, Kolta cannot get rid of the habit of summing up, at least intermediate ones. Evgenia Vezhlyan, Anna Narinskaya , Ella Rossman and Olga Sedakova - from different countries and cities - about what is happening to us today.

I stood at a bus stop. In our small town, buses do not go very well, the wait pulled out. From the hill where the stop was located, in the lumen between the houses one could see a desert landscape, a little Martian ... I examined it. A saber woman next to me asked me from where I came from. I habitually replied that from Russia. “This is probably hard,” she said. “You left the war, and then the war is again.” “Ken,” I replied. And to herself thought: "How really?" What I feel now is impossible to accommodate in the resin. Yes, it's hard for me. But not quite in the sense that my interlocutor could keep in mind.

We have no shelling here. The rear service application worked only a couple of times in these two months. We then tried to clear the bomb shelter, but the idea was bogged down: the neighbors assured that there was never anything like that - and now it would not be. So it happened. I calmly go to bed and do not put any anxious backpack near the bed, like my friends in Tel Aviv and other cities of the Center for Israel. What am I doing? I just live. Everything is as usual, as it gradually developed for this Israeli year. That is, quite good. One woman, a repatriate of the 90s, to whom I went behind the floor scales (here they give repatriates generously and give a lot of things, and pick up a thing-a good reason to make a new acquaintance), told me that emigration is a way to start life from scratch and live it the way you want. In my case, this is so - and not so: a clean sheet does not work, it turns out about the same as it was in Russia, but otherwise in another country. I am writing a dissertation in the Russian -language literature of Israel, I participate in literary life, go to scientific events, teach - in the zoom in that “everywhere”, which becomes a place of work when the institution is completely online. I participate in the life of a good literary magazine.

Where is the war? About everywhere. She, like an icy, burning cold from a sudden gap, invades life and makes her stop, stumble ... as if to come to her senses. When it all started, these invisible cracks were now huge. For the first two weeks, life around was as if paused. The empty city resembled the times of Covid, in the stores they grabbed water and toilet paper, everything around seemed unrealistic, as if I were suddenly thrown into military cinema, where people were dressed in uniforms and go to the front right because of the festive, terrified table (the war began on a festive day, and we live-this was the case-on the religious street, and I was the person who reported from the syl. The neighbors are terrible news). Then gradually life began to speed up and grow together. Slow and bad. My friends, who lived here the very life, from the zero they wanted to discuss at a meeting, who has how many children at the front and where to get a warm sleeping bag is soon winter ... and shudder from each phone call - after all, everything can be. At the exhibition organized by NPOs (here it is called “Amuta”), which I enter into, came the Miluimnik (a soldier called from the reserve) in uniform and with a machine gun.

I caught myself on the fact that I began to treat people with weapons differently. I'm not afraid of them. I am generally less afraid here than in Russia. Fear, it turns out, is different. There are different forms and types of fear. And the war, if you are lucky to stay in a deep rear, is still not about fear, I think. Not about fear as such. On the extreme, this war, for me, now. For me, the main emotion of this war was not fear, but horror, the feeling that you are experiencing when faced with transcendental. Horror as one of the forms of transgression. Fear is about “beat or run”, here, now, and horror is not about the nature of the action, but about the depth of experience, about what you cannot come to terms with, what should not be, but it is, there is a fact, and its immutability stops your breath. Such horror covered me on September 11, 2001. And I experienced a very similar feeling on October 7, when I read in the news telegram channel about what happened. And further, and all this time the horror does not let go of the incident, because it does not end. The hostages are still in the hands of terrorists, and the red -haired kids Bibas and their mother managed to turn into media characters drawn by artificial intelligence over these months, managed to become a recognizable symbol, which the feelings of all the Israelis are projected. But this was the case for me from the very beginning: I irrationally, unaccountably personified them and felt as close as close, as soon as I saw a picture of the younger boy, Kfra on the network. And quite quickly a video appeared, mounted from the frames of ordinary home video about children (brought from the hospital, the first steps and all this that are usually removed as a keepsake) and the frame, where the almost unrecognizable mother holding both boys in the arms is taken to gas. So I was not original in my desire to focus my feelings on this family. I can analyze the reasons why it “worked” so, and could explain how this “construct” “arranged”, deconstruct it. But I will not. Why? Because something that is constructed, something distorting, is subject to deconstruction, its goal is to clean, expose the design of acts. And in this case, such “rationalization” contradicts my feeling and my experience. The Bibas family is differently built into my reality. It just exists, is present. She is performing, as Batler would say, declares her right to live. For me, it is, no matter how she and wherever she was “represented”.

It hurts me to know that this woman and these children have become the object of manipulation in negotiations on hostages, that now no one knows whether they are alive either, and it is not known where they are at all. The horror of the alienating disappearance of a person, especially the child, is an ultimate experience for me. Or even prohibitive. The worse war, which is just completely subject to rationalization and even normalization, which is unacceptable, including for me. But the war at least has (potentially, according to international law) the rules subject to understanding. As a duel ritualizes the murder, so the war professionalizes and ritualizes violence, while normalizing it and driving into the framework. Yes, the war is vile. Yes, she should never be anywhere. You can discuss the legitimacy of the methods of its conduct and the need for its beginning (it is better not to start, you cannot start, but there are defensive wars). But the war is still within the boundaries, albeit on the Sama border, anthropologically conventional.

The problem is that the massacre on October 7 had nothing to do with war. Thai worker for a long time chopped off the head of a garden chip. They shot at young children, they cried and called mother. I am now retelling the evidence that I read. There are many of them. About some of them are now being disputed. For example, is it true that the terrorists burned in the microwave of the baby, or is it a “fake”? It may well be that about the microwave is a fake. But how does this change the overall picture? The identities of many killed were identified by the charred remains. Among them were minors ... It is all so incomprehensible that, no matter how we try to build an argument around this, to discuss the “adequacy” of all the measures that were taken after, the discussion only causes rage, because the event, which became the reason for these measures and these discussions, is not scaled and absolutely broken out from the course of things. This is a rupture in the fabric of being, which has nothing to darn. It can not be justified by anything - because there is nothing to justify him at all, nor can they justify anything - because, since no answer can be proportionate to him or adequate, it is necessary to proceed from the fact that the actions that followed him should not be an answer to him.

The massacre on October 7 cannot be a reason for discussing the historical guilt of Israel, because in this way we will connect the history of Israel with this event and will not understand anything in it, but only show (not wanting it) that the Israelis are “to blame” in what happened to them now, because it was 20 years ago, and 40 years ago-there. This does not mean that the historical mistakes of Israel do not need to be discussed, as well as its historical achievements, but - not here, not so. Because if this is done right here, on the ashes, in the middle of endless memorial ceremonies (this is called “Sive”), then the baby Kfir, which either died or not, is guilty and “rightly” punished for the deeds of his Jewish ancestors. Or - strengthen - because he is a Jew. Naturally, not one of those who speak about Israel in such a vein, being a person and being in his right mind and solid memory, will say this on purpose, but this is the effect of performativity, where and when all this is pronounced.

I recall the statement of the young poetess Barbara is not valo from the Russian accusations of imperial and Putinism. In response to the question "Where were you when Putin came to power?" She wrote: “When Putin came to power, I sat on a red plastic pot” (I quote from memory). True, I can’t boast of this. When Putin came to power, I was 26 years old, and I thought that the USSR was already defeated and I just needed to “do its job”, and not engage in “some kind of” policy. The cries of the horror of those who are older, those who said that the KGBSHNIK in power will lead the country to the disaster, were celebrated with an ironic smile, and those who went out on the squares with posters were called “demrine” and were not very welcomed, considered friki ... At my generation (at least many of its representatives), the political iron was slowly formed. And when it formed, it was too late.

Are I guilty in this case? Are I responsible for what happened? Does it not turn out that, having left Russia, I tried to escape from guilt assigned to me? Removing legal responsibility for Russian citizenship? Something to replay? Was it not a shame that, despite my position, despite all the rallies that I went to, I will still be only “Russian”, which “how they are all” and “guilty of the actions of the criminal state”. Partly yes, I admit. I did not want to drag the guilt on myself, which I did not feel. I felt not guilty, but only fear and hatred. The hatred of those who make me experience this fear. The volume of fear was revealed gradually, as it “soaked” from life in Russia. So I stop internally squeezing and mentally invent excuses, seeing a policeman that comes to me. So I write the word "war" on Facebook without accompanying this action of the convulsions of self -censorship. So I teach in the zoom and just say, without pulling myself and without thinking: "What will I do for it?" Living inside Russia, we do not even feel how not we are not free. Repressive power is irrational and unpredictable, its actions are random. "Is it dangerous to come to Russia?" - the participants of the relayed chats ask each other. “No, not dangerous. Well, that is, you will be detained. Or they will not be detained. " In this, the tactics of the Russian authorities resemble the tactics of terrorists, with whom it is so retreating. It is amazing to trace the paths with which the promise of “wet in the toilet” leads to the arrest of Evgenia Berkovich ... The Russian must not know what to be afraid of in order to be afraid of everything - just in case. Then he at some point relaxes, loses vigilance, then to curse him-and to court. But will we blame the repressed? For short -sightedness, for insufficient fighting against the regime, for not gone on time? For the actions of this regime itself (they are also citizens of the Russian Federation). Is it not enough for what?

In the logic of the design, where the charge is built on the inclusion of the accused in one of the two opposed sets, there is a flaw. The marginal consequence of its application will be that the babies are “fairly” accused or punished for that country and an era in which they were not lucky enough to be born. In the cycle of poems by the poet German Lukomnikov, written after February 24, there is a short but very indicative poem: “I was a genius and talent, this is milestones passed, and now I am the occupier and traitor of the homeland.” Laughter with laughter, but the short text of the poem reveals the logic of the non -exclusive third, in which a non -bureaucratic system of differences is required to correctly determine the situation ...

The event in the 21st century is arranged so that it takes place "everything, everywhere and at once." The event falls into different, often not related to each other, but, on the contrary, “unleashed” coordinate systems, is not grasped by a total logical scheme, subordinate to the relationship “if”, a scheme in which those who do not support the “Free Palestine” slogan in its radical sense are unequivocally qualified as “racists”, and those who support are supported by, as they support. Anti -Semites. In this strict scheme, we cannot find an adequate definition of the massacre on October 7, which, turning into a simple reservation, the figure of speech (“We, of course, share horror, but” “This is monstrous crimes, but”), first reduces, and then is simply replaced from the discourse, as if it weren’t “only” an episode, a reason to talk about the “fault of Israel”. Because if on the contrary, then (such is the logic where everything is in the same plane and in the same system) the life of Palestinians is less valuable than the life of those who were killed on October 7. A kind of horror economy or grief economy is introduced. If you “distinguish” these, then you “belittle” those. There is a strict connection of events that suggest that there is a relationship between the equivalence of the parties inside and that it is impossible to say about one side, not to mention the other. The conversation is possible only in the binary bunch of “if”. The operator here is equivalence or, in other words, justice. If you are in horror about October 7, you should also balance this horror by listing the equivalent victims of “response” actions.

But thereby we create a false dependence, which also turns human life into an object of ideological bargaining. The lives of the Palestinians are valuable on their own. Without any connection with October 7 and the victims of October 7. And they are more “more valuable” that this event has the right and should be separate. Each life is unique and has the right to be considered without any connection and without a reason, just as such. Each must be mourned. The relationship of love, friendship, sorrow is not reciprocated and cannot be equivalent. Sorrow for the victims on October 7 should be “untied” with events before and after, turned off from moral bargaining. I grieve in lost loved ones, and this does not mean that I do not appreciate the life of distant ones. If the lives of the Palestinians are valuable, then this does not mean that the life of Jews is a bargaining coin in the struggle for independence or political interests (incorrect and opposite). By qualifying the event, we must first distinguish between the different coordinate systems in which it occurs. And agree on these distinctions. In such a “start -up”, withdrawing events from the system of hard binary contrasts - the key to the possibility of dialogue, the exit from the endless bargaining, where the actions of one side find more and more excuses in the actions of the other. “Binarism” leads to the confusion of optics, indifference, for example, victims and rapist in a situation containing more than two axes of coordinates, in other words - in a multidimensional situation ...

So - it's hard to answer the question, is it hard for me? Yes, it is not easy for me, a Russian woman repatriated after February 24, 2022. And the war exacerbated the situation. The life between fear from repression - there and horror from terror - here, in general, “life between” ... Yes, and (false) choice between fear and horror - so -so choice. And it’s hard, making this choice, to justify for your feelings (emphasis on this word) about the fact that, according to some, “insignificant”, and according to others, “one of the cases” in a series of conflicts ... and it seems that all these mutual accusations, kencellings, emotional bargaining do not have a real attitude to the struggle for free Russia, or to the struggle for free from terror Palestine, neither to the analysis and discussion of the terrible situation, which has developed that in Ukraine, in the Middle East. Instead of endless disputes about who is to blame, instead of appointing guilty of one or others, followed by gluing the corresponding label, it would be better to focus on determining and clarifying what happened and start to negotiate what to do. It seems that while we are infinitely far from this.