#aisza

[mariacallous]

Meduza's The Beet: Dispatch from Podlaskie

Hello, and welcome back to The Beet!

Eilish Hart here, the editor of this weekly newsletter from Meduza that brings you long-form journalism from across Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here to join our mailing list. And be sure to check out last week’s feature about Nagorno-Karabakh’s tragic final act if you haven’t already. 

As you may know, Poland is set to hold a doubleheader this weekend. The ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) has called a controversial four-question referendum for the same day as the October 15 parliamentary vote. Voters will be asked if they support dismantling border defenses and accepting “thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa” — the antithesis of the PiS government’s handling of the border crisis with Belarus since 2021. By all appearances, the ruling party designed the referendum questions to highlight key talking points in their campaign and to undermine their main rival: the opposition Civic Coalition led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk. However, both the PiS and the opposition have been pushing anti-migrant rhetoric in their campaigns in an apparent attempt to outdo each other in what polling shows will be an extremely tight race. 

And so, ahead of this weekend’s vote, we’re bringing you a bittersweet dispatch courtesy of journalist James Jackson, whom you may remember for his past work with The Beet on a borderless tripoint in Central Europe. This week, James takes us back to summertime in Podlaskie, a province in northeastern Poland that, in addition to sharing a highly fortified border with Belarus, is home to two Tatar villages. As the descendants of asylum seekers who settled in the region centuries ago, Podlaskie’s Tatars are living proof of Central and Eastern Europe’s diverse past — and, boy, do they have stories to share. Moreover, since 2021, these communities have experienced the border crisis firsthand and responded with compassion, distributing aid to stranded migrants and refugees and even conducting Islamic funerals for the deceased among them. I hope you find their story as fascinating as I did.

Dispatch from Podlaskie

In Poland’s Wild East, Tatar culture is alive and well 

By James Jackson

There’s something ethereal about driving through the vast Polish region of Podlaskie in the summer. Best known for its bison and Żubrówka Bison Grass Vodka, this is Poland’s own Wild East, a frontier province along the reinforced border with Belarus. Yellow corn fields and seemingly endless rows of green pine trees punctuate its wide-open blue skies. Locals drink a moonshine called duch puszczy, “the spirit of the forest.”

Podlaskie even boasts its own historic horse-riding warriors, the Tatars, one of Europe’s oldest and one of the world’s most northern Muslim populations. With their wooden houses of worship, the Tatar villages of Bohoniki and Kruszyniany have the air of a little mosque on the prairie. Their cemeteries boast gravestones inscribed with novel-sounding Polish-Muslim names like Aisza Poltorzycka and Mustafa Bogdanowicz, alongside flourishes of Arabic and a smattering of Cyrillic lettering.

Kruszyniany Mosque, August 2022

GRZEGORZ GAJEWSKI / ALAMY / VIDA PRESS

JAMES JACKSON

Painted wooden shutters on a wooden house in Kruszyniany. June 2018.

EDWIN REMSBERG / ALAMY / VIDA PRESS

Crimea’s indigenous Tatar population may be larger and better known today, but the Lipka Tatars were Muslim islands in interflowing Catholic and Orthodox seas spread across Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania before modern statehood. There are around 2,000 Tatars still living in Poland today, half in Podlaskie’s Tatar villages and the others scattered to the cities.

‘We don’t feel like outsiders’

In the Western imagination, Central Europe isn’t known for its diversity. Behind the Iron Curtain, everything was communist or Christian, gray with soot, and rife with decaying prefabricated tower blocks. But sitting down over a bright purple chłodnik soup of beetroot, cucumber, and eggs outside a colorful yurt in the Tatar village of Kruszyniany, these preconceptions seem far away. 

As both the nationalist government and catch-all opposition take aim at migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa ahead of the parliamentary election on October 15, the Tatars serve as a reminder of a diverse and tolerant Poland that can sometimes be hard for modern observers to recognize.

Dżenneta Bogdanowicz runs a local restaurant and a visitor’s center with her husband. The Bogdanowicz family received this land hundreds of years ago as a gift from the legendary Polish King Jan III Sobieski for bravery in the Battle of Vienna. This battle looms heavily in nationalist myth-making as a time when the Polish Winged Hussars saved Christian Europe from the Turkic hordes of the Ottoman Empire. Some would perhaps rather forget that they fought victoriously alongside Muslim Tatars, just like they did in the Battle of Grunwald to throw off the yoke of the Teutonic order.

Bogdanowicz is a diminutive, effusive woman with a bowl haircut. As we eat, she chatters away in Polish, her first language. “The Polish Tatar language disappeared in the 16th century. Tatars are military men; they came to the area and married women, but children usually learn language from their mother, so that’s why the language disappeared,” she explains. “Many Tatar tribes didn’t have a common language, so they usually spoke the local language of where they were.”

Bogdanowicz’s family once owned 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of land in what is now Belarus, but it was lost in the great redrawing of Poland’s borders after World War II. Her grandfather fought for Poland in the war, following a family tradition of sorts. When he returned from exile in Britain on his wife’s orders, the Communist secret police hunted him down as a former Polish officer. He was kept in a prison camp in the center of Warsaw before he was executed in the 1950s.

She tells us this before instructing us on how to eat the traditional beef pie — “you cut the top off and eat it from the inside” — that she’s served alongside a babka ziemniaczana, a peppery potato cake with salty pickled cucumbers from their garden.

JAMES JACKSON

The Bogdanowiczs’ hospitality took a bittersweet blow five years ago. “We lost everything in a fire, even historical artifacts and souvenirs,” our host says, pointing to a freshly built wooden house that took the place of their burned home. But well-wishers from across Poland rallied to their aid. “We didn’t realize people even knew who we were, but many came to support us financially and mentally, as well,” she recalls. 

“We don’t feel like outsiders,” Bogdanowicz adds. “Polish people see Tatars as equal citizens.”

The frontier of the Islamic world

“The Tatars are a remnant of an extremely multicultural world,” historian and Goodbye, Eastern Europe authorJacob Mikanowski tells The Beet. With nomadic origins as part of the Mongol Golden Horde, the Tatars were invited to settle in the region by a Lithuanian duke who granted asylum to Khan Tokhtamysh’s clan after they lost a war with the conqueror Timur in 1395.

At that time, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — which later became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth — was home to a wide range of ethnic and religious groups, including Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusians, alongside Ashkenazi Jewish minorities, who would experience the Jewish Golden Age. Then, at the end of the 18th century, Poland-Lithuania’s more centralized and militaristic neighbors in Prussia, Russia, and the Habsburg Empire teamed up to extinguish this diversity and partition the commonwealth, spelling the end for what was once the largest state in Europe.

Nomadic fighters were an invaluable asset on this western edge of the flat Eurasian Steppe, and the Lipka Tatars often crossed sabers with Cossacks, Crimean Tatars, and Ottomans in service of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a prime position in the Bogdanowiczs’ kitchen, there stands a crescent-shaped standard bearer their ancestors carried centuries ago to fight for this flawed, unstable, yet precocious European republic.

“Eastern Europe is one of the frontier regions of the Muslim world,” Mikanowski explains. “We shouldn’t see it from just the West; you can change your perspective and equally well view it as one of the northernmost extensions of Islam.” Indeed, some Balkan countries have been Muslim longer than Latin America has been Christian, and Tatars have played a crucial role in Eastern European and Russian history.

The Muslim cemetery in Kruszyniany. October 2018.

TOUCH OF NATURE / ALAMY / VIDA PRESS

This consistent exposure to Islam led to one of the strangest trends in Polish history. From the 16th until the 18th century, members of the aristocratic Szlachta elite (who made up around 15 percent of the commonwealth, which by then they viewed as the bulwark of Christendom) started dressing in the Ottoman style and calling themselves Sarmatians, an ancient term for eastern European nomadic tribes taken from Ptolemy’s Geography.

Even when riding into battle against the Ottoman Empire, these nobles wore curved sabers, Turkic kalpak hats, and colorful Persian sashes. “When [Jan III] Sobieski was defeating the Turks during the 1683 Battle of Vienna, his Polish troops were dressed almost exactly the same way as their opponents,” writes journalist Marek Kępa. 

As the only people able to vote under Poland-Lithuania’s Golden Liberty system (also known as the Nobles’ Democracy), the Szlachta relied on an imagined, ancient-Iranian warrior ancestry. “That was to differentiate the gentry from the peasantry. It was about being better than your serfs,” Mikanowski explains. Some nobles even saw the Tatars as their brethren — with the caveat that, as non-Christians, they were unsaved.

Doing something good

Though the Renaissance-era daydream of Sarmatism eventually died out, the Lipka Tatars did not, and they preserved their own traditions despite the disappearance of their language. 

In the village of Bohoniki, half an hour’s drive from Kruszyniany, a wedding party gathers outside the community center while we wait for Maciej Szczęsnowicz, the chairman of the local Muslim community. As we sit down for tea across from the square brown house of prayer with its subtle minaret and red fence spiked with a crescent moon, the sounds of clapping and accordion music waft over to us, along with the scent of cardamom. The celebrants are dancing in a circle; among them is an older man who looks uncannily like a Tatar Lech Wałęsa.

Maciej Szczęsnowicz

JAMES JACKSON

Szczęsnowicz and his community attracted international attention in 2021 after Alexander Lukashenko’s regime tried to send tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers over the Belarusian border and into neighboring Poland. A humanitarian crisis ensued, with Polish border guards carrying out unlawful and sometimes violent pushbacks. The Polish government accused Minsk of waging a “hybrid war” and declared a state of emergency along the country’s eastern frontier, barring access to journalists and activists. 

Szczęsnowicz, however, got permission from the Polish authorities to help the migrants, and he was one of the very few allowed to enter the tightly controlled border zone. Together with his community members, he began handing out 300 meals a day. 

Some migrants didn’t survive the journey, succumbing to hunger, thirst, exposure, or injuries from beatings at the hands of border guards. That November, the Bohoniki Tatars conducted an Islamic funeral for 19-year-old Syrian Ahmed al-Hassan, who reportedly drowned in the river that runs along the Polish-Belarusian border. As the Imam read the rites, al-Hassan’s family watched via video link. “We wanted to spread the news that we were doing something good for people,” Szczęsnowicz tells The Beet. 

Despite the bureaucratic hurdles in getting permission from embassies and the Polish authorities, Bohoniki’s Muslim community has held eight more funerals since then, burying the dead on the edge of their cemetery. The most recent ceremony took place in January of this year. 

“They found him close to the Białowieża [Forest]. His brother came for the funeral, and so did the ambassador of Iraq,” Szczęsnowicz recalls. 

Imam Aleksander Bazarewicz (center) says a prayer during the funeral ceremony of a 19-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the border river trying to get to Poland. Bohoniki, November 15, 2021.

WOJTEK RADWANSKI / AFP / SCANPIX / LETA

At least 49 people have died since the border crisis began, and more than 200 others are still missing. One body was found with a piece of paper that had the address of the Bohoniki community center written on it, Szczęsnowicz says.

The response to the funerals hasn’t always been positive, however. Szczęsnowicz has even received death threats, as well as offers of police protection.

Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s The Green Border, a film based on the true story of refugees stranded between Belarus and Poland in 2021, has met similar backlash — including from figures in the Polish government. Before the film’s premiere at last month’s Venice Film Festival, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro likened it to Nazi propaganda. (The film won a special jury prize, and Holland filed a lawsuit against Ziobro for defamation.) 

Though the crisis has somewhat abated, the electronic sensors on Poland’s newly constructed border wall registered 20,000 attempts to cross between January and August. 

On election day, October 15, Poles at the polls will also take part in a national referendum, which will ask (among other things) whether they support the “admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa” as part of the European Union’s migration pact. 

The referendum is widely regarded as a way to boost turnout ahead of a tightly fought race where both sides have used immigration has as a rhetorical chess piece. How Poles respond may show how much of the commonwealth’s legacy lives on today. As loyal Muslim defenders of Poland and descendants of refugees, the Tatars will be watching.

JAMES JACKSON

That’s all for now! 

For more of The Beet’s reporting from Poland, check out our March dispatch on how Ukrainian refugees were faring there after one year of all-out war. Until next time,

Eilish

[martynagoraj]

26.05.2022 Dziś jest dla nas podwójne święto! Bardzo ważne. To właśnie tego dnia trzy lata temu na świat przyszła Aisza – to właśnie wtedy zostałam najszczęśliwszą mamą na świecie!! Wszystkiego najlepszego kochana córeczko! С днём рождения, дорогая доченька! Tug'ilgan kuningiz bilan aziz qizim! Зодруз муборак духтари азиз! Dzisiaj nawet mały smoczek Przyszedł na Twój 3 roczek. Przyjmij więc od niego kwiatka, Na te Twoje 3 latka, Wszystkiego najlepszego! #aisza #urodziny #mamjuz3latka #dzienmamy #kocham (w: Kielce, Poland) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeBLRSkMhplNUWP9UUiHcloQX-VKo1NpLcF1Zs0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[secretaryunpaid]

Love, Cupid Hates Me...

Warnings: Explicit Music Lyrics (I do not own), otherwise funny and awkward attempt as not spending this Lover’s Holiday alone...

Rating: General Audience

Pairings: None

Word Count: Short so I didn’t even bother with counting... IJBH...

Dahlia hates Valentines Day... all the displays of affection, and she is on an “I Hate Men” trip. Every since she started this plot to get revenge on Sam, she has been slowly falling in love with him. No matter how much she tells herself that she hates him.

She was at the campus’ Communications Broadcasting Center when this happened...

That damned cupid bug just won’t stop biting her like a damned pest. He makes all the young girls believe all of the hoopla about opening their hearts up to the possibilities of lasting love.

She is joined by a random male, Eric Laughslim, who claims he just wanted to sit next to a friendly face from class... Not five minutes later, he’s asking for a phone number...

This guy just comes on way too strong... He’s cute, but I am looking for some triad arrangement here...

Just let me serenade you a lil’ bit... You’ll get it, then... {explicit lyrics...}

Truth be told, they were all just after the Kitty...

Valentines’ Day... The day of romantic dates, lost virginity, sappy proposals, but for Dahlia, she was on a hunt to put Cupid out of his misery.

That damned cupid... He is so dead if I ever see him again!

Has anybody seen that DAMNED CUPID?

Why does this boy have no game???? It’s times like this is when I HATE LOVE/LUST !!!

The problem here is your attitude.

Maybe, just maybe... he isn’t like the others...

I let him sit down... even tried a little convo, ya know... but what came next?

“Are you looking to get some “strange” tonight? Looks like you’re alone... I’m alone... Word on campus is...”

Pump yo brakes you horn-dog....

How did you think it was okay to just show up at my room, I literally ran from you earlier? What about that was not clear? {Door slams in face}

Dahlia’s reasons for hating love:

But always Kill ‘Em With Kindness... Best Advice I can give...

``` But, Happy Valentine’s Day to those who actually enjoy it! ```

Just adding a bit of humor to the occasion for those who aren’t really feeling it in 2021...

[crowbar-n-kickstand]

My dog Aisza, now vs 9 years ago...

+100 to floof

She hopes you'll feel better soon :)

[shikitsuka]

9, 15, 16, 24, 58, 62 and 69! I asked you way more than you asked me 😅 I hope you don't mind!! Have a great evening!! <3

Oh I don't mind! Wouldn't reblog ask lists if I did 😄

9. Do you bite your nails?

I don't but I used to long time ago.

15. Have any pets?

I have a dog! Her name is Aisza and if you stalk my posts you can see her sometimes!

16. How exactly are you feeling at the moment?

Hgdvi prepare for chaos:

Last christmas by Wham! just ended so now listening to All I want for christmas, mood is great if a bit sleepy, I feel warm and chill-happy. Even though I was procrastinating learning for exam today lmao. Doing it now slowly tho don't worry

24. What is/are/were your best subjects?

Math, biology, chemistry I suppose too? In this order of ease if learning. Dunno for how long math will stay on my list, waiting for uni to whack me in the face more

58. Favourite weather?

I can enjoy most days depending on the context and for how long it lasts, but a sunny day is always welcome so I guess that!

62. What makes you happy?

Having free time, my lazy brain looves being able to indulge in doing one thing for hours. My plants make me happy as well, I like them a lot (even if I worry about them in winter).

A nice dream at night, or a cozy sleep when I actually feel sleepy going to bed and it all feels soft.

Little things, getting something nice for myself or enjoying a certain weather, nice walks, certain smells- rain, a summer night, ect...

Hanging out with a close person if I have one at the time

At least I think so, I feel more often at peace than giggly 100% happy so I classify it as happy for me, idk if you do as well?

69. Do you believe in soulmates?

I don't believe in fate or spiritual bonds, what I think of as a soulmate is just someone you're getting along with really well and enjoy hanging out with and can talk to about anything!

Edit: almost forgot! Have a nice evening as well!

[loplainlointhemorning]

“Aisza”

lyrics:

hello you, with your wizened gate

your crown of copper and tears retraced

use those tears to wash the face of the

last three children in Aisza

standing over my winter bed

with your teeth gutted out of your head

left me to stand neither live nor dead in that summer of Aisza

look at these now torn apart fields

pink and black bodies spread over the hills

the sun coming up on blood-dark shields

over the valley of Aisza

when we were young and talented things

you’d bow your head every time I’d sing

of the strawberry moon with its thousand gold rings

that one summer in Aisza

I smell the brush burn at your will

take the bodies and bury them still

their little bones will turn black as the hills but you

cannot save them from Aisza

cannot save them from Aisza

[bece14blog]

Clara... Si no te hubieses ido de Erasmus a Francia, donde estaríamos ahora?

Mar.... Si vivieras aquí en Madrid y no en Valencia, hasta donde hubiéramos llegado?

Stefania... Si hubieras seguido la carrera aquí en vez de volver a Cádiz, te imaginas?

Aisza... Un día entero fue suficiente, el resto estaba hecho, y si...?

Solo he conocido cuatro chicas en estos 3 años, con las que de verdad hubiera tenido algo serio, de todas las que he conocido solo cuatro. Razones externas jodieron todo lo que pudo ser, esta vez no hay nada de eso, dale

[abanetkrakow-blog]

Lampa Wisząca AISZA 6 nr 2084 https://abanet.pl/lampy-wiszace-zyrandole/6147-lampa-wiszaca-aisza-6-nr-2084.html 0CD5-790F1 ów

[martynagoraj]

#aisza #mojamala #kochamją❤ #unicorn🦄 #malewielkieszczescie #czasnazabawe #dziekujemy❤️ @patlyk_02 @paulina_goraj_1527 https://www.instagram.com/p/CXI9kbWMZE5r2CA29dFn9OkBTcqSaakbp3mk5c0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[minstradamus]

... ayisha 😂😂

IT'S JOANNE BUT CUTE BUT I DON'T KNOW

Jk your name exists in polish - Aisza 💕

Send me a word and I will translate it to my native language

[aisza]

Even with this petition, it is unlikely they'll change the fee increase on all the different types of nurses... but maybe?

[nicephotosofsimplethings]

Aisza

[artherapiecoloriage]

Nouveaute sur Artherapie.ca

Princesse Aisza coloriage pour adulte par Dar-Chan

#3/5Coloriagespouradulte, #Artiste, #Coloriages17ans+Mature, #Coloriagesgratuitsprêtsàimprimeretcolorier, #Dar-chan,Artiste, #MangaetBDjaponaise, #Modefashion, #PersonnagesDisneyetautres

[carrollis]

Little Red Riding Hood :3 Based on Aisza who is purely amazing >///< <3

Loooove X3

This is my first picture using paint tool SAI and I quite like it (maybe because of Aisza?) XD

[martynagoraj]

06.11.2021 05:05 Nie ma spania, jest zabawa #aisza #kochamja #firstlove #mamaicorka #👩‍👧💕 https://www.instagram.com/p/CV66qcfqf0jz-nZmxoOUGLRvqrvU-k-n8pzdGA0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[martynagoraj]

Mamy warkocz 💪🏻 #aisza #warkoczyk #mamyto https://www.instagram.com/p/CUXNptpMQUbv_bKYmFHz1j49FVTev2CXmJTItc0/?utm_medium=tumblr