Less than twenty years ago-although it feels like much more-being Hungarian still lit up the table, people leaned closer, they didn't go quiet, Budapest was all about beauty, glamour and long golden evenings by the Danube, someone always smiled and mentioned the Parliament lit up at night, the charm of the Fisherman's Bastion, the lively, chaotic buzz of the ruin pubs and the warmth of the people, and I not only remembered this world, but took it with me everywhere, because it shaped the way I understood myself and the concept of home.
And then gradually-so gradually, so gradually that for a while you could almost believe that nothing was happening-everything started to change, and then in 2012 Orban Viktor was elected prime minister for the second time.
At first it was just a vibe-a subtle shift in the way people talked, the conversations got tighter, the hesitation before certain words appeared, and the jokes weren't really funny anymore-but then it all got heavier, like a fog settling on the air that you can't quite put your finger on, but you can feel it in your lungs, in your chest, and in the way people avoid prolonged eye contact because somewhere deep down everyone has started to remember-or rather relearn-that the wall has ears, that politics can be dangerous, that silence is safer than honesty, and that sometimes survival means shrinking yourself smaller and smaller.
The most shocking and painful thing was the way people's warmth disappeared, the former openness was replaced by caution, curiosity was replaced by suspicion, and the neighbour became a potential threat in a system that needed enemies to justify itself, because it always needed someone to fear, someone to blame, someone to hate - migrants, Ukrainians, LGBTQ people - complete groups were transformed into distorted, grotesque fantasies, repeated over and over again on posters and television screens, until fear slowly became background noise, something you hardly notice anymore, yet it dominates everything and burns into every cell.
Families were torn apart along invisible fault lines, friendships were strained under the weight of unspoken things, and the country seemed to grow narrower and more suffocating, as if someone had imperceptibly drawn the horizon closer without anyone being able to tell exactly when it happened.
And in the meantime, the system has become tougher.
The constitution was rewritten-it seemed abstract and technical at first-but then it became clear that it was about durability, about making change almost impossible, about power surviving outrage, resistance, even hope, while public wealth quietly flowed into the NER and private hands, corruption became not the exception but the operating principle, public debt grew, and people became more and more exhausted and poorer.
And the absurdity - the almost incomprehensible absurdity - would almost have been funny if it hadn't been so painful: EU money has been used to create senseless spectacle, a canopy walkway in the middle of a treeless field, millions spent on scenery, a billion-dollar wooden toilet, a multimillion-dollar paint blob as a cycle path, while hospitals have rotted, teachers have struggled, institutions and systems have collapsed and closed.
Europe - the community to which we naturally belong, our research, our history, our home - has slowly drifted apart, relationships have become strained, trust has faltered, and the sense of belonging has begun to crack.
And there was the reality of everyday life, of living in it, working in it, building in it, waking up every morning knowing that the rules could change overnight-literally overnight-because the government itself became unpredictable, regulations were issued at night and in place in the morning, entire livelihoods, entire lives, have been made impossible overnight, as when a single decision eliminated a small business tax form that people had built their entire lives on, without any consultation, preparation or consideration of the consequences.
I remember that strange, almost unreal exhaustion, that constant, low-level anxiety, that feeling that no matter how much you study, how much you work-five degrees, six degrees-you're still standing on ground that could disappear from under you at any moment, that planning is naive, that stability is an illusion.
The media has been completely transformed, the public channels have become a permanent propaganda, independent voices have been squeezed out, not always by open force, but by a slow process of elimination, simply eliminating the basic conditions for survival.
And underneath it all, there was the grief that seeped into our lives, day by day, until it finally became part of your identity, the grief of seeing a country you love become unrecognisable, of carrying a version of yourself, that no longer exists, that you sit at a table somewhere in the world and feel the silence where there used to be recognition, and you know exactly why, and you feel at once defensiveness, shame and heartache at the warrior patriotism.
And the mourning of hopelessness - cyclical, recurring again and again - as the system tightens, as the possibilities narrow, as the gap between what could be and what is grows wider and wider, and finally becomes unbearable.
And even in that, there was still something in me - stubborn and irrational - that wouldn't let go of that other Hungary, the one full of light and laughter and possibility, the one worth fighting for, because you know, when everything is slowly taken away, memory becomes resistance.
After sixteen years of darkness and learned helplessness, in the last post-last minute, when paedophiles and child abusers were already being pardoned by the state, two years ago something did move.
A man appeared who came not from the outside but from the inside, who knew this rotten, rotten system, how it worked, its weaknesses, and that is what enabled him to start dismantling it. Not with the same means, not with fear and propaganda, but with presence, with persistent human connection, by going around the country, talking to people who nobody had gone to before, to elderly people, to rural people who had previously been bought with potatoes or threats, and he did not exploit them, but listened to them and understood them.
He has gathered real expertise around him, not childhood friends promoted from the sandpit to roles they barely understand, not people chosen for loyalty and nods of approval, not people with no depth, not people who are not good at reading, speaking or writing, not people who overnight became richer like whole royal families, but people with knowledge, integrity and real vision.
And something began to shift, not suddenly, not spectacularly, but with a growing, still fragile realization that maybe it wasn't forever, maybe it wasn't permanent, and the movement became a movement, the movement became a party, and the party became something we had almost forgotten to recognize: hope.
You could see it in people's eyes, you could hear it in the conversations, as they changed, as more and more people started saying the same things differently, as eyes opened, first one by one, then in waves, and with it came courage-real courage-police, soldiers, IT people, people from the system, breaking the rules of silence, saying what everyone had felt before but few dared to say out loud: that we live in a mafia state.
And hope, as it always does when it finally finds a way, did not stay quiet for long, it became anger, and the anger that had been built up from years of humiliation, fear, suffocation and suffering slowly became collective, something that could no longer be contained.
And then something happened last Sunday that even now, as I write this, seems unreal, because it seems, at least from where I'm sitting, as if for the first time in the world, such an oppressive regime was replaced not by force but by democratic means, through free elections, the very means that had been hollowed out and manipulated for so long, and yet somehow swept aside by a sweeping, historic victory.
I and some friends of mine voted in New York, at the embassy, with all the weight we had brought with us, squeezed into a symbolic gesture of waving a little green envelope, and then the next day we gathered in a restaurant - Hungarians living abroad but longing to go home - and watched the results, staring at the screen as if it would disappear in a blink of an eye.
We didn't believe it, we just didn't believe it at first. We refreshed, we rewatched, we looked at each other, asking without words if this was really happening, because when you've lived in hopelessness for so long, hope becomes suspect, almost dangerous.
And then all of a sudden the feeling came, like a shockwave, we exploded. We screamed, we cried, we laughed, completely out of control, as if some primal, restrained force had been ripped out of us, something we'd been pushing down for sixteen years and now had nowhere to go, and I don't even remember exactly what I did, only fragments remain, sounds, bodies, that raw, uncontrolled joy, and somewhere along the way I broke my finger-in two places, actually-and I didn't even notice. It was only later when I went to the bathroom and saw it-blue, swollen, three times as big as it should have been-and had a surreal moment of oh my God, what had happened, but a broken finger seemed insignificant compared to what we'd just experienced.
Then we listened to the speech of our future Prime Minister, and everything went quiet again, but it was no longer the silence we were used to, not the silence behind which there was always some unspoken threat, but a different kind of silence, when something finally finds its way, when relief begins to return to a place that has forgotten what relief is, exactly what it feels like.
We stood there, hugging each other, crying, repeating that we didn't believe it, we didn't believe it, and yet somewhere deep down we began to feel that maybe it was true. People from the street applauded us, came up to us, hugged us, tasted our red, white and green cake, and we sat there, both incredulous and euphoric.
The next day, I listened to the international reactions, to the calm, restrained voices of Europe, to the cautious congratulations, and to the feeling that something important had happened, something beyond us, that this small, beautiful country of ours might find its way back to where it always belonged - in the heart of Europe.
Suddenly I could imagine myself sitting at a table somewhere in the world again, saying that I was Hungarian, and there would be no awkward silence and scrutiny, but interest, respect, maybe a little love again.
God, how I missed that feeling, that kind of pride that doesn't hurt.
Now I look at my country from here - still from a distance - and I see the crowds flowing through the streets of Budapest, I see the faces lit up by something inside that I haven't seen for so long, I see the future Minister of Health dancing, really dancing, as if politics could be about life again, not fear, and I feel something stirring inside me that has been bottled up for years.
Even now, as I write this, it feels unreal, as if I am pushing the boundaries of a new reality, not knowing how far I can go, waiting for something to bounce back, for the consequences to come, for the night to bring something that will change everything.
But the thing is, it might not, not this time. Maybe now we can actually have a voice, maybe we can be free to think, to speak, to disagree, to exist, without constantly calculating the risks involved. Maybe now we don't have to fear what the night will bring.
Honestly, I'm not sure I believe it yet, but for the first time in sixteen years I can imagine a future where I do.
And I watch that iconic, slightly absurd dance over and over again, as if the repetition helps me believe that it really happened, imprinting in my nervous system, as it does in my retinas, that this version of Hungary exists now, and at one point I find myself teaching my dog the moves, dancing with him in this small New York space, and I get my bandaged finger caught in it, and I hiss for a moment, but I laugh because it takes me back to that restaurant, to that crazy, euphoric moment when Hungary was rewriting its own history and we didn't even realize what we were part of, we just felt it burst out of us, uncontrollably, overwhelmingly.
In fact, that's what I wanted, that's exactly what I wanted, even if I didn't dare to say it - I wanted it to matter again, to hurt again, to be reached by my country across the distance, to feel the absence, to make living abroad not only a relief but also a sacrifice, to be able to miss Hungary again.
And now I miss him, God, how I miss him, and I love that I have something to miss.
Homesickness runs through these eight thousand kilometres, and somehow each one can be felt separately, as 8,000 little tugs that pull me back to something I love but cannot reach, cannot step into, cannot be a part of in the way I suddenly, desperately want to.
On the morning of 13 April, I woke up, opened my eyes and waited. I waited for that familiar first moment, that fixed realisation that has been with me every morning for sixteen years, after those first blissful unconscious seconds, that yes, this is real, get ready, today I have to survive another day. But it didn't come.
I waited for the next usual thing - that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I open the news, that reflex, that almost constant anxiety that was part of my body, but it didn't come.I just lay there, looking at the ceiling, not understanding, as if I had woken up to a bad life. But then slowly, cautiously, as if I were approaching something fragile, I realized: maybe this is how it will be from now on.Maybe I don't have to be afraid of what happened last night. Maybe I don't have to be afraid that under the cover of night something has been taken again.
Maybe I won't spend the next few weeks desperately looking for loopholes to stay on my feet, trying to adapt to something I never chose.
I listen to this new man talking to the press. He was our only chance, all the other oppositions have really been dysfunctional for the last sixteen years. We had no choice: we had to put all our trust in him, and now we watch him with trembling eyes as he carries our hopes, our hearts, and I would like to hug him, but while I am hugging him, I would also like to whisper to him: do not spoil it. Don't you dare mess it up, Peter.
I blink, I still don't understand, I still don't dare to believe, as if I don't understand the rules of this new world, as if I'm waiting for someone to correct me: no, you misunderstood, that's not it, but no one is coming.
And alongside the confusion and disbelief, there is something else that is expanding, growing inside me, slowly filling the space where fear used to be. After sixteen years of drowning, I find myself
At last
Kapok
Breathe
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