At OpenDemocracy.net, Barys Piatrovich, a Belarusian writer and journalist, recalls the first month after the Chernobyl catastrophe of April 26, 1986: “It was difficult for me to write this text. I've been working up to it for over twenty years. More than once I have started to write but given up after the first few lines. […] All that is left is perhaps the hope that mentioning those events will stir some people's memories and they will recall that scorching, rainless May and its hot winds, the decontamination and the resettled ‘Chernobylites'…”