‘What About My Potatoes?’
What you’ll miss when the world ends
I have to tell you about this book — it’s my favourite book ever — but so sad it literally took me a year to read because every time I’d pick it up, and I mean every time, I’d burst into tears again. It’s called Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It’s a whole book of interviews with people who survived the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl, right? And it’s the wildest thing because, again and again, people all say the one same thing.
When ahusband comes home with the news that the nuclear reactor has exploded and it’s gushing bucketloads of radioactivity out into the air and they have to evacuate, the wife says: ‘What about the potatoes?’ When a soldier comes into an old woman’s hut in his gas mask and tells her she has to leave her home, the first thing out of her mouth is to ask what’ll happen to the potatoes in the fields.
I swear I’m in love with these women and their goddamn potatoes. The husbands all say pretty much the same thing, ‘Well if you don’t mind turning into radioactive jelly for a few potatoes knock yourself out but I’m outta here’. Eventually most of the women get shoved onto the buses for the big cities and leave their potatoes behind — but that’s always the first thing out of their mouths: ‘What about the potatoes?’ ‘What will happen to the potatoes?’ ‘Who’ll pick the potatoes?’ Just this potato obsession. All they have is potatoes on the mind. It’s potatoes potatoes potatoes.
And when I first read that, I’ll be honest, I thought they were all solid-gold Russian hillbillies. I couldn’t wrap my head around their priorities. The world is over, the air’s poison, the ground’s radioactive, and they’ve zeroed in on the starchy vegetables in the field. But now I can see it. That’s just how it works. It’s always the small things that trip you. So you get told the world’s ending and you think ‘But what about my potatoes?’.
That’s the stuff that makes life worth living. People think you’re meant to suddenly stop caring about your potatoes. But I’ll tell you right now you can’t suddenly turn that stuff off. It’s not how it works. When I lost my brother — he committed suicide in 2023 — all I could think was ‘But who’s going to call me on my birthday now?’ and ‘Who’s going to come running at midnight in their pyjamas in the pouring rain to my place every time I think there’s a burglar outside?’
At his funeral I sat there looking at all these people and I realised what we were: a bunch of strangers who all missed the same potatoes.
