the eXile - editorial

Issue #23/104, Nov 23 - Dec 7, 2000

Hark! A Miracle is Born

The eXile is pleased to announce that one of the expatriate community’s most distinguished and renowned members, Heidi Hollinger, is about to give birth. We welcome and wholeheartedly support Hollinger’s pregnancy, and we expect that other local English-language publications will set aside their petty differences and likewise embrace her gift to the world: a child.

News of Hollinger’s pregnancy reached us through the pages of Litsa, Russia’s answer to People Magazine. On page 60 of the November issue, Hollinger stares at the reader with reserved sexuality, suggestively pouring water into a vase of white roses, opposite a photograph of fellow Canuck Celine Dion. At the end of the adoring article, stunning news is revealed to Litsa’s readers: “[...] Canadians cultivate within themselves a gentleness, domesticity, and charm. Even if they are, let’s say, a photographer, like the well-known Heidi Hollinger, they strive for simple family values. Thus it wasn’t in vain that Heidi managed to bewitch the whole of Russia’s male population, including one modest, bearded employee of the Kremlin administration, so much so that she’ll soon be giving birth...

“And so we are breeding together-Russia with a Canadian woman.”

The clear reference here is to Putin’s administration chief, Alexander Voloshin, the man-behind-the-man, or in this case, the-beard-atop-the-Canuck.

Could it be possible? Could Canada’s most famous expatriate be pregnant with the child of President Putin’s right hand man? If so, then it would mark the culmination of a stunning career for the plucky, pint-sized photographer.

In two weeks’ time, the world will know the answer. That is when Hollinger expects to give birth. Analysts here in Moscow have been furiously speculating over what the Hollinger-Voloshin union of genetic material might produce. While there is sharp disagreement over the weight and height of the baby, most agree that it will be born with cloven-hooves, long sharp fingernails, and a menacing beard, regardless of its sex.

We at the eXile recently contacted Hollinger by email and put these questions to her point blank. Here is her much-delayed reply, which we received just as this issue was going to bed:

Thank you for your thoughtful questions. Your newspaper has always been so kind to me and I appreciate your continued interest in my life.

I find it very professional that the EXILE has finally decided to contact me personally to confirm facts instead of simply publishing the usual abuse.

No it is not Voloshin’s baby, though I am considering Alexander for a middle name. The ultrasound showed no beard ( but then again hair follicles are not apparent on the screen, just bones and organs.) However, the baby will be born in two weeks, so I’ll let you know how he comes out.

All the best,

Heidi

Who is Heidi Hollinger, and why does she matter to us?

On the one hand, she is an individual, a Canadian photographer who has lit up our lives with snazzy photographs of post-Communist Russia’s history makers, capturing them in telling images that will speak a thousand words for centuries to come. Who can forget her scandalous photograph of flamboyant nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky dressed only in his underwear, hand lazily clutching his unit? Or her widely-reported birthday party last year, attended by the likes of Sergei Stepashin, Boris Nemtsov, and Vijay Maheshwari? Indeed, Hollinger is perhaps Moscow’s biggest expatriate star: she has appeared on television, in films, and has graced the pages of Russia’s leading magazines and newspapers. She published her own book of photographs in the West and has held exhibits both here and abroad. She is rumored to have slept with everyone from Billy Bragg and David Byrne to Kalmyk strongman Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky.

But Heidi Hollinger is more than just an unscrupulous slut. She is all of us. She is you and me. She is the maid sweeping the dust-bunnies from the floor of a lawyer’s Western-standard apartment; she is the driver stuck in traffic on his way to pick up Paul Starobin’s children from the herpes clinic on Ulitsa Gorbunova; she is the marketing whiz at a newly-launched Moscow firm struggling to survive in an emerging world of global competition; she is the little Bangladeshi girl swept up by a tidal wave during Typhoon Marcos, dragged out to sea, pulled under by a powerful undercurrent, devoured by bottom-feeding crabs, her remains washed ashore, where they disappear under swarms of sand fleas; she is the distraught mother crying over her dead child, beating her head against the thatched floor of the refugee center and refusing to eat the 200 grams of rice donated to her by a Norwegian humanitarian aid organization. She is the ray of sunshine that bursts through the dark clouds and heats up the bloated carcasses of villagers and livestock, cooking the raw meat and heralding to the billions of flies that now, now is the time to lay their trillions of maggot eggs in the raw crevices of protruding bones and oozing wounds. Hollinger is all of us, and that is why we are here to celebrate her gift to the community and to the world at large: the gift of Life.

Come, let us celebrate together as we approach this Christmas season. For this is the season when we celebrate the greatest birth of all: yes, that’s right. The birth of Slovakia. A nation born on January 1st, 1993. A day that will live in infamy.

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