The censor is going to kill me. The odds of that go up every day. I’ve never actually seen the censor. They say it’s a woman. Detective novels say women are very inventive when it comes to murder, so she’ll find a way to get me. Why would she want to kill me? Because I’m like Harry Potter at the beginning of the first book. Remember the letters from Hogwarts? It’s similar for me, just without the owls and the wizards. The convoy keeps moving me from one penal colony to another, then to a hospital, then back to a colony. And wherever I arrive, an officer comes to my cell (not unlike the cupboard under the stairs at Uncle Dursley’s house) and says in a tired voice: “Convict Navalny, this is for you. Sign here.” Then he hands me a huge bundle stuffed with letters, telegrams, and postcards. Most of them are birthday greetings, which have been arriving for almost a month now. But there are also many letters from May and even April, which means they’ve been traveling after me for quite a while. And on every envelope, a neat strip 2–3 mm wide has been cut off with scissors. To open it without damaging the contents. So I sort through the letters. Most are handwritten. I can set aside the illegible ones. And at that moment I think about the woman censor. How she snips a 2 mm strip off each of thousands of envelopes. How she deciphers every word (what if these scribbles contain extremism). How she enters everything into the register, makes a copy, and stamps it as having passed censorship. Then she looks at the pile of unprocessed letters. Opens her desk drawer. Takes out a small rag doll. The doll is wearing a black pinstripe suit and a ridiculous cap. For a few seconds the censor whispers something, and then with furious rage plunges the scissors into the little man’s chest. Then she sighs, puts the doll away, and cuts a 2 mm strip off the next envelope. So: 1. Huge thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes, letters, telegrams, postcards, and every other sign of support. 2. Don’t forget that in Russia, sadly, there are many political prisoners, and for each of them it matters to know they are not alone, and to dream of boarding the Hogwarts Express home. 3. Just in case, in the long list of people who want to kill me, right after “FSB officers with chemical weapons” and “oligarchs I investigated,” add the line: “an unfortunate woman censor driven to hysteria by jokes she doesn’t understand about cats, Rick and Morty, and a spaceship” 😉