Ahmet Altan was arrested during
Turkey's media crackdown after the failed July 2016 coup d'état and he was
expecting that sooner or later he would be arrested just like his father was many
years ago1. Just after his arrest, he realized how he would miss the
things that he loves, routine he enjoyed as a writer and most importantly his
freedom to decide. Nevertheless, he didn't submit to hopelessness and continued
his observation of prison details with eyes of a novelist. He yearned freedom
which he couldn't ask loud, instead motivated himself to bear the harsh prison
reality and terror. In a prison cell devoid of mirrors, Ahmet realized how it
feels to be distanced from one's reality and as he got to know the background
of other cellmates, slowly the prison life took new form for him, where he was able
to uncover the shades of experiences never touched or thought of before. Ahmet
tried hard to look normal, so that his loving ones could take it easy and he
himself could stand to the burden of captivity, even when knowing that the
possibility of a reasonable trial was almost none.
1. What
I was experiencing was not déjà vu. Reality was repeating itself. This country
moves through history too slowly for time to go forward, so it folds back on
itself instead.
Ahmet got to listen to a story2—and
later fabricating it himself— of a young teacher who couldn't bring
himself to give out names of his friends to earn liberty, and also of other
prisoners with the attentiveness of a writer, blazing his imagination and taking
pleasure in the stories he absorbed from them, when he tried to relive someone
else's experience when he was not able to live his own3 – which only
proves how hungry Ahmet was to get back his creative space.
Ahmet recalls the episodes when
he was released before being arrested again and an encounter with a policeman who
has read his novel and discovers in prison how the concept of time is rooted in
our lives and what happens when it is distorted. In the process he finds a way
to measure time in solitude of prison without clocks, when he wasn't able to envision4
things, the only creative fodder the writer can live with. Ahmet has taken
realistic, philosophical and imaginative route and wiseness to share his
experience in a way of an essayist, a novelist and a victim and at times we
forget that he is inside a prison writing this.
2.
The only way to move was with the voice – by
talking and telling. Anyone on earth who finds a listener has a story to tell.
What is difficult to find is not the story, but the listener. I was the
listener in that cage.
3.
In a cage that objectified unhappiness, I was thinking
about what happiness was. Like a blind alchemist searching for the spell that
turns copper into gold, I was trying to find the secret that turned “frozen
seaweed” and “coffin lids” into joy.
4. I
was not able to imagine. I could not imagine a single thing. My mind was
petrified. Not even an image moved inside it. The magical images of the land of
my imagination were glued on the walls of my mind like discolored frescos. They
were not coming to life.
Ahmet can see how the shape of
truth has changed for him and what it means to write and to be free; he comes
across paradoxes or lessons5 between the voids and silences of the
prison walls and spaces in which he makes his voyages. Struggling with his
longing and witnessing that of others Ahmet tries to understand his dreams too
– unrelated to his prison life. In a thirteen-foot-long cell the people of
different faith and culture has merged into one another, and despite the
personal views of Ahmet differs to those of his cellmates, he finds it easy and
satisfying to show respect for their faith, and realizes that our primordial
connectedness unfurls under the dire situations when human emotions become the
only religion we can perform.
As Ahmet is sentenced to life in
prison without parole, he is reminded of one of his own characters in a novel,
who faced the similar fate as his, and he feels like it was he himself who
wrote his destiny or at least he could write his fate6. He feels the
final flicker of hope dying when he is sentenced for life nevertheless collects
himself to keep his fighting spirit7 alive though the impact he has
suffered internally is not something that he can ignore. When he is able to get
a book to read in the prison, he dwells on literature and writing and finally
is relieved to find solace in something he loves utmost, meanwhile he
encounters the nature of evil and
tries to understand it, as he becomes its victim. In the final chapter The
Writer's Paradox, Ahmet uses a famous paradox to show his position, while still
being a victim inside a prison, and challenges Turkish government and those who
imprisoned him that they've failed8; they cannot capture a writer's
mind.
5.
Forgetting is the greatest source of freedom a
person can have. The prison, the cell, the walls, the doors, the locks, the problems
and the people – everything and everyone placing limits on my life and telling
me “you cannot go beyond” is erased and gone.
6.
I will never see the world again; I will never
see a sky unframed by the walls of a courtyard. I am descending to Hades. I
walk into the darkness like a god who wrote his own destiny. My hero and I
disappear into the darkness together.
7.
I will fight. I will be brave and I will despise
myself for it. I will be injured by my inner conflicts. I will write my own
Odyssey, write it with my life in this narrowest of cells. Like Odysseus, I
will act with heroism and cowardice, with honesty and craftiness, I will know
defeat and victory, my adventure will end only in death. I will have the
Penelope of my dreams. I will write in order to be able to live, to endure, to
fight, to like myself and to forgive my own failings.
8.
I am writing this in a prison cell. But I am not
in prison. I am a writer. I am neither where I am nor where I am not. You can
imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because, like all writers, I have
magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.
I Will Never See the World Again is a thought-provoking and clear
picture of not just Ahmet's case but of all those who are incarcerated, unjustly accused
and whose freedom to speak, write and live has been compromised. This prison
memoir heralds the endurance in the face of adversity born out of politics
corrupt with power which treats every citizen as a threat and puts trial of
courts – run by corrupt judges – only as a formality. We see senseless and evil
authorities running the prison system and one man struggling, building block by
block an internal shield to keep being motivated and preserve his creative spirit
and repose to fight so as to be heard – a voice both tender and sharp which
speaks to us all.
Author: Ahmet Altan
Translator: Yasemin Çongar
Publisher: Other Press
Page Count: 224pp
Price: $15.99
Author Photo Credit: https://www.otherpress.com/authors/ahmet-altan/
Review Copy Courtesy: Other Press
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