... But Not Defeated

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