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  • Against labels

    In 1992, during the Yugoslav Wars, my family fled to Finland. Because I was only two years old at the time I don’t have any memories whatsoever from life back in Kosovo, the country I was born in. I learned to read at an early age, and books and stories quickly became my passion. For as long as I can remember, writing stories is what I’ve wanted to do in life. It makes me extremely happy and proud to be able to report that my childhood dream came true. I am a writer today.

    When I was a child I never thought that home was somewhere other than Finland. I never asked my parents whether we would be moving back to Kosovo one day, and I never felt out of place. I never experienced any emotion of dislocation or otherness because the world I lived in was the only world I knew. When I started going to a Finnish school and having conversations with teachers and other students this changed drastically, and I realized that I was different from my peers – a refugee, an immigrant, an asylum seeker. Until that point I had no reason to think of myself as an outsider, to refer to myself as an immigrant, to think about where my home was.

    During my school years I was frequently confronted by questions regarding my background, my ‘real home’, such as: ‘What is it like to live in a foreign country? Under such pressure, between two different languages, two different cultures, between religions?’. Or: ‘How does it feel when there’s a war in your home country?’ Answering these kinds of questions made me exceptionally uncomfortable, I truly feared them, and eventually I got into the habit of avoiding new people as I knew that the questions would start pouring in once I told others my Albanian name. I always felt that because of my background I was seen as less fortunate, that in the eyes of others I was traumatized, ruined for good, that my world was somehow shattered.

    The way I saw it, there was no war in my home, no pressure in my existence, no violence in my past. Switching between Albanian and Finnish and knowing about both Finnish and Albanian traditions felt completely natural. It was painless, effortless, because I knew nothing else. This was my world, I had nothing else to compare my reality to. I quickly realized these questions offended me because they presumed that my life is somehow torn apart, divided in two, burdened with elements that don’t mix.

    When my first novel My Cat Yugoslavia was published in Finland in August 2014, the media started referring to me as an ‘immigrant writer’. Because I have written a novel about an Albanian family living in Finland as an ethnic Albanian living in Finland, many assume that I am my protagonist, that I own a pet snake, that I am or have been in an abusive relationship and that my father is dead, just like in the story I’ve written. It made me laugh at first, and I wasn’t surprised, because as a student of literature I was aware of how debut novels are typically perceived.

    Once I even got a call from a journalist who had interviewed me the day before. He said they weren’t happy with the pictures they had taken during the interview and suggested we take new ones. ‘Since it’s such a warm day, could you come out with your pet boa?’ he asked. I told him with great resentment that I don’t have a snake. I’ve never had a snake. My Cat Yugoslavia is just a book, a work of fiction, and I don’t keep a talking cat as a companion either.

    I gradually became increasingly irritated by the label I was given, and I became more and more offended by the headlines about me and my work: ‘Experience Finland Through the Eyes of an Immigrant’, they’d say, ‘This Is What Being a Foreigner In Finland is Like’, or, ‘To a Migrant Finland is Cold and Racist’.

    Being labeled like this made me extremely sad because what made me pursue a career in fiction was the ability to tell stories – fates free from labels, stereotypes, prejudice and oppression. It proved that I’m still being seen through a filter, that what I feared the most as a child is still happening and present in my life, in my career as a writer of fiction. I’m not seen as a creative individual, I am just a face for an audience, a bridge between ‘us’ and ‘them’, an interpreter of worlds. Even though I had written a novel in Finnish, even though I had lived in Finland my whole life, even though I had graduated from a Finnish university, I was seen as someone from the outside, as someone who speaks from the sidelines, as someone who’s in the margins of Finnish society.

    The implication is this: that this is not my home, this is not my country, this is not my language.

    I’ve been a writer for only a few years, but during this time I’ve been asked countless times about migration, racism, nationality, the situation in the Middle East. ‘What should we do with all the people fleeing the area and coming to Finland?’ Or: ‘Would you care to share your thoughts on how Finland could perform better in assimilating refugees?’ As if I had exceptional insight or an answer to one of the biggest questions of our time because of my background. Needless to say, being an immigrant or a refugee doesn’t make anyone an expert in immigration, nor does writing about an immigrant family.

    Placing a person, a writer, an artist, in a category – whether it’s as ‘woman writer’,  ‘immigrant writer’, ‘refugee’, ‘gay’, ‘Muslim’ – jeopardizes what they can do and create, threatens their freedom to express themselves the way they see fit, and endangers the uniqueness of every single story.

    Nowadays, when someone asks me about my personal story and the world I was raised in I say that it’s simply beautiful, it is whole, and every language I know and every country I’ve lived in has made my life fuller and richer and more wonderful. That’s what I say, maybe annoyingly so, when someone asks me about my home country. When they ask me about the war I say that even though I’ve experienced loss and grief, I am very lucky because I get to do what I love. I’ve had success early on in my career, I am privileged and very fortunate to have people around me who support and understand me and what I do. I tell them this because it is the truth. I am an artist, I get to be my home, my own language, my own culture.

    I am a country.

    My Cat Yugoslavia is available from Pushkin Press.Photo credit: Giuseppe Milo on flickr.

  • Lampedusa: Gateway to Europe

    One day my editor-in-chief called me in to his room. ‘It’s time for you to go to Lampedusa,’ he said. ‘Your colleague has to come back and we can’t leave the island without a journalist.’

    I was confused and excited at the same time. My colleague told me the first person I should call in Lampedusa was Pietro Bartolo, the doctor at the local clinic.

    ‘Why?’ I said. ‘What kind of help can he give me? I want to tell the story of the people who leave their country to survive. Why a doctor?’

    ‘Pietro isn’t a doctor,’ he answered. ‘He’s the doctor and he’s the first person the refugees meet when they reach Lampedusa. You have to talk to him.’

    So when the plane landed at the island’s airport I called Pietro Bartolo. He looked very unassuming, but came across as calm and determined. He was my first contact on the island, and each time I went to Lampedusa he gave me precious advice. He liked my way of writing about what was happening and I liked the way he welcomed people as they arrived frightened after a terrible journey. So we became friends.

    In 2014, a year after the horrific shipwreck in which 368 men, women and children died, I went to Pietro’s clinic to see a photography exhibition about that disaster. Back in 2013, on 3 October, a delegation of local healthcare professionals was in Lampedusa for a conference. When the news of the shipwreck arrived, Nino Randazzo, the bureau spokesman, went with Pietro and other doctors to the quay of the famous Favaloro pier. He started taking pictures and videos which became the first documentary evidence of the tragedy. I asked Pietro to tell me what happened that day and to describe the photos. Whilst Pietro spoke, my colleague Marco Sacchi and I cried. His voice was full of emotion and he conveyed to us the great pain he had felt as lifeless bodies began to fill up the pier. Only one picture made him proud: Pietro and a fisherman carrying a girl who seemed to have drowned. Her name was Kebrat and she was the only one Pietro could save. A miracle.

    That interview was shown on Mediterraneo, a Rai national magazine show. At the end of the interview I told Pietro: ‘We have to write a book, we have to tell people what is really happening and we have to help these people who only ask to leave in safety and to save their families.’ At first, Pietro didn’t want to write this book because he feared that telling their stories was betraying their trust. But when Fuocoammare, Gianfranco Rosi’s film, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival I called Pietro to congratulate him and he told me: ‘Now we can do the book.’

    So we started this incredible journey. We decided to arrange the stories in a way that put everyone on the same level. It was an exhausting experience; when Pietro told me the stories he relived every moment, and when I had finished writing I felt destroyed. When the book was finished I went to Lampedusa. Pietro, his wife Rita, and I shut ourselves away for two days. Every page was a punch to the stomach and by the time we had finished we had no more tears to cry.

    But writing the book was just the first step. Our mission is to speak to people. We’ve visited schools all around Europe, theatres, town squares, universities, and each time people tell us: ‘We didn’t think it was so bad.’ We want to keep on discussing this, debating it, and telling everyone that we have to face reality, that we have to help these people, that we have to realise that there’s no alternative. We must welcome those who run away from hunger and war. Lampedusa’s people did it and sent a message to Europe. And Europe has to hear this message.

  • Loosened Locks: on Mahvash Sabet

    A woman walked out of Evin Prison in Tehran late one evening. Her face was pale from long confinement but her eyes shone bright. Her hair, shoulder length and dark when she first entered those doors, now reached her waist and was grey beneath her purple headscarf. There was no surprise in her glance, no eager anticipation. Just a quiet gratitude.

    When I saw the press photo of Mahvash Sabet standing outside Evin that night, I was struck by that glance. We have never met, and I have only read her words in translation. We have only spoken once, during her brief furlough after eight years of unbroken detention. But though I had worked for months on her poems, nothing had prepared me for her nonchalant grace after so long in prison.

    Mahvash Sabet was unjustly condemned to prison for her Baha’i beliefs, which are considered heretical by the mullahs. At her arrest, with six other colleagues known as the Yaran, she was carrying out the tasks of the democratically elected Baha’i institutions, disbanded when Khomeini came to power.

    The largest religious minority in Iran, the Baha’i community has borne the brunt of persecution since the middle of the 19th
    century.  Arbitrary arrests, brutal executions and tragic disappearances have been commonplace since the present regime came to power, but the systematic programme of the Islamic Republic to uproot all trace of this peaceful faith has drawn worldwide condemnation.

    Before her arrest, Mahvash, with a background in psychology and education, had assumed responsibility for the well-being of Baha’i youth being harassed in schools and deprived of university education. She was a good communicator and known for the uplifting letters she wrote, the poems she shared with friends and family. She was visiting Baha’is in Mashhad when she was arrested.

    Held without legal representation for more than a year, and finally condemned in a show trial, Mahvash received a cruelly long sentence in 2008, only recently commuted to 10 years. If her release comes before those of the other Yaran, it is because she was the first imprisoned. But if journalists were waiting to see her on the night of her release, it may also have been because her words were freed before she was.

    Many have entered Evin Prison over the past four decades.  Many, among them Baha’is, have never come out.  And many who still remain have grown bitter eating the ‘black camphor bread’ of that place. But Mahvash escaped the bitterness through poetry. In fact, the reason I knew of her, apart from the privilege of sharing her beliefs, was because of those poems.

    About four years ago, a handful of Mahvash’s poems reached us abroad.  Like many Persians, versifying was in her blood but she had never considered herself a poet. Her words made me weep — not just because of the terrible conditions she described, but because of her compassion. Her poems were dedicated to others. She was scribbling on paper napkins to bear witness to the suffering of others. She was piecing together the sorrows of others.

    She was also writing of hope inside the prison, looking for any signs she could find, a scrap of blue sky, a thistle in the pavement, to keep faith behind those walls. Her poems recorded the heroism of maintaining joy in those impossible conditions. She was not wallowing in grief; she had no illusions about herself. She was simply trying to lift her spirits and those of others as high as she could above those walls.

    I longed to help her poems reach the world.

    From 2011 on, with the help of others, I adapted Mahvash’s verse into English. Prison Poems, first published in the UK in 2013, has since been widely distributed in the US, in Canada and in Australia. It has also appeared in French, German and Italian editions as well as the original Persian.  Earlier this year, a Norwegian publication coincided with a performance of Lasse Thoresen’s composition, based on the poems, at the International Church Music Festival in Oslo.

    Indeed, since she was chosen by PEN International as one of the five ‘Imprisoned Writers of the Day‘ on November 15th
    , 2014, Mahvash has become internationally known. Despite being behind bars, her poems have reached beyond them.  They are a vindication of the human spirit, a proof that the life of the mind and the vigour of the soul can never be confined.

    So perhaps there is something symbolic about Mahvash’s refusal to cut her hair in Evin. Perhaps those flowing locks of hers, grown long and grey behind its walls, are emblematic of her unrestrained spiritual freedom.  When I looked at that photo, taken at the moment of her release, and saw that quiet smile and the long swathe of elegant hair beneath her purple scarf, I realized that this woman had no need of translation.

    She has been free all her life.

    Mahvash Sabet  was named 2017 International Writer of Courage by Michael Longley at the PEN Pinter Prize ceremony at the British Library on 11 October. In her acceptance speech, she reflected on the importance of PEN’s campaigning on behalf of  imprisoned writers.’This is what PEN did for me, by championing my cause.  This is what you are doing for so many poets and writers in the world. When I suffered in prison, your compassion sustained me; all through those dark years, your sincere support encouraged me. You are an example of advocacy to people of goodwill everywhere, including journalists and activitists among my own compatriots, and even certain clerics in Iran.’

    Find out more about our work on behalf of Mahvash Sabet here. Support our work and donate here.

  • Die, My Love

    I lay back in the grass among fallen trees and the heat of sun on my palm felt like a knife I could use to bleed myself dry with one swift cut to the jugular. Behind me, against the backdrop of a house somewhere between dilapidated and homely, I could hear the voices of my son and my husband. Both of them naked. Both of them splashing around in the blue paddling pool, the water thirty-five degrees. It was the Sunday before a bank holiday. I was a few steps away, hidden in the underbrush. Spying on them. How could a weak, perverse woman like me, someone who dreams of a knife in her hand, be the mother and wife of those two individuals? What was I going to do? I burrowed deeper into the ground, hiding my body. I wasn’t going to kill them. I dropped the knife and went to hang out the washing like nothing had happened. I carefully pegged the socks to the line, my baby’s and my man’s. Their underwear and shirts. I looked at myself and saw an ignorant country bumpkin hanging out the laundry and drying her hands on her skirt before returning to the kitchen. They had no idea. Hanging out the clothes had been a success. I lay back down among the tree trunks. They’re already chopping wood for the cold season. People here prepare for winter like animals. Nothing distinguishes us from them. Take me, an educated woman, a university graduate – I’m more of an animal than those half-dead foxes, their faces stained red, sticks propping their mouths wide open. My neighbour Frank a few miles away, the oldest of seven siblings, fired a shotgun into his own arse last Christmas. What a nice surprise it must have been for his pack of kids. But the guy was just following tradition. Suicide by shotgun for his great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and father. At the very least, you could say it was his turn. And me? A normal woman from a normal family, but an eccentric, a deviant, mother of one child and with another, though who knows at this point, on its way. I slowly slide a hand into my knickers. And to think I’m the person in charge of my son’s education. My husband calls me over for a beer under the pergola, asks, blonde or dark? The baby appears to have shat himself and I’ve got to go and buy his cake. I bet other mothers would bake one themselves. Six months, apparently it’s not the same as five or seven. Whenever I look at him I think of my husband behind me, about to ejaculate on my back, but instead turning me over suddenly and coming inside me. If this hadn’t happened, if I’d closed my legs, if I’d grabbed his dick, I wouldn’t have to go to the bakery for cream cake or chocolate cake and candles, half a year already. The moment other women give birth they usually say, I can’t imagine my life without him now, it’s as though he’s always been here. Pfff. I’m coming, baby! I want to scream, but I sink deeper into the cracked earth. I want to snarl, to howl, but instead I let the mosquitoes bite me, let them savour my sweetened skin. The sun deflects the silvery reflection of the knife back to me and I’m blinded. The sky is red, violet, trembling. I hear them looking for me, the filthy baby and the naked husband. Ma-ma, da-da, poo-poo. My baby’s the one who does the talking, all night long. Co-co-na-na-ba-ba. There they are. I leave the knife in the scorched pasture, hoping that when I find it next it’ll look like a scalpel, a feather, a pin. I get up, hot and bothered by the tingling between my legs. Blonde or dark? Whatever you’re having, my love. We’re one of those couples who mechanise the word ‘love’, who use it even when they despise each other. I never want to see you again, my love. I’m coming, I say, and I’m a fraud of a country woman with a red polka-dot skirt and split ends. I’ll have a blonde beer, I say in my foreign accent. I’m a woman who’s let herself go, has a mouth full of cavities and no longer reads. Read, you idiot, I tell myself, read one full sentence from start to finish. Here we are, all three of us together for a family portrait. We toast the happiness of our baby and drink the beers, my son in his high chair chewing on a leaf. I put a finger in his mouth and he shrieks, biting me with his gums. My husband wants to plant a tree for the baby’s long life and I don’t know what to say, I just smile like a fool. Does he have any idea? So many healthy and beautiful women in the area, and he ended up falling for me. A nutcase. A foreigner. Someone beyond repair. Muggy out today, isn’t it? Seems it’ll last a while, he says. I take long swigs from the bottle, breathing through my nose and wishing, quite simply, that I were dead.

    Sarah Moses is a writer and translator. Her stories, translations, and interviews have appeared in chapbook form, as well as in various journals, including  The Argentina Independent  and  Brick.  She is  Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large for Argentina, and divides her time between Buenos Aires and Toronto, where she’s from.Carolina Orloff is a researcher, writer and translator currently based in Scotland. As well as translating contemporary Latin American fiction, she has also published academic texts analysing the works of writers from this region, with a particular focus on Julio Cortazar. In 2016, Carolina co-founded Charco Press, for which she is also the main editor.

    Charco Press is a new publisher focusing on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world. They aim to act as a cultural and linguistic bridge for you to be able to access a brand new world of fiction that has, until now, been missing from your reading list. Find out more.Ariana will be in conversation with novelist Tessa Hadley and translator Danny Hahn at the LRB Bookshop on 29 September.

  • The Writer’s Paradox

    Ahmet Altan was imprisoned in Turkey with his brother Mehmet in September 2016. Despite being denied access to receiving and sending written communications, he wrote The Writer’s Paradox for publication on the eve of his trial, which starts on 19 September. We have been campaigning to raise awareness of Ahmet’s plight as part of our Speak Out campaign.
    Translated from the Turkish by Yasemin Çongar. Türkçe.

    ‘A moving object is neither where it is nor where it is not,’ implies Zeno in his famous paradox. Ever since my youth I have believed this paradox is better suited to literature or, indeed, to writers, rather than to physics.

    I am writing these words from a prison cell.

    Add the sentence ‘I am writing these words from a prison cell’ to any narrative and you will be adding a tense vitality, a frightening voice that reaches out from a dark and mysterious world, the brave stance of the robust underdog and an ill-concealed call for mercy.

    It is a dangerous sentence that can be used to exploit people’s feelings. And writers do not always refrain from using sentences in a manner that serves their interests when what is at stake is the possibility of touching people’s feelings. Even understanding that this is their intention may be enough for the reader to feel mercy towards the writer of that sentence.

    But wait. Before you start playing the drums of mercy for me listen to what I will tell you.

    Yes, I am being held in a high security prison in the middle of the wilds.

    Yes, I am staying in a cell where the door is opened and closed with the rattle and clatter of iron.

    Yes, they give me my meals through a hole in the middle of the door.

    Yes, even the top of the small stone-paved courtyard where I pace up and down is covered with steel cages.

    Yes, I am not allowed to see anyone other than my lawyers and my children.

    Yes, I am forbidden from sending even a two-line letter to my loved ones.

    Yes, whenever I have to go to the hospital they pull handcuffs out of a cluster of ironwork and put them around my wrists.

    Yes, each time they take me out of my cell orders such as ‘raise your arms, take off your shoes’ hit me in the face.

    All of this is true but this is not the whole truth.

    In summer mornings when the first rays of the sun come through the naked window bars and stab my pillow like shining spears, I hear the playful songs of the birds of passage that have nested under the courtyard eaves, and the strange crackles that the prisoners pacing the other courtyards make as they crush empty water bottles under their feet.

    I live with the feeling that I still reside in that pavilion with a garden where I spent my childhood or, for whatever reason and I really don’t know the reason for this, at one of those hotels on the chirpy French streets of the film Irma la Douce.

    When I wake up with the autumn rain hitting the window bars, bearing the fury of northern winds, I start the day on the shores of the Danube River in a hotel with burning torches in the front, which are lit every night. When I wake up with the whisper of the snow piling up inside the window bars in winter, I start the day in that dacha with a front window where Doctor Zhivago took refuge.

    Until now, I have never woken up in prison – not once.

    At night, my adventures are filled with even more action. I wander the islands of Thailand, the hotels of London, the streets of Amsterdam, the secret labyrinths of Paris, the seaside restaurants of Istanbul, the small parks hidden in between the streets of New York, the fjords of Norway, the small towns of Alaska with their roads snowed under.

    You can run into me along the rivers of the Amazon, on the shores of Mexico, on the savannas of Africa. I talk all day with people who are seen and heard by no one, people who don’t exist and won’t exist until the day I mention them. I listen as they converse among themselves. I live their loves, their adventures, their hopes, worries and joys. I sometimes chuckle as I pace the courtyard, because I overhear their rather entertaining conversations. As I don’t want to put them on paper in prison I inscribe all of this into the crannies of my mind with the dark ink of memory.

    I know that I am a schizophrenic man as long as these people remain in my mind. I also know that I am a writer when these people find themselves in sentences on the pages of a book. I take pleasure in swinging back and forth between schizophrenia and authorship. I soar like smoke and leave the prison with those people who exist in my mind. They may have the power to imprison me but no one has the power to keep me in prison.

    I am a writer.

    I am neither where I am nor where I am not.

    Wherever you lock me up I will travel the world with the wings of my endless mind.

    Besides, I have friends all around the world who help me travel, most of whom I have never met.

    Each eye that reads what I have written, each voice that repeats my name, holds my hand like a little cloud and flies me over the lowlands, the springs, the forests, the seas, the towns and their streets. They host me quietly in their houses, in their halls, in their rooms.

    I travel the whole world in a prison cell.

    As you may well guess, I possess a godly arrogance – one that is not often acknowledged but is unique to writers and has been handed down from one generation to the other for thousands of years. I possess a confidence that grows like a pearl within the hard shells of literature. I possess an immunity protected by the steel armor of my books.

    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 in prison.

    Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through walls with ease.

    Ahmet Altan is an acclaimed Turkish novelist, essayist and journalist. In a career spanning 30 years, Altan has written ten novels which have been translated into many languages and reached bestseller lists around the world. He has also written for many of Turkey’s leading papers, including Hürriyet, Milliyet and Radikal and from November 2007 until December 2012 was editor-in-chief of liberal Turkish daily newspaper Taraf.Ahmet Altan is among the many writers and journalists to have been imprisoned in Turkey in the wake of the attempted coup that took place in July 2016. Ahmet was detained alongside his brother, the renowned economist and journalist Mehmet Altan, in a dawn raid in September 2016. Charges leaked to the press included ‘giving subliminal messages in favour of a coup on television’ the night before the failed insurgency. Find out more here.

  • The power of place

    There is a photo that lies asleep in the memory of my cellphone. It was taken by a dear friend of mine on a sunny summer afternoon, during a day trip she took with the youngest of my sons. There is a bend in the river, and trees on the bank and on the mountainside, their reflection on the water, along with the reflection of clouds. The other bank is missing – out of the shot. In the background, a man and a woman are resting on a beach surrounded by trees with their rucksacks and towels, too small in that little picture, their faces out of focus.

    That river flows in a valley not too far from my village, only an hour’s drive, more or less.

    My friend sent me the photo because she wanted to share with me that sunny afternoon, the two of them reaching the river, taking a dip, diving from a rock, swimming in the cold water. I can imagine their laughter, the sound of the river, the sun and the wind on their skin, the cool shade under the trees.

    It seems such a beautiful place, quiet and peaceful and still.

    Nothing is moving – it’s just a photo, after all – but from the moment I saw it I knew I had a story to tell. A story about the man and the woman resting on the beach with their rucksacks and towels: do they love each other? Are they just friends? Siblings, perhaps? Do they secretly want to split up? Are they waiting for someone? Is someone else watching them, unseen? What are they thinking about? Do they want to run away, or are they about to dive in the river?

    I told myself: ‘Someday you’ll write a story set on that beach surrounded by trees’. I’m not saying I’ll do it for sure: I’m just saying that I would love to do it, that today I’m still thinking about it, that something happened when I first saw that photo, when I first saw that bend in the river, that beach.

    This is how my imagination works, I suppose: mysteriously, the process of writing always begins with a place. This is the power of places and landscapes – rivers, woods, cornfields, roads, paths, hills, villages, gardens, lawns, houses, a bridge, a factory, an old mine, a creek: they contain stories – dozens of them – as if they were books, and somehow they compel me to tell those stories, to write them down. Just like that beach that lies in the memory of my cellphone, places are my fuel, my inspiration.

    But there is much more than that. From the first story I wrote, up until my latest novel, Can you hear me?, places have always been characters. They have always been anything but backdrops. They have their own voices – even their silence is a kind of voice, a beautiful one – their moods and their thoughts, and I can feel them. I need them. I crave them.

    Can you hear me? is full of characters because it is full of places. The woods in which Elia and Stefano wander to find an antidote to the boredom and emptiness of summer are characters, as well as the hills, the abandoned cotton mill, the gas station, the old mine, the kitchens and bedrooms and porches.

    The creek is a character too, the one I think about more often, as if it were one of the protagonists. When Elia’s father, Ettore, takes the girl to the bank of that creek, one August night, and forces her to sit on a trunk, the two of them are not alone: there is the water, the stones, the mud and the bushes too. There is the waterfall and the slippery rocks. The wind that blows through the leaves and the sound of the waterfall are like a cry. The creek is crying for Ettore, not just for the girl, and I can feel its compassion.

    Places have their own nature. Somehow they are able to talk, act and react, even though they might seem so silent and still – in truth, they are full of life: little, barely-perceptible, sometimes invisible movements. They constantly look at other characters and constantly whisper their words into their hearts. Above all, they hide their secrets. They are a mystery, like all of us.

    So, let’s go back to the photo that lies asleep in the memory of my cellphone, like an amazing, strange, ancient fish at the bottom of a frozen lake. My friend and my son – he’s only ten years old – don’t know how much it touched me, how often I take my phone, dig in its memory, find that picture and look at it. How could I explain how I feel, the impression of life, the stories that beach whispers to me?

    I answered the message she sent me – ‘We’re here and we’re having fun!’ I texted I was happy for them. I wrote: ‘Wow: what a place! I’d like to go there sometime.’ That’s it. Everything else is my secret, the process of my imagination, the voices I imagine to hear, like the cry of the creek, that August night, in Can you hear me?

    The man and the woman are still on the beach with their rucksacks and towel, apparently motionless. I’m sure sooner or later they’ll do something and say something, because of that place surrounded by trees. It will make them breathe and move and talk. It will bring them to life. They’ll live there forever, as Ettore – the most hidden part of him – will live forever on the bank of that creek, in the dark, near the water, hearing that place crying and silently responding to it – what a place.

    Yes, what a place.

    Elena Varvello is an Italian writer. Can you hear me?  is her first novel to be published in English, translated by Alex Valente, and is out now with Two Roads Books. Photo credit:  Federico Botta

  • Elena Varvello on the power of place

    There is a photo that lies asleep in the memory of my cellphone. It was taken by a dear friend of mine on a sunny summer afternoon, during a day trip she took with the youngest of my sons. There is a bend in the river, and trees on the bank and on the mountainside, their reflection on the water, along with the reflection of clouds. The other bank is missing – out of the shot. In the background, a man and a woman are resting on a beach surrounded by trees with their rucksacks and towels, too small in that little picture, their faces out of focus.

    That river flows in a valley not too far from my village, only an hour’s drive, more or less.

    My friend sent me the photo because she wanted to share with me that sunny afternoon, the two of them reaching the river, taking a dip, diving from a rock, swimming in the cold water. I can imagine their laughter, the sound of the river, the sun and the wind on their skin, the cool shade under the trees.

    It seems such a beautiful place, quiet and peaceful and still.

    Nothing is moving – it’s just a photo, after all – but from the moment I saw it I knew I had a story to tell. A story about the man and the woman resting on the beach with their rucksacks and towels: do they love each other? Are they just friends? Siblings, perhaps? Do they secretly want to split up? Are they waiting for someone? Is someone else watching them, unseen? What are they thinking about? Do they want to run away, or are they about to dive in the river?

    I told myself: ‘Someday you’ll write a story set on that beach surrounded by trees’. I’m not saying I’ll do it for sure: I’m just saying that I would love to do it, that today I’m still thinking about it, that something happened when I first saw that photo, when I first saw that bend in the river, that beach.

    This is how my imagination works, I suppose: mysteriously, the process of writing always begins with a place. This is the power of places and landscapes – rivers, woods, cornfields, roads, paths, hills, villages, gardens, lawns, houses, a bridge, a factory, an old mine, a creek: they contain stories – dozens of them – as if they were books, and somehow they compel me to tell those stories, to write them down. Just like that beach that lies in the memory of my cellphone, places are my fuel, my inspiration.

    But there is much more than that. From the first story I wrote, up until my latest novel, Can you hear me?, places have always been characters. They have always been anything but backdrops. They have their own voices – even their silence is a kind of voice, a beautiful one – their moods and their thoughts, and I can feel them. I need them. I crave them.

    Can you hear me? is full of characters because it is full of places. The woods in which Elia and Stefano wander to find an antidote to the boredom and emptiness of summer are characters, as well as the hills, the abandoned cotton mill, the gas station, the old mine, the kitchens and bedrooms and porches.

    The creek is a character too, the one I think about more often, as if it were one of the protagonists. When Elia’s father, Ettore, takes the girl to the bank of that creek, one August night, and forces her to sit on a trunk, the two of them are not alone: there is the water, the stones, the mud and the bushes too. There is the waterfall and the slippery rocks. The wind that blows through the leaves and the sound of the waterfall are like a cry. The creek is crying for Ettore, not just for the girl, and I can feel its compassion.

    Places have their own nature. Somehow they are able to talk, act and react, even though they might seem so silent and still – in truth, they are full of life: little, barely-perceptible, sometimes invisible movements. They constantly look at other characters and constantly whisper their words into their hearts. Above all, they hide their secrets. They are a mystery, like all of us.

    So, let’s go back to the photo that lies asleep in the memory of my cellphone, like an amazing, strange, ancient fish at the bottom of a frozen lake. My friend and my son – he’s only ten years old – don’t know how much it touched me, how often I take my phone, dig in its memory, find that picture and look at it. How could I explain how I feel, the impression of life, the stories that beach whispers to me?

    I answered the message she sent me – ‘We’re here and we’re having fun!’ I texted I was happy for them. I wrote: ‘Wow: what a place! I’d like to go there sometime.’ That’s it. Everything else is my secret, the process of my imagination, the voices I imagine to hear, like the cry of the creek, that August night, in Can you hear me?

    The man and the woman are still on the beach with their rucksacks and towel, apparently motionless. I’m sure sooner or later they’ll do something and say something, because of that place surrounded by trees. It will make them breathe and move and talk. It will bring them to life. They’ll live there forever, as Ettore – the most hidden part of him – will live forever on the bank of that creek, in the dark, near the water, hearing that place crying and silently responding to it – what a place.

    Yes, what a place.

    Can you hear me?  is Elena Varvello’s first novel to be published in English, translated by Alex Valente, and is out now with Two Roads Books.

    Photo credit:  Federico Botta

  • Instructions Within — Andrew McMillan reads Ashraf Fayadh’s poetry

    Poet Andrew McMillan reads and reflects upon the writing of Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian-born poet, artist and curator living in Saudi Arabia. A key figure in taking Saudi contemporary art to a global audience, Fayadh was charged with apostasy and sentenced to death in 2015. The sentence was later overturned but the court ordered a harsh new sentence of eight years and 800 lashes. Despite ongoing calls for his release, Fayadh remains in prison.

    To maintain awareness of his case, English PEN was invited to publish a UK edition of Fayadh’s collection Instructions Within, translated by Mona Kareem. Ten pages of the collection, first published by the Beirut-based Dar al-Farabi in 2008 and later banned from distribution in Saudi Arabia, were among the evidence used to convict him. Proceeds from this edition will go towards English PEN’s ongoing campaigns in support of Fayadh’s release and on behalf of other writers at risk around the world.

    Before he was the symbol of a struggle, or a cause to fight for, Fayadh was a writer, and so it’s his words which deserve attention. There’s a down-to-earth plainness about some of his work, even a wry humour which I think it’s important to keep hold of despite the dire situation he finds himself in:

    The time has come for you to pick up the pace — not sexually —
    and for you to change your smelly socks.
    …
    A scientific fact: bacteria…. grow rapidly.

    So yes, as you’d expect, there is a weight (of history, geography, politics) to these poems, and yet it feels important to celebrate the joy and wit in this work as well. In ‘An Aphorism’, Fayadh writes:

    To be in love is not to be a bird in the hand of the one you love,
    better for them than ten in the bush.
    A bird in the bush is better than ten in the hand,
    from the bird’s point of view.

    I’d suggest using that one as a greeting in the next Valentines Card you send, just to mix things up a bit!

    In a poem called ‘Your Luck Today’, Fayadh goes further:

    Mercury crashes into the moon due to an odd dispute!
    an old friend calls you out of nowhere to inquire
    whether it was Haifa Wahbe herself in that porn video.
    And an old love floats on the surface
    (though only dead bodies usually float)!

    A poem that starts off like an over-enthusiastic friend telling you an anecdote has that chilling moment at the end, like a punchline to a joke that leaves you thinking rather than laughing afterwards.

    As someone whose head is bereft of hair, I was particularly drawn to the three lines of ‘Equality’:

    It is said people are like the teeth of a comb
    but they are not… anyway, I’ll shave my head
    so I won’t be forced into the comparison

    A verse like that isn’t just throwaway though, there’s a note at the bottom of the page which gives the full quote the poem is based on, and attributes it to the Prophet Mohammed – there is a brave answering back going on in a poem like this as well.

    This is a vital book that needs to be read by all those interested in literature; if poetry has any job at all it is to be a witness, and to make us pay attention to things by describing them in such a way that makes us consider them afresh. Fayadh understands this mission, nevermore so than in a poem like ‘The Last of the Line of Refugee Descendants’, and this opening stanza:

    You give the world indigestion, and other problems, too.
    Don’t force the ground to vomit,
    and stay close to it, very close.
    A fracture that can’t be set,
    A fraction that can’t be resolved
    or added to the number,
    You cause some confusion in global statistics.

    Order you print-on-demand copy of Instructions Within (translated by Mona Kareem, Jonathan Wright and Mona Zaki) here. 

    For further information about Ashraf Fayadh’s case and how you can get involved with English PEN’s ongoing campaigns for his release, visit the website here. You can also find out more about our Writers at Risk work and current campaigns.

    The featured image, which is also the cover image of Instructions Within, is by   Hala Hassan.

  • Editing a book review: a dangerous act in Turkey

    Being an outspoken writer has never been easy in Turkey. The history of Turkish literature is also the infamous history of exiled, jailed, and persecuted authors. During the early days of the Turkish republic, in the 1920s, Halide Edib Adıvar, the first canonized female novelist of the Turkish language, was exiled after a conflict with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Republic of Turkey. Nâzım Hikmet, arguably the most important modern Turkish poet, spent twelve years in prison and lived in exile until his death in 1963. Pioneering short story writer and celebrated novelist Sabahattin Ali, whose novel Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943) was recently published by Penguin Classics, was murdered at the Turkey-Bulgaria border after years of state pressure, imprisonment, and harassment.

    In today’s turbulent Turkey, numerous writers and journalists share the ill-fated path of their precursors. During the past year, Turkey has become the biggest jailer of journalists, surpassing China or Russia. Novelist Ahmet Altan (whose novel Endgame was recently published in English, translated by Alexander Dawe) and essayist Ahmet Turan Alkan are among the journalists and writers who are currently in prison because they spoke the truth and exposed the lies of the government. Novelist Aslı Erdoğan, who was released after spending four months in prison, recently described the trauma she experienced behind the bars: ‘My soul still is in prison.’ Linguist Necmiye Alpay was also among the few writers who was released after months in prison, while another linguist, Sevan Nişanyan, who was jailed not over a political case but a land dispute, recently fled Turkey and announced his escape on Twitter: ‘The bird has flown. Wish the same for 80 million left behind.’

    However, not everyone is as free as a bird or as lucky as Nişanyan. Among the jailed journalists are dozens of my former colleagues from Zaman (Time) and Yeni Hayat (The New Life); both newspapers were shut down by the Turkish government. Every day I look out for a single story about my colleagues and hope to hear good news. Meanwhile, among persecuted journalists, I follow one colleague’s trial more closely because his job was the same as mine: Turhan Günay, the 72-year-old book review editor of Cumhuriyet (The Republic) newspaper has been in prison for nine months.

    Founded in 1984, Cumhuriyet‘s book review was the first newspaper book supplement in the country. When we launched Kitap Zamanı in 2006, Cumhuriyet‘s book review had been our guide, both as a model to emulate and to surpass. As the two prominent newspapers from different sides of the political spectrum Cumhuriyet and Zaman were competitors, but as book review editors Turhan Günay and I only had respect for each other and for our profession. The world of books and literary journalism largely stayed out of the ups and downs of politics. Of course we had our editorial differences: while the weekly Cumhuriyet Kitap more frequently gave platform to mainstream Turkish authors, Kitap Zamanı also aimed to bring voices from different literary cultures to the Turkish audience. (For example, Alberto Manguel, Etgar Keret, Geoff Dyer, Joyce Carol Oates, Javier Marías, and Per Petterson are among the contributors of Kitap Zamanı‘s last printed issue.)

    Turhan Günay, the editor of Cumhuriyet‘s book review since 1985, went on trial this week with sixteen other Cumhuriyet journalists on charges of aiding terror. Scenes and dialogues from the ongoing trial reminded me of a poorly-written dystopian novel. The judge asked Günay if he ever supported terrorism with his reviews. He even interrogated Günay’s criteria in choosing books to review. (First and foremost, correct grammar is a requirement to be reviewed, said Günay.) At one point, the editor told the judge: ‘Do you also want me to talk about my divorces?’ It was such a surreal trial that the judge went so far as to ask Günay about his ‘biggest secret’: his youthful appearance. (At 72, Turhan Günay looks much younger than his age.)

    To my surprise, one of the accusations leveled against Turhan Günay is his phone conversations with Ali Çolak, Zaman‘s culture editor. Ali Çolak, my longtime colleague, is a prominent essayist and one of the kindest people I know. He is a romantic who daydreams in the newsroom of living by a lake, like Thoreau, and writing his long-planned ‘Book of Trees’. Ali Çolak always wanted to live as a recluse, like Salinger, or in a vast library, like Borges. But the Turkish government accuses him of being part of a so-called terrorist organisation. Apparently even talking to him on the phone is a crime. The absurdity of these accusations is beyond anyone’s comprehension. Both Turhan Günay and Ali Çolak edited culture and arts pages and book reviews for years and helped to keep intellectual life alive in Turkey. In a democratic country, their dedication to books and literature would have been cherished and they would have been given lifetime honors. But in the dark age of anti-intellectualism and autocracy, Turkish authorities want to keep the two editors in prison for life.

    It is obvious that political journalism is not the only dangerous occupation in Turkey: editing a culture and arts page or a book review is just as perilous. The trial of Turhan Günay highlights a troubling reality that goes beyond the political grudge the Islamist Turkish government bears against its opponents. While ignorant oppressors want to silence the free press and divergent voices, they also have no tolerance for the intellectual and/or artistic pursuits of writers and editors, whatsoever.

    Turkey’s recent experiences show that anti-intellectualism, a result of populism in politics, is an imminent threat. People who cherish freedom of speech around the world have to unite and resist against the hostility towards intellect, the arts, and literature. Either at home or in exile, it is our responsibility to keep our inner fire ablaze and resist the falling darkness.

  • A conversation with Vigdis Hjorth

    Vigdis Hjorth is a prolific, prize-winning Norwegian writer. A House in Norway (Norvik Press 2017, translated by Charlotte Barslund), which won a PEN Translates award, is the first of her novels to be translated into English. A political fiction as well as a take on the Künstlerroman, it tells the story of Alma, a textile artist with strong left-wing ideals, who rents out an apartment in her house to a Polish family. Over the course of the novel, Alma’s ideas about herself and others are challenged by the realities of cohabiting with someone she only ever refers to as ‘the Pole’.

    When I met Vigdis, she had a coffee cup in one hand, and a copy of Wittgenstein in the other. This provided the starting point for our conversation about the political in fiction.

    Your novel A House in Norway does two things: it is abstract because it is clearly very concerned with ideas, but you’ve also said that it’s very concrete, that it’s about something that you experienced yourself.

    When I embark on a new novel I take my starting point from something that bothers me or something that burns me. If I thought that the question, the problem, the dilemma only concerned me, then I wouldn’t write about it. But if it burns in me I guess it burns in a lot of others as well. I can write concrete stories but the questions I ask apply to many people.

    The protagonist Alma in A House in Norway could be a symbol for many of us: so content with her ideals that she thinks having ideals is enough. Alma doesn’t even see that there’s a contradiction between the tapestry she’s making, depicting her socialist ideals, and the fact that she has no compassion for and no interest in her neighbours.

    This is very interesting to me because there are some who would defend Alma. They’d say, We can’t help everybody and we cannot help those who can’t help themselves. Some may say that we cannot help everybody, and I agree with that. But we must try! I always think of this poem by Bertold Brecht:

    A Bed for the Night

    I hear that in New York
    At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway
    A man stands every evening during the winter months
    And gets beds for the homeless there
    By appealing to passers-by.

    It won’t change the world
    It won’t improve relations among men
    It will not shorten the age of exploitation
    But a few men have a bed for the night
    For a night the wind is kept from them
    The snow meant for them falls on the roadway.

    Don’t put down the book on reading this, man.

    A few people have a bed for the night
    For a night the wind is kept from them
    The snow meant for them falls on the roadway
    But it won’t change the world
    It won’t improve relations among men
    It will not shorten the age of exploitation.

    He says in a simple manner – which is Brecht’s way – that we have to work on two fronts. We have to do something about the structures, and we also have to help the individual. It’s a fantastic poem that shows us how we can make it work.

    Would you say that your work is political?

    Yes I would. My last novel, Arv og miljø is the most political, and has caused a big debate in Norway. In it, I tried to mirror one of Marina Abramovic’s first performances. Abramovic is supposed to stand still for six hours. On the table in front of her are a lot of things: a rose, a feather a gun. The public can do whatever they want with those objects. In the beginning the public is very discreet. Then they take the feather. But suddenly one breaks the intimacy border and touches her. They get caught up and rile each other up. They take her clothes off. In the end it develops in a very bad way. One takes the gun, takes it to her head. They are so provoked by the fact that she doesn’t move. Then, when after six hours she does move, they retreat.

    When talking about this performance, Abramovic said, ‘They couldn’t stand me because of what they had done to me.’ That’s also why the family can’t stand the main character in Arv og miljø.

    So people don’t want to see the suffering they’ve caused?

    Yes, and also because to see the suffering would remind them of their own humiliating history. But for some reason, when talking about this new book, Norwegian reviewers and the reading public only care about the personal story.

    Do you think there’s something peculiarly Norwegian about this focus on the personal? After Knausgård, is everyone just interested in the personal story?

    Yes I think so. It is very Norwegian. Also, I think that most people in Norway are so well off that they don’t bother about politics. The political questions in Norway are about minor things. We don’t talk about foreign politics at all. We only talk about community-level issues. We don’t talk about conflicts, structures, capitalism. We do of course have critical voices. But they are not concerned with literature. The literary field is aesthetical and personal.

    A House in Norway (translated by Charlotte Barslund) is out now with Norvik Press. Vigdis recited Brecht’s poem in a Norwegian translation. The English translation is by George Rapp.