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Tag: journalism

  • 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.

  • Death is like love

    Translated from Russian by Bela Shayevich.

    [From a conversation with Aleksander Laskovich, soldier, entrepreneur, emigrant, interviewed periodically between the ages of 21 and 30.]

    When I was little, we had a tree in our courtyard… this old maple… I’d talk to it, it was my friend. After Grandpa died, I cried for a long time. Bawled all day long. I was five, and it had made me realize that I was going to die and everyone I knew was going to die, too. I was seized by terror: everyone is going to die before me, and I will be left all alone. Savagely lonely. My mother felt sorry for me, but my father came up to me and barked: ‘Wipe those tears away. You’re a man. Men don’t cry.’ But I didn’t even know what I was yet. I’d never liked being a boy, I didn’t like playing war. But no one ever asked me what I wanted… Everyone made the decisions for me… My mother had dreamed of having a girl and my father, in typical fashion, had wanted her to get an abortion.

    The first time I ever wanted to hang myself, I was seven… The incident with the Chinese bowl… My mother had made jam in this Chinese bowl we had and put it on a stool to cool; meanwhile, my brother and I had been chasing our cat all over the house. Muska managed to fly over the bowl like a shadow, but not us… My mother was still very young, my father was in military training. And there it was: a puddle of jam all over the floor… My mother cursed her fate as an officer’s wife who was forced to live out in the back of the beyond, on Sakhalin*, where there were ten metres of snow in the winter and in the summer, the burdock grew taller than she was. She grabbed my father’s belt and chased us out into the street: ‘But Mama, it’s raining and the ants in the barn bite.’ ‘Shoo! Get out of here! Beat it!!!’ My brother ran to our neighbour’s house, and I decided to hang myself. I clambered into the barn, found a rope in a basket. They’ll come looking for me in the morning and find me dangling from the rafters – happy now, fuckers? Right then, Muska squeezed through the door… meow, meow… Sweet Muska! You’ve come to take pity on me. I hugged her, squeezed her, and that’s how the two of us stayed until morning.

    Papa… What was Papa? He read the paper and smoked. He was a political commander† in an air regiment. We moved from one military town to the next, always living in dormitories. Long brick barracks, exactly the same wherever we went. Even the way they smelled was identical: like shoe polish and Chypre, the cheap cologne. That’s how my father always smelled, too. A typical scene: I’m eight, my brother is nine, and my father comes home from his shift. His belt squeaking, his calf boots creaking. In that moment, all my brother and I want is to become invisible, to fall off the face of the Earth! Papa takes Story of a Real Man by Boris Polevoy down from the shelf – in our house, it was like the Bible. ‘And what happened next?’ He starts in on my brother. ‘The plane crashed. And Alexey Maresyev crawled away from it… Wounded. He ate a hedgehog… and fell into a ditch…’ ‘What ditch?’ ‘It was the crater from a five-tonne bomb,’ I try to help him. ‘What? That was yesterday.’ We simultaneously shudder at the sound of my father’s commander tone. ‘So you didn’t read it today?’ The next scene: we’re running around the table like three clowns, one big one and two little ones; us with our trousers down and Papa clutching a belt. [A pause.] We all grew up on cinema, huh? The world in pictures… It wasn’t books that raised us, it was films. And music… The books my father brought home still give me a rash. My temperature rises whenever I see Story of a Real Man or The Young Guard on anyone’s bookshelf. Oh! How Papa dreamed of throwing us under a tank… He wanted us to hurry up and grow up so we could volunteer to fight in a war. He was incapable of imagining a world without war. He needed us to be heroes! And you can only become a hero at war. If one of us had lost our legs like that Alexey Maresyev of his, he would have only been happy. It would have meant that his life had not been in vain… Success! Everything had fallen into place! And he… I think he would have carried out the verdict with his own bare hands if I had broken my oath, if I had dared to waver in battle. A regular Taras Bulba! ‘I begat you, and I shall be the one to kill you!’ Papa belonged to the Idea, he wasn’t really a human. You must love the Motherland with your entire being. Unconditionally! That was all I ever heard, my entire childhood. The only reason we were alive was so that we could defend the Motherland… But despite all this, I simply could not be programmed for war, instilled with a puppy-like readiness to stick myself in a hole or a dike or throw myself on a landmine. I just never liked death… I’d crush ladybirds – on Sakhalin, in the summer, there are more ladybirds than sand – and I’d crush them like everyone else did. Then, one day, I had this terrifying realization: why have I made all these little red corpses? Another time, Muska had had kittens, but they were premature… I brought them water, tended to them. My mother saw what I was up to and asked: ‘Are they dead?’ And after she said that, they died. But no tears allowed! ‘Men don’t cry.’ Papa gave us army caps as presents. On weekends, he would put on his records with army songs, and my brother and I were forced to sit there and listen as a ‘modest manly tear’ made its way down our father’s cheek. Whenever he got drunk, he’d tell us the same story: the enemy had surrounded ‘the hero’, he valiantly defended himself, shooting at them until he was down to his last bullet, which he’d saved for shooting himself in the heart… At that point in the story, my father would fall over cinematically, catching the leg of the stool with his foot, which made it topple down with him. That was always really funny. Then, my father would suddenly sober up and turn stern: ‘There’s nothing funny about a hero dying.’

    * An island in the Pacific Sea that has alternated between Russian and Japanese rule since the nineteenth century. The USSR seized Sakhalin from the Japanese during World War II.

    †A political commander is a military political commissar responsible for the political education of the troops, lecturing on ideology and the Party line.

    Find out more about Second-Hand Time, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions here.

    Buy tickets to see Svetlana Alexievich in conversation with James Meek on Tuesday 31 May at the Cambridge Union.

  • Self-censorship and silence

    Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott

    ‘I’m alive because I know who’s in charge. People follow the orders of the Gulf Cartel around here,’ says Francisco, a journalist from the city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas, which is considered to be one of Mexico’s ‘narco-states’.

    Francisco does not only receive instructions from his editor. He also takes calls from the ‘boss of the plaza’, who orders him to put in or take out images of shootings and dead bodies: ‘If you care about your family, keep that shooting yesterday out of the papers. Otherwise, you’re fucked.’ And Francisco obeys – to save his life, to keep his job.

    Francisco, like so many others, suffers from ‘self-censorship’. This is an increasingly common phenomenon in Mexico, the most dangerous country in Latin America for journalists, and one whose citizens’ right to information is being severely violated by attacks on the press: more than 120 journalists have been killed in recent years, and 22 have disappeared. In this country, journalists are murdered because of what they publish and because of what they refuse to publish. Every 26 hours, a journalist will be the victim of an act of violence. Last year alone, 326 attacks on communicators were recorded, five of which were murders. And it isn’t only organised crime that’s killing journalists. Most of the attackers are officials or agents of the Mexican state.

    The murders are getting bloodier and crueller, and they involve every kind of torture. The violence against female journalists is particularly terrible, and often gender-specific: the majority of those killed were also raped or mutilated, and some were even decapitated. We’re tired of watching the bodies of our colleagues and friends being taken away, and the pain and suffering their spilt blood leaves in its wake.

    The relentless assault on freedom of expression is getting worse. By choosing not to guarantee the safety of journalists, Enrique Peña Nieto’s government has succeeded in silencing important independent critical voices. Bullets, censorship, self-censorship and government control of advertising and TV and radio concessions have led to a serious lack of correct and timely information, and a dearth of news about key issues such as state crimes committed by the army, the navy and the various police forces. There is not enough coverage of the phenomenon of narcopolitics, the collusion of corrupt authorities with the powerful drug cartels that dominate the Mexican territory, or the smuggling and piracy that have, with the cooperation of the police, passed into the hands of organised crime. State violence – forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture – hardly receives any attention in the televised media. There are parts of the press under the thumb of the government or the drug cartels. There are forbidden topics and forbidden journalists. The idea is to instil fear, horror and silence.

    Those of us who dare to break the barrier of silence have to confront all kinds of threats. We work in conditions of war, but without the protection that reporters covering armed conflicts would normally receive. Here there are no bullet-proof vests or helmets. Press signs on vehicles mean nothing, and neither do the press cards that are supposed to ensure your personal safety in neutral territory.

    Faced with the drug barons’ Kalashnikovs, we have only our pens. Among the mighty rifles of the army or the police, there are only our notebooks and computers. We are an easy target. It doesn’t cost much to kill journalists in Mexico, and the murderers know that it’s highly unlikely anything will happen to them afterwards. Impunity is the only constant. Over 90% of murders go unpunished, despite the existence of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Against Freedom of Expression, which last year recorded a backlog of 120 pending cases. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is a smokescreen. The Mexican state would rather carry on pretending than actually take action to protect the country’s journalists.

    This is an unequal war. As journalists, we have words. The people attacking us have bullets. Mexican journalism is wounded; information is mutilated.

    Why do we stay here, why do we carry on? Out of dignity and a commitment to the truth. Our mission is to search for that truth in spite of everything. Mexican journalists have learnt to work under hostile conditions, completely undefended. We live with persecution and harassment. But we don’t let fear paralyse us – on the contrary, it helps us to measure the risks and stay alive, to continue giving a voice to the voiceless and shining a light on dark secrets that are normally kept silent.

    Staying here and carrying on, that’s the mission, although we can smell the predator’s rotten breath, although we can hear the bullets, although we know that words cost lives. Freedom has a high price in Mexico, but it’s the only way we have of reaching the truth.

    Read this piece in the original Spanish here.

    Read ARTICLE 19 Mexico’s annual report ‘State of Censorship’, which examines freedom of expression in Mexico.

    Sanjuana Martínez is a featured writer in English PEN’s 2015 Mexico focus. Read about her case and take action here.

    To find out more about Sanjuana Martinez and her work, visit www.websanjuanamartinez.com.mx
    Follow her on Twitter: @SanjuanaMtz
    Visit her Facebook page: Sanjuana Martinez

  • Autocensura y silencio

    Read Annie McDermott’s English translation of this piece here.

    ‘Estoy vivo porque se quien manda. Aquí se hace lo que ordena el Cártel del Golfo,’ dice Francisco, un periodista de la ciudad de Matamoros, Tamaulipas, considerado un narcoestado de México.

    Las órdenes de trabajo para Francisco no vienen solamente del jefe de redacción, también atiende las llamadas del ‘jefe de la plaza’ quien le ordena quitar o poner imágenes de balaceras o cadáveres: ‘Si quieres cuidar a tu familia, no publiques nada de la balacera de ayer, si no, te va a llevar la chingada,’ le dice quien se ostenta solo como ‘jefe de plaza’. Y Francisco obedece para salvar la vida, para conservar su trabajo.

    Francisco como muchos, padece la ‘autocensura’, un fenómeno cada vez más común en México, el país más peligroso en América Latina, para ejercer el periodismo y donde el derecho a la información de los ciudadanos está siendo vulnerado severamente por la violencia contra la prensa: más de 120 periodistas han muerto en los últimos años y 22 permanecen desaparecidos. En este país, los periodistas son asesinados por lo que publican o por lo que se niegan a publicar. Cada 26 horas, un periodista será víctima de un hecho violento. Tan solo el año pasado, se registraron 326 ataques contra comunicadores y cinco fueron asesinados. A los periodistas no los asesina solamente el crimen organizado. La mayor parte de los agresores son funcionarios o agentes del estado mexicano.

    Los asesinatos son cada vez más sanguinarios y más crueles. Incluyen torturas de todo tipo. La violencia contra las periodistas es terrible, el componente de género está incluido, la mayoría de las ejecutadas fueron violadas, o mutiladas; algunas incluso decapitadas. Estamos cansados de ver pasar los cadáveres de nuestros colegas, de nuestros amigos. La estela de dolor y sufrimiento que va dejando la sangre derramada de nuestros compañeros.

    La guerra sin cuartel contra la libertad de expresión se intensifica. El gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto prefiere no garantizar la seguridad de los periodistas y de esta manera, ha conseguido acallar importantes voces independientes y críticas. Las balas, la censura, la autocensura o el control gubernamental sobre publicidad y concesiones de radio y televisión, han ido provocando un alto déficit de información veraz y oportuna, una ausencia de noticias y cobertura informativa sobre temas importantes como los crímenes de Estado cometidos por el Ejército, la Marina o las distintas policías. Tampoco hay suficientes noticias sobre el fenómeno de la narcopolítica, la connivencia de autoridades corruptas con los poderosos cárteles de la droga que dominan el territorio mexicano o el contrabando y la piratería que ha pasado a manos del crimen organizado en connivencia con los policías. Las desapariciones forzadas, ejecuciones extrajudiciales; la tortura, son parte de la violencia del Estado que difícilmente encuentra un espacio digno en los medios de comunicación televisivos. Una parte de la prensa está arrodillada ante el poder gubernamental o el poder del narcotráfico. Hay temas prohibidos y periodistas prohibidos. Se trata de instaurar el miedo, el terror y el silencio.

    Quienes nos atrevemos a romper el cerco de silencio, tenemos que enfrentarnos a todo tipo de amenazas. Trabajamos en condiciones de guerra, pero sin la protección que debe ser brindada a los informadores en  la típica cobertura de conflictos bélicos. Aquí no hay chaleco antibalas ni cascos. Tampoco funciona el aviso el aviso de ‘prensa’ colocado en los vehículos, o la acreditación que salvaguarda tu integridad física en territorio neutral.

    Frente a los Kalashnikov de los capos de la droga solo tenemos nuestras plumas. Entre los rifles de alto poder del Ejército o las policías, solo están nuestras libretas y computadoras. Somos un blanco fácil. Matar periodistas en México sale barato. Los asesinos saben que hay una gran probabilidad de que no les pase nada. La impunidad es la constante. Más del 90 por ciento de los asesinatos sigue impune a pesar de que existe la Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos cometidos contra la Libertad de Expresión, la cual, el año pasado, registró un rezago 120 casos. La fiscalía es una cortina de humo. El estado mexicano prefiere simular que actuar y proteger a los periodistas.

    Esta es una guerra desigual. Los periodistas tenemos la palabra. Ellos – los depredadores de la prensa – tienen las balas. El periodismo mexicano está herido. La información mutilada.

    ¿Por qué seguimos aquí? Por dignidad, por compromiso con la verdad. Nuestra misión es la búsqueda de esa verdad por encima de cualquier obstáculo. Los periodistas mexicanos hemos aprendido a trabajar en condiciones adversas de absoluta indefensión. Convivimos con la persecución, el hostigamiento y el acoso. Pero el miedo no nos paraliza, al contrario, nos ayuda a medir los riesgos para seguir con vida, para continuar dando voz a los sin voz y lanzar luz sobre las zonas oscuras de la información sometidas al silencio.

    Seguir aquí, es la misión, aunque el fétido aliento del depredador este cerca, aunque se escuche el sonido de las balas y las palabras cuesten la vida. La libertad, tiene un alto precio en México, pero es el único camino para llegar a la verdad.

    Read Annie McDermott’s English translation of this piece here.

    Read ARTICLE 19 Mexico’s annual report ‘Estado de Censura’, which examines freedom of expression in Mexico.

    Sanjuana Martínez is a featured writer in English PEN’s 2015 Mexico focus. Read about her case and take action here.

    To find out more about Sanjuana Martinez and her work, visit www.websanjuanamartinez.com.mx
    Follow her on Twitter: @SanjuanaMtz
    Visit her Facebook page: Sanjuana Martinez

  • Once I Was a Dog

    This article is part of the English PEN Between EU and Me project, supported by the European Commission

    Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

    I am an omnivorous scavenger, I sniff every object, I trust my intuition more than my eyes, and my most highly developed instinct is to run away. And if I have to be somewhere quickly, I run. At a rate of one breath to four paces, I can run ad infinitum, for hours on end. I can eat and drink without stopping. Absolutely nothing will induce me to get into a lift if I’m not going higher than five floors. I never take the lift down. And I never get lost. My brain has its own in-built navigation system.

    I even know how to talk to dogs, though I don’t wish to chat with every dog I meet, because like all the creatures in my house I have my racial prejudices. We can’t stand pit bulls, for instance – nasty muscle-bound dogs, four-footed yobbos with brains the size of a pea. And the scavenging – it’s just a reporter’s metaphor. When I go into the field (as the old reporters say), in other words on a work trip, within Poland or abroad, to gather material for a new article, I stop to inspect every speck of dust, every detail, every scrap of information and every little story – every bit of carrion, rubbish or shit. I might not use it later on, I might not devour it, but I’m sure to pick it up and take it away with me.

    The limping dog, or ‘being on the road’ versus ‘travelling’

    All this makes me naturally equipped for travelling. Anyway, I love to travel, though I hardly ever say that. What I say is that I love ‘being on the road’, which is hardly surprising, considering that in a former life I was a stray dog.

    Please note, I didn’t say a dog ‘with no master’, but a stray dog. For what sort of pleasure is there in being a dog ‘with a master’? In having a master? So I wasn’t a dog with no master, I was just free, independent, a drifter… All right, I was eternally hungry, crawling with lice and fleas, and covered in eczema, on top of which I had cancer of the testicles – by the end of my short life they were virtually trailing along on the ground behind me, but for all that, I was a cheerful, actually a very happy dog. A disgusting mongrel with festering eyes and ears, exuding a stink like a latrine, but proud of all the vigorous, dynamic spermatozoa I’d sent out around the entire world then known to me.

    I was lame in a back paw, so it’s probably from my dog’s life that I remember the coarse rhyme I’ve never heard in my present life. My mother says that in her childhood the lowlifes in Sochaczew (the town we’re from) used to bellow something like this at the homeless dogs to chase them away, after tying empty cans to their tails. The rhyme goes like this:

    A limping dog ran on the grass

    (Screw the fucker, screw the fucker, screw the fucker)

    Some bastard kicked him up the arse

    (Screw the fucker, screw the fucker, screw the fucker)

    Oh you fucker, booted up the bum

    (Screw the fucker, screw the fucker, screw the fucker)

    I’m grassing on you to your mum

    (Screw the fucker, screw the fucker, screw the fucker).

    It must be because of my former identity that I get such unspeakable pleasure out of reporting on the homeless – people, not dogs, because a dog can indeed be homeless too, but once he has a home he ceases to be a dog. (That’s what I thought in my previous life, but I shouldn’t be saying it now, because when my own dogs read this, I’ll be the one in the doghouse.)

    The three reports I wrote about the homeless were examples of immersion journalism. Two were researched in Warsaw, and one in Moscow. I got myself up in rags and went to live on the streets. It felt wonderful – I hadn’t the slightest doubt it was, or used to be my way of life. I was in no doubt at all that I hadn’t changed, I’d just gone back to my old identity, my old life, my old ways of getting food and drink and a bed for the night.

    Like changing the railway points, with a change of dress you get rid of your identity as a journalist, husband, father, owner, or citizen – in short, you stop being a normal person, a Muggle, and you become a tramp, who’s not ashamed to beg, piss in the park, or sleep on the grass below the statue of Adam Mickiewicz. To my excellent fellow reporter Wojciech Jagielski, who doesn’t rate this genre of reportage (or rather this method of gathering material) and says it’s just done for a lark, I reply that he is quite mistaken. The world of the homeless can only be described from the position of a piece of trash lying in the street (or of a stray dog too). You’ll never find out how people (the normal ones) regard a piece of trash that’s knocking about in the street, unless you are one.

    So, in a former life, I was a stray dog. I’m doubly fond of the Polish word wałęsać, meaning ‘to stray’ or ‘to wander’, out of respect for Lech Wałęsa. I realised this in the days of the so-called first Solidarity (from August 1980 to December 1981), when folks used to say as a joke that the government (meaning the communists) was wandering – wałęsa się – while Wałęsa was governing.

    So why do I prefer ‘being on the road’ to ‘travelling’? Because for me the most important thing is the time before I reach my destination, the before, the going, the slow transfer. When I meet my readers, I often tell them, or write in book dedications, that the most important thing about travelling is being on the road, not reaching your destination.

    The Sherpa with a grand piano, or ‘traveller’ versus ‘tourist’

    They say travelling is very simple and easy now, accessible and affordable to everyone. I have friends who go to the most far-flung corners of the world, including New Zealand, Swaziland and Patagonia. But are they travelling, even if they ride across the pampas on horseback?

    I doubt it. When I’m preparing for each trip, I read innumerable accounts of such exploits on the internet. The level of ignorance about the place the person has gone to is staggering. But does he need to know more? Of course not. People are free to do as they like. But they can’t say they’re travelling. What they’re indulging in is tourism!

    A PE teacher from Świdnik rides his motorbike solo all the way across Siberia to Magadan in Kolyma – an extraordinary exploit, but the question is, what for? For nothing. For pleasure, because he likes riding his motorbike, and here on the Eurasian continent that’s the furthest you can go.

    But he too is a tourist, as are the clients of all those adventure travel agencies called things like ‘Tingling Spine Trips’ or ‘Cupful of Adrenaline’. For these companies nothing is impossible. After all, tourists are taken up Mount Everest, or sent off to the North or South Pole. A good Sherpa can carry a grand piano up Everest. There is no limitation – not even disability disqualifies you. Sightless or legless tourists have conquered the world’s highest peak. You can sail down the Amazon on a raft, ski across Greenland, cycle over the Gobi Desert (I have this particular exploit to my credit), kitesurf across the Red Sea or swim the Bering Strait, and you’ll still just be a tourist. Because if you ask these people why they go to the Poles, they’ll reply: to conquer them.

    What for? They’ve already been conquered. So what’s the difference between a traveller and a tourist? The objective. The traveller is a geographer, geologist, cartographer, missionary, reporter, film-maker, naturalist, or glaciologist who has been commissioned to research the rate at which the glaciers are melting in the Pamir range. The traveller goes abroad for a reason. The tourist goes because he likes going, out of curiosity. And thus for no reason.

    All the travel festivals, of which we have at least a dozen in Poland, and I’ve even been to some, should be called tourist fairs, because all their participants’ incredible expeditions and exploits are frankly quite pointless.

    The bike and the estate car, or give luck a chance

    Your form of transport – that is one of the most important decisions an itinerant reporter has to make. The subject you’re working on determines the way you’re going to have to move about in the field. And vice versa – your form of transport will have an effect on the sort of material you gather.

    The rules are quite simple. The more outlandish your idea, the more likely it is to happen. Sometimes my dear colleagues at Gazeta Wyborcza’s foreign correspondence section raise an uproar, crying: ‘It’s just not possible!’ And that makes my blood boil, because I wouldn’t be going to the other end of the world if my idea were impossible; so I come up with a bicycle, hitchhiking, a canoe, or else I buy an old jeep to make the possible happen – in an ordinary way, any old way, by making something out of nothing. I do all this purely to give luck a chance, to get it to start working.

    Małgorzata Szejnert, who for many years was my boss and mentor at the newspaper’s reportage section, used to say a reporter who has no luck shouldn’t really be in this profession. So I do everything I can to improve my luck.

    And I must admit you get the most luck (or at least some) on a bike. It’s the best form of transport for a reporter. It only has one drawback, which is that it’s slow. In a country as big as China, for instance, it didn’t work for me, because I had too little time to do my job, to gather material. I was always behind.

    But apart from that, the bike has nothing but advantages. Best of all, you don’t miss anything, not a single apricot – in Uzbekistan they dry them on the asphalt. You can’t miss anything because you’re going so slowly. With full saddlebags, a tent, and some supplies of food and water your speed is at best 20 kilometres per hour. You only have to stop pedalling and put a foot on the ground, and people spring up around you. It’s always like that. Then they start asking questions, you patiently answer them, and when they ask what now, you say you have to find a place for the night. In Central Asia there has never been an occasion when somebody hasn’t shouted: “Come and stay at my place!” Can anything better happen to a reporter? Before bed, we have supper together, then we chat away half the night, if not the whole night, and by morning I’m a local. I know all about this town, village or district.

    On the other hand a car is wonderful, because it gives you an incredible sense of freedom. You can move about the entire country at the speed of light and nobody can stop you, and you also have a roof over your head. I love to sleep in my old Volvo. Of course, a reporter should have a big estate car, big enough to unroll a mattress and stretch out comfortably even though you’ve got a bike next to you in summer and a pair of skis in winter. I once wrote a long article about the Suwałki region of north-eastern Poland, but there was such a big dump of snow that I could only get about the place on cross-country skis.

    I love this dog’s life. When I’ve got a topic I can cover at home, meaning in Warsaw or somewhere in Poland, I always choose the smaller places – Łomża, Krasnystaw, Czarnków, Dzierżoniów… I love the dog’s life, hotels, roadside bars, and inns. I love being on the move, on the road.