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I Will Never See the World Again

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His liberty and independence of thought were not effortlessly maintained: whatever your inner fortitude, prison, by its very nature, is crippling. “In a matter of 5 hours I had travelled across five centuries to arrive at the dungeons of the Inquisition.” The sensory deprivation was immediately disorienting: like Oscar Wilde, he discovered that time ceases to mean anything. “The air and the light in our cage never changed. Each minute was the same as the last. It was as if a tributary of the river of time had hit a dam and formed a lake. We sat at the bottom of that motionless pool.” The first anniversary of failed coup in Istanbul, 2017. Photograph: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images 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 Browns and their streets. They host me quietly in their houses, in their halls, in their rooms. The document asked how they should dispose of my body in the case of an accident,” says Zhang. “I chose to have my body buried under the mountain.”

A lot of the redemptive clichés are about seizing agency, taking control of yourself. That isn’t very realistic for most people. The extreme case would be the American airman who remembered Epictetus as he was ejected from his jet over Vietnam and was, for several years, tortured and deprived in a terrible prison, but used Stoicism to survive. That’s an extreme form of control where nothing external can harm you, you’re completely within a prison environment with an abusive system, but you can still retain your mind by the power of the will. In his teens, Zhang was diagnosed with the same eye condition. Medical treatment failed to slow the disease’s progression, and at 21 years old he lost his sight completely. He had flunked China’s college entrance exams and was working blue-collar jobs in the city to scrape by. Here in the depths without light, the police, with each of their gestures and words, carved us out of life like a rotten, maggot-laced piece from a pear and severed us from the world of ‘the living’. To escape what I was living through, to rest and relax a little, I would take refuge in what they had endured. In a matter of hours I had traveled across five centuries to arrive at the dungeons of the Inquisition.Altan survives prison not by grinding out stoic mantras, but by his beautiful turn of phrase. The book becomes even richer when Altan interrogates the idea of using writing to survive. He says that being a writer is his way of being brave. But he also believes that a writer should not be brave. A writer should be honest before anything else. He worries that his bravery is an expression of dishonesty and that in relying on writing for survival he is sacrificing the thing he values most about writing. There’s a tension and vulnerability within his fierce, writerly resistance. I was like Julius Caesar, who, as soon as he was informed that a large Gallic army was on its way to relieve the siege at Alesia, had two high walls built: one around the hill fort to prevent those inside from leaving and one around his troops to prevent those outside from entering. During a scorching heat, when crops catch fire, a circle is drawn around the blaze and the grain along that circle is set alight before the flames can reach it. Once the fire arrives at the circle it stops, as there is nothing left there to burn. They use fire to put out fire. At the time, the idea sounded ludicrous — even to Zhang himself. “I had never seen a snowy mountain before and I didn’t have any experience of outdoor sports,” he says. My father had asked the police if they would like some coffee. When they declined he laughed and said, ‘It is not a bribe, you can drink some.’

I can understand why some people, especially victims of abuse, might send this book windmilling across the room. But I don’t think V wrote it as a prescription for victims. Rather, she says the book is an offering of what’s been healing for her.Would I be able to endure the days, weeks, months and years of swinging in the air, unable to let go of the branch for even an instant? The guides only needed 20 seconds to tie a climbing knot, whereas it might take me a few minutes,” says Zhang. “But as long as our safety and schedule weren’t compromised, I did it by myself. It was my own experience.” I Will Never See the World Again is Altan’s memoir detailing his arrest and imprisonment. It depicts a parallel world in the prisons and courtrooms of Turkey, where words are meaningless and action impossible. As the judicial process becomes more absurd and Altan’s release less likely, he finds the only escape is his imagination and the ability to write.

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