Dawn by Selahattin Demirtas

Author:Selahattin Demirtas
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2019-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

A LETTER TO THE PRISON

LETTER-READING COMMITTEE

Dear Committee,

I’m writing you this letter from a high-security prison cell. “Why?” you might ask. Well, because I’m in prison, if you must know. So now you’re probably thinking, Yes, we’re fully aware of that. The question is: Why on earth are you writing to us? We’re going blind from reading all your letters as it is. And that’s exactly why I’m writing to you. For pity’s sake, what kind of career have you people chosen for yourselves? You sit around all day reading letters written by a bunch of strangers. What sort of life is that? And to think they even pay you for it. (Indeed, they do—the grand sum of 2,060 lira a month!) But that’s not the point here. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the point is. (Now, these last sentences have been “borrowed” from an İlhami Algör story; I hope that won’t be cause for you to redact them.)

But I digress, so let me cut to the chase. I keep getting requests from people on the outside (at least they think they’re on the outside) for just one more story. I’ve told them it’s best if I keep my correspondence brief from now on, that the members of the letter-reading committee are already at their wit’s end. The poor things are working their fingers to the bone because of me, and for what? Besides, I tell them, it’s not as if I’m a real writer or anything. But, of course, when you grow up in a house like mine, with a musician for a mother and a wordsmith for a father, you can’t help but pick up a thing or two.

Let me explain: As children, we woke each morning to the sound of our mother playing the piano. Our house had two rooms. We children all slept together in one of them, the same room where our mother kept her piano. Every morning, without fail, she’d sit down and bang away at the keys, bless her heart. Believe me, the sound still rings in my ears to this day. When we were a bit older, she said to me, “Son, are you an idiot? What piano? It’s a sewing machine, for God’s sake! I use it to make some money on the side.” But to our ears it was music, and that’s what matters, right?

Dearest committee members, you might very well have children of your own—may God protect them—so let me give you a word of advice: If you want them to have a musical ear, don’t bother with songs. Just make sure they’re exposed to rhythm. Even the great virtuoso Arif Sağ owes his talent in large part to the rhythmic clapping of the water mill in the village where he grew up.

And then there’s my father. He had a real way with words; they flowed from his mouth like verse. It was only when we were older that we realized it wasn’t poetry but profanity.

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