Once you will have read the excerpt from this let­ter, you will under­stand the rea­son and the form for the sup­port to which you are invit­ed, in com­plic­i­ty with our friend Zehra, for the full moon on the 20th of this month of Jan­u­ary 2019.

At night, while she was in the jail of Amed (Diyarbakır) in East­ern Turkey, Zehra Doğan, the Kur­dish woman, jour­nal­ist and artist, looked up at the moon and the stars…

She was recent­ly trans­ferred to the jail in Tar­sus, more than 500 km away from Diyarbakır, her native town. Zehra’s let­ters keep on reach­ing us nonetheless…

One of those leters talked to us about the moon, eter­ni­ty and danc­ing women.

Türkçe | Français | Eng­lishEspañol


Dear Friend,

Night. A full moon above our heads. I start writ­ing to you under its light.

It shines so pret­ti­ly. It has not even man­aged to hide. It is behind the clouds but its halo reveals it in all its naked­ness. So beau­ti­ful, so pre­cious, so white. It’s light pierces the clouds, spreads all around and cre­ates a strange atmos­phere, like trans­par­ent magic.

As if I were out­side, some­where, thou­sands of years ago and as if, from the zenith, I were look­ing down on this moment.

Its light does such a job of embell­ish­ing these hor­rid barbed wires.

This leads me to think about the rea­son for the dis­gust we feel when encoun­ter­ing ugli­ness. In fact, if I look care­ful­ly, they are not so unsight­ly. Enmeshed barbed wires, shaped by cer­tain human inter­ven­tions. They stand there, silent and calm. They only serve as mat­ter for cer­tain feelings.

Sim­ple barbed wires. Objects the name of which imme­di­at­ly sours our faces and makes us say “so lousy”. The object used to mark fron­tiers, divide, define spaces and which, when we over­step those lim­its, pun­ish us with their point­ed tips.

But now, I stop and I look; and those ugly barbed wires, cov­ered with claws, strike me as so inno­cent and harm­less that I can’t man­age to be angry at them. They seem to say “We have noth­ing to do with this, they’re the ones who’ve made us this way.” I feel as if I’m dis­cov­er­ing their naive and pure aspect. Like a woman, drift­ing in the ide­ol­o­gy that has turned her into a mer­chan­dise for thou­sands of years and who would rebel sud­den­ly and say “I have noth­ing to do with this, men have made me this way.” The cry would be the same.

So, in call­ing these barbed wires “ugly” am I not caus­ing them an injus­tice? As men have inter­fered with every­thing, they have played with the wires’ chem­istry and installed them above our heads. This tells me that I’m at the wrong address when I turn against the wires and look at them with a curse.

Tonight, the barbed wires are so innocent.

Bathed in moon­rays, their shad­ows scat­ter on the walls of the prom­e­nade, like danc­ing women. They shine even more, the life­less barbed wires, sen­tinels to my condemnation.

Zehra Doğan
May 29 2018 Diyarbakır Jail

This is why we call upon all sup­port­ers of Zehra Doğan and, through her, of all her polit­i­cal pris­on­er friends in Turkey, for a night-time ren­dez-vous of solidarity.

Dif­fer­ent from the usu­al sol­i­dar­i­ty ini­tia­tives, this one will take place under the light of the moon who will act as the sacred god­moth­er to this rendez-vous.

Witch­es, dryads, fairies, women, fem­i­nists, poets,

Magi­cians, lep­rechauns, enchanters and singers,

Wher­ev­er we may be, let us go and meet our god­moth­er, if only for a few min­utes, let us send up our mes­sages of sup­port, courage and ener­gy through the moon’s inter­ven­tion. The moon who will car­ry our mes­sages to those who will be wait­ing behind bars, with their eyes on the full moon.

Wher­ev­er you may be on the five con­ti­nents, alone or with friends, at home, in your gar­den, in the streets, under a star­ry win­ter sky, behind your win­dows, on your bal­conies bathed in moonlight…

On the night of Sun­day Jan­u­ary 20 2019 at 9 PM in France (11 PM in Turkey) we invite you to the rendez-vous…

If you wish to do some read­ings, fol­low this link for some texts by Zehra Doğan and this one for a col­lec­tion of poems about the moon.

Let us know about your ini­tia­tives, the places, images… by email or via the Free Zehra Doğan face­book page… We will pub­lish them.

Here are two books our friends Zehra has sug­gest­ed we read on this theme…

The first is a book Zehra often talks about in her let­ters: “Cal­iban and the Witch” by Sil­via Fed­eri­ci. And the sec­ond  is the one she was read­ing when she was trans­ferred to the jail in Tar­sus with 19 friends, despite the fact she was hand­cuffed in the trans­porta­tion vehi­cle: “Women who run with wolves” by Claris­sa Pinko­la Estés. Pleas­ant reading…

And don’t for­get that the new year is  an excel­lent excuse to send let­ters, cards, draw­ings toward the prison, at the fol­low­ing address:

Zehra Doğan C‑3
Tar­sus Kadın Kapalı CİK 
Ali­fakı Mahalle­si Ali­fakı sokak 
Tar­sus – MERSİN
TURKEY

For more infor­ma­tion about Zehra:
zehradogan.net (trilin­gual) and Kedis­tan’s Spe­cial File (mul­ti­lan­gual)


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com
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Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.