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By Rober­to Saviano  pub­lished in Cor­riere del­la Sera on Novem­ber 26 2021

YES, WORDS ARE EVERYTHING AND THOSE WHO ATTACK US KNOW IT

Every year on Novem­ber 15, PEN Inter­na­tion­al holds a day ded­i­cat­ed to impris­oned writ­ers, shed­ding light on cas­es of writ­ers per­se­cut­ed because of words they wrote, declaimed, pro­nounced, but most­ly because their words were heard.  Words alone are rarely as fright­en­ing as  those who sup­port and spread them. The PEN’s Com­mit­tee for impris­oned writ­ers asked me to write a let­ter to Sela­hat­tin Demir­taş, a Kur­dish writer and oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal leader cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Turkey. He is seen on the pho­to I chose this week. On the right, dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing, in prison on the left. Sela­hat­tin is smil­ing on both pho­tos, but you’ll have no trou­ble see­ing the dif­fer­ences between the two smiles.

Dear Sela­hat­tin,

I am writ­ing to you today as the num­ber of days of your deten­tion approach­es 2 000. Think­ing about the enor­mi­ty of that fig­ure hurts, it hurts know­ing you were not lib­er­at­ed as expect­ed by the Euro­pean Tri­bunal of Human Rights. Thus, in Turkey, you are arrest­ed, judged and sen­tenced for your words. You are arrest­ed, judged and sen­tenced for your life jour­ney, which is not a crim­i­nal one, but a jour­ney of thought, of shar­ing, of study.

The “evi­dence” they claim in order to con­firm your “guilt” con­sists of your pub­lic speech­es, the words you spoke and that were report­ed by the media…no crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, but words. For us, who are in the field of words, words are every­thing, and those who accuse us for our words know this well. They know that each word we think, write and pro­nounce rep­re­sents us. They know we are ready to sac­ri­fice every­thing to defend those words. We may be wrong, but that’s how it is.

EVEN THOUGH THEY TRIED TO DEPRIVE YOU OF THE POSSIBILITY OF FREELY DISPOSING OF YOUR BODY, YOU HAVE NOT KEPT SILENT

My sit­u­a­tion can­not be com­pared to yours, but I’ve often been asked if I regret my words and their con­se­quences of my life. I’ve always answered tat I am not a hero, that I nev­er aspired to being one, that I only wrote what I thought was the right thing to write and that, had I known what I would expe­ri­ence, I might have stopped soon­er. I don’t know if, know­ing all that I know today, I would have done it, except in order to con­firm that crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tions fear the sto­ry — the word! — as if it were  a weapon. This induces an aware­ness from which it is impos­si­ble to turn back. It is the cor­ner­stone to my life: the pow­er of the word, of civil­ian involve­ment, of denun­ci­a­tion, of defend­ing the voice­less ones.

THE STATUE OF GIORDANO BRUNO, BURNED ALIVE IN 1600 SEEMS TO TELL US: “LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENS TO A MAN WHO SPEAKS” 

My dear Sela­hat­tin, you know of Gior­dano Bruno, a philoso­pher from my coun­try. He is the one toward whom I turn when I con­sid­er that the suf­fer­ing I lived through wasn’t worth it. On Feb­ru­ary 17 1600, Gior­dano Bruno was tak­en to the Cam­po de’ Fiori in Rome, undressed on the pub­lic square and burned alive on fire­wood. Where he was burned there now stands a bronze stat­ue  that observes us even when we try to ignore it. I can­not ignore it, so every time I lift my eyes, the stat­ue seems to tell me: “Look at what hap­pens to a man who speaks !”  Bruno under­stood that all men are made of the same sub­stance; more­over, that the uni­verse, of which we are but a small part, is also made of the same sub­stance, hav­ing as sole rule to har­monise itself in its infi­nite diver­si­ty and infi­nite possibilities.

Imag­ine the mar­vel­lous sym­pho­ny of free­dom and fear it gen­er­ates in any pow­er that wants to cen­tralise, con­trol, estab­lish bor­ders to rea­son­ing and block off the ter­ri­to­ry of your being with walls. These infi­nite worlds — eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal, social, human — are truths that die as soon as we cease to defend them, just as law and free­dom die when no longer defend­ed.  Bruno would have been saved, if only he had renounced his infi­nite worlds. But he did not recant, even though he loved life deeply, because, had he denied them, his truths would have been extin­guished. There was noth­ing left but to die in order to affirm them. You, dear Sela­hat­tin, have revealed life,   life behind the head­lines in Turkey, and you have even put your body on the line to defend these words. And although it is pre­cise­ly of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­pos­ing freely of this body that they have wished to deprive you, you have not accept­ed to be qui­et. This is why I am here writ­ing to you, so that my words may walk along beside your own.

Rober­to Saviano 


Headline photo: During a public meeting for the defence of the Kurdish people, two photos were shown on the same topic, Selahattin Demirtas, writer and opposition politician: on the right, during a public meeting and, o the left, in prison where he has been in detention since close to 2 000 days. (Photo Yasin Akgül/Afp via Getty Images)
Translation from French by Renée Lucie Bourges
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