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Eng­lish lan­guage read­ers may ask them­selves: why trans­late an arti­cle about a book only avail­able in French?  For one, the book may even­tu­al­ly be avail­able in Eng­lish also. And, for anoth­er, what Joseph Andras has to say is inter­est­ing in its own right.

About the book “Nûdem Durak • Sur la terre du Kur­dis­tan” itself: it con­sists of a biog­ra­phy inter­wo­ven with texts by Nûdem her­self, tales and notes, meet­ings and tes­ti­mo­ni­als, slow­ly becom­ing a dia­logue with the com­mit­ted singer her­self and, through her, a con­nec­tion to an entire peo­ple striv­ing for its free­dom, its cul­ture and its will to build a future with the oth­ers peo­ples inhab­it­ing this vast region split in four parts.

In 2015, Nûdem Durak the singer was only 22 years old when she was sen­tenced to nine­teen years in prison by the Turk­ish regime. Her ’crime’: defend­ing through her music the strug­gle and the cul­ture of her native peo­ple, the Kurds. That is her only crime. And yet, she was false­ly accused of being a mem­ber of a so-called “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion”. She is still in prison, sen­tenced to stay­ing there until…2034. The strug­gle of an entire peo­ple for its free­dom is thus also expressed through her.

Five years after Kanaky (pub­lished by Actes Sud), Joseph Andras pur­sues his work of lit­er­ary inves­ti­ga­tion : in a sen­si­tive and well-doc­u­ment­ed nar­ra­tive — the prod­uct of four years of research — he recon­sti­tutes the his­to­ry of an indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive injus­tice through the life of the young artist.

Who bet­ter than the author him­self to speak about the book?

*

 

Kedis­tan • Let’s begin sim­ply. There are tens of thou­sands of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Turkey: why a book about Nûdem Durak in particular?

Joseph Andras • I’m tempt­ed to answer just as sim­ply : I don’t know.

K • You don’t know?

JA • What I mean by that is that I don’t know why this “case” held my atten­tion so strong­ly as to spend four years of my life work­ing on it. Her case is triv­ial. She is but one detainee among so many oth­ers. Iden­ti­cal. Sad­ly iden­ti­cal. State repres­sion is so mas­sive that it destroys all dis­tinc­tions : pris­on­ers are num­bers in brief press releas­es. One day, I came across a 9‑minute report on Al Jazeera: it con­cerned the sto­ry of this singer on the eve of her lat­est incar­cer­a­tion, in April 2015. This pro­duced a kind of com­mo­tion in me. I sup­pose this is how I write — pre­vi­ous­ly, I had been caught up by the “case” of Fer­nand Ive­ton and Alphonse Dianou. It was impos­si­ble for me to act as if I had not seen what I saw. Her life broke into mine : I had to fol­low through. Sad­ness is a healthy emo­tion, but it ren­ders one pow­er­less. Just as a lament does. So I had to go to Kur­dis­tan and meet her fam­i­ly, her rel­a­tives, her lawyer. Exchange let­ters with her. Exam­ine her file. Inves­ti­gate as best I could. And, in the end, sug­gest this book writ­ten by her side. It con­sist­ed, in a way, of trans­form­ing an indi­vid­ual con­cern into a col­lec­tive polit­i­cal action — because, what is a book, if not a shared space?

K • One could say: You are French, how does this con­cern you?

JA • I would answer three things. The first: what con­cerns the human species, and more wide­ly, the world of the liv­ing, con­cerns every­one. The world is tiny now that it is so inter­con­nect­ed. From the Loiret to the Japan­ese region of Kan­sai is a sto­ry of neighour­hoods. The sec­ond is that Nûdem Durak is fight­ing for a more just social order and that, in order to do so, she mobi­lized rev­o­lu­tion­ary, demo­c­ra­t­ic and social­ist tra­di­tions. As a social­ist, I am de fac­to con­nect­ed to all of mine, or ours, no mat­ter where they may be. I have more in com­mon with a rev­o­lu­tion­ary whose lan­guage I do not under­stand than with a French cap­i­tal­ist — I’m almost ashamed to men­tion such a triv­ial real­i­ty. And the third thing is that, being French, thus a French cit­i­zen, I find myself co-respon­si­ble, as are all French peo­ple, for the dis­cur­sive, mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic poli­cies and behav­iors of my coun­try. It so hap­pens that Kur­dish mil­i­tants are cur­rent­ly in prison, here also. Now, cur­rent­ly. That three cadres of the Kur­dish rev­o­lu­tion were assas­si­nat­ed in Paris, in 2013, and that offi­cial respons­es are still being await­ed, in vain. That on on Decem­ber 23 last, three oth­er Kur­dish mil­i­tants were assas­si­nat­ed in Paris, in ques­tion­able con­di­tions, by a fas­cist claim­ing to have com­mit­ted an “attack”. That the Macron gov­ern­ment has con­demned Kur­dish resis­tance. That France was a so-sig­na­toree in 1916 to the Sykes-Picot agree­ments on the split­ting up of the Near East. That the Turk­ish State is a mem­ber of NATO along with the French State. And that the lat­ter main­tains the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Par­ty — the PKK — on the list of “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions”. How could I not be concerned?

K • What in fact is Nûdem Durak accused of?

JA • Of being a mem­ber of the PKK, thus, of being a “ter­ror­ist”. Where­as the facts are as fol­lows: she is not a mem­ber, and she is a resistant.

K • And had she been a Par­ty member?

JA • She could have been. But she did noth­ing oth­er than sing pop­u­lar, patri­ot­ic or rev­o­lu­tion­ary songs and teach music, as a vol­un­teer, to youths in her region. She was sen­tenced to 19 years of prison for her opin­ions. She does not belong to the Par­ty. She nev­er bore weapons. Let’s say that she is a sim­ple sym­pa­thiz­er of the Kur­dish demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment, in its widest sense, as are a num­ber of her com­pa­tri­ots. I should add that the PKK is obvi­ous­ly not a “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion”. It is a for­ma­tion prac­tic­ing armed self-defence  against colo­nial­ist, nega­tion­is­tic and poli­cies aimed at exter­mi­na­tion applied by the Turk­ish State. This is a well-known method of States: describ­ing as a “ter­ror­ist” who­ev­er oppos­es their maneu­vers. States hold a monop­oly on ter­ror and exer­cise con­trol over words. Bald­win says as much in one of his books, con­cern­ing the head of the FBI: “No one ever called for­mer J. Edgar Hoover a ter­ror­ist, although that was  pre­cise­ly what he was.” “Ter­ror­ists”, then, were the Black Pan­thers, of course. Alger­ian, Irish, South-African, Pales­tin­ian or French resis­tance fight­ers were put in the same cat­e­go­ry. When writ­ing is the craft you prac­tice, the least you can do is to put words back in their prop­er place. So, yes, Nûdem Durak resists through her art. And, yes, the PKK resists with weapons — while call­ing, for decades, to a nego­ti­at­ed and dis­armed peace.

K • Half of your book con­sists, in fact, of a book that Nûdem Durak wrote while in prison. Why this choice?

JA • I want­ed her to be read. That peo­ple learn what she has to say with­out inter­me­di­aries, ambas­sadors or oth­er inter­venors. She is alive, she is sen­tenced to stay in prison until 2034 and, dur­ing that time, she express­es her­self: let’s lis­ten to her. My words do noth­ing oth­er than to act as escort to her own. She wrote this book behind bars, in Turk­ish, and she wished for it to be pub­lished some day. She man­aged to exfil­trate it as writ­ten pages, and I man­aged to obtain them. We trans­lat­ed it with com­rades. It can now be read in French — hope­ful­ly, it will be trans­lat­ed soon into oth­er languages.

K • One of your books is avail­able in Turkey. I imag­ine it will be impos­si­ble for this one!

JA • Books are reg­u­lar­ly cen­sored and destroyed over there. Be they Kur­dish or Turk­ish, jour­nal­ists and writ­ers fill the pris­ons. For now, I can’t see how Nûdem Durak could be found in a book­store. But Turkey is not con­demned to live under a fascis­tic regime…

K • You men­tion a num­ber of Turk­ish fig­ures in your pages, start­ing with the poet Nâzım Hikmet.

JA • I’ve been read­ing him for a long time. He accom­pa­nies me: I read him, and re-read him. He has a superb refine­ment. A beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty. I also men­tion the writer Pınar Selek who lives in exile in France, or the writer Aslı Erdoğan who lives in exile in Ger­many. I met her in the course of the writ­ing. She open­ly sup­ports Nûdem Durak, as well as all the oth­er polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. I believe she was bro­ken by deten­tion and by exile. It goes with­out say­ing that Turk­ish dis­si­dents have my sym­pa­thy, and even my admi­ra­tion. They pay a heavy price for their wish for dig­ni­ty. Nûdem Durak holds no ani­mos­i­ty toward the Turk­ish peo­ple : she denounces the insti­tu­tions, the author­i­ties, the pow­er of the State.

K • Your book is direct­ly linked to the inter­na­tion­al cam­paign Free Nûdem Durak. But you also make ref­er­ence to anoth­er, old­er, cam­paign, led by Gisèle Hal­i­mi and Simone de Beau­voir in favor of the Alger­ian pris­on­er Djami­la Boupacha. Do you con­sid­er your­self as walk­ing in their footsteps?

JA • I pay them trib­ute. The book Djami­la Boupacha, writ­ten by lawyer Gisèle Hal­i­mi based on an idea by Simone de Beau­voir, kept me com­pa­ny through the writ­ing. She defends this young detainee arrest­ed and tor­tured by the French army. She leads us to a close under­stand­ing of her, of her moti­va­tions, her being. She destroys the State nar­ra­tive by elab­o­rat­ing anoth­er one. This is the ges­ture I wished to renew, 60 years lat­er : an under­stand­ing of a col­lec­tive sit­u­a­tion through a cir­cum­scribed case.

K • But do you think your book can have an impact? The Free Nûdem Durak already counts on impor­tant voic­es: Angela Davis, Noam Chom­sky, David Grae­ber, Yan­nis Varo­ufakis, Ken Loach…

JA • I have no idea. This is why this book is part of an inter­na­tion­al cam­paign. Books only have a lim­it­ed influ­ence, we all know that. They can­not under­mine the social order. But they feed imag­i­na­tions, they per­pet­u­ate tra­di­tions of lib­er­a­tion and they throw some light on areas of usu­al opac­i­ty. They can even, some­times, act upon time: in light of the dai­ly media flow, of pass­ing infor­ma­tion, they force one to stop. To see what we can­not see the rest of the time. This book, along with assem­bling in one space every­thing con­cern­ing this “case” has no oth­er objec­tive. It will not release Nûdem Durak from her cell, that is cer­tain: it might even­tu­al­ly throw some light, along with oth­er sources on her life, her voice and the order allow­ing for this detain­ment. Angela Davis was detained in the past, in North-Amer­i­can cells; in sup­port­ing Nûdem Durak, I sup­pose she knows that she will not bring about her lib­er­a­tion. But she con­tributes in ren­der­ing this incar­cer­a­tion real — because a pris­on­er with no one to car­ry his or her voice to the out­side is twice a pris­on­er. Also, a book ren­ders pos­si­ble this odd expe­ri­ence: pass­ing silent­ly in the back of the world’s dai­ly fren­zy, 250 pages along­side a poor­ly known pris­on­er, of a ban­ished artist. It can hap­pen that a read­er be affect­ed by it: he or she has stepped back from the world in order to return to it, more focused, more obsti­nate. And that mod­est strength might link up with larg­er forces. Polit­i­cal ones. So, we shall see. I think I can state, cold­ly, fac­tu­al­ly, that I put Fer­nand Ive­ton back on his feet; while at oth­er times, noth­ing, silence. Once a book is out, noth­ing belongs to me any­more. I’ve done what I could.

K • Your books have spo­ken about Alge­ria, Kanaky, Viet Nam. The anti­colo­nial­ist ques­tion appears cen­tral in your work. Is this book part of that?

JA • Yes. Kur­dis­tan strug­gles against four impe­ri­al­ist States and Kur­dish rev­o­lu­tion­ary open­ly con­sid­er them­selves mem­bers of the world-wide anti­colo­nial com­bat.  Nûdem Durak does not stop talk­ing about it in her pages. A few days ago, I read in the Eng­lish-lan­guage press the tes­ti­mo­ni­al of a Kur­dish fight­er, cap­tured and beat­en by Israeli agents. It said ” ‘If you know about Viet Nam, you known Kur­dis­tan… a new Viet Nam in our hearts’, wrote Sami in a poem. ‘To the defence­less pris­on­er in Diyarbakır, to the tree leaf in Viet Nam, to the liv­ing being in Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, to the orphaned baby in Sabra and Chati­la’ “. Anoth­er Kur­dish fight­er, Can Polat, wrote to a Pales­tin­ian writer, Mazen Safi: “May each of us real­ize that the Kur­dish and Arab blood were always and still are unit­ed, pure, in defend­ing the dig­ni­ty and the free­dom of the Kur­dish and of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple.” So, yes, cer­tain­ly, I unrav­el this same long string.

K • You seem to hes­i­tate over the word “inves­ti­ga­tion”. And, in fact, one does not real­ly know what is the nature of this book: a long jour­nal­is­tic reportage? A log book? A legal argu­men­ta­tion? At any rate, you quote sev­er­al writ­ers : Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Vic­tor Hul­go, André Gide…

JA • I am aware of its rather com­pos­ite nature. Such as was Kanaky. I am nei­ther a jour­nal­ist nor a lawyer, only a writer — mean­ing, that I may occa­sion­al­ly bor­row their tools. We were talk­ing about Hal­i­mi, but there exists a French inter­na­tion­al­ist lit­er­ary tra­di­tion to which I feel par­tic­u­lar­ly close. Short­ly after the Com­mune, Louise Michel pub­lished Kanak Leg­ends and Chants des Gestes. In the 1920s, writ­ers Léon Werth and André Gide pub­lished Cochin­chine and Trav­els in the Con­go. In 1982, Genet wrote about the Sabra and Chati­la mas­sacres then, with Pris­on­er of Love, on the Pan­thers and the fedayin. One could also men­tion Maspero in the Balka­ns. I have the impres­sion of fol­low­ing the road they have point­ed out for a long time.

K • And Sartre ?

JA • He was asked one day to explain his attrac­tion to lived lives rather than to fic­ti­tious ones. He answered : “My aim is to attempt to make appar­ent the meet­ing between the devel­op­ment of the per­son, as illu­mi­nat­ed by psy­cho­analy­ses, and the devel­op­ment of His­to­ry. […] What I would like to show is how a man comes to pol­i­tics, how he is seized by it, how he is trans­formed by it.” I under­stand this very well.

K • One last ques­tion. Your first six books were pub­lished by Actes Sud. This one is pub­lished by a small inde­pen­dent pub­lish­er from the rad­i­cal left. Why?

JA • It’s sim­ple. I had a com­mit­ment with them to pub­lish a book of poet­ry, one I final­ly decid­ed to leave unfin­ished. I owed them a text — moral­ly speak­ing. And, in order to defend a com­bat book, it struck me as nat­ur­al to turn toward a rev­o­lu­tion­ary pub­lish­er. Espe­cial­ly since Ici-bas has put the anti­colo­nial ques­tion at the cen­ter of its interests.

K • Thank you so much, Joseph…

• For more: Spe­cial Free Nûdem Durak file
Inter­na­tion­al cam­paign “Free Nûdem Durak”
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Joseph Andras Nudem Durak livre

Nûdem Durak. Sur la terre du Kurdistan
Joseph Andras 
ISBN : 979–10-90507–44‑9
ICI BAS / “Les Réveilleurs de la nuit”, paru le 05 mai 2023
256 pages, 22€

 


 

Trans­la­tion from French by Renée Lucie Bourges

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Renée Lucie Bourges
REDACTION | Auteure, tra­duc­trice et interprète
Née au Québec dans une famille fran­co-irlandaise, elle a vécu et tra­vail­lé comme rédac­trice et tra­duc­trice en Amérique et au Moyen-Ori­ent. Elle réside dans le sud-ouest de la France d’où elle écrit des romans en anglais, et frater­nise avec tous les autres funam­bules de son espèce.