‘What kind of world are we living in?’ He asks himself looking into the distance of his memories. He feels the exhilaration of his strong desires and hopes for a better future. He murmurs to the walls around him, ‘We all wait. Yes the oppressed men and women always fight and wait for that bright future on the horizon.’

He gazes upon a piece of paper which sits on the table in front of him. He shifts his eyes to observe the environment around him. He looks at the dusty floor and contemplates the room’s shadows. His chair is hard and uncomfortable, so he shifts around until he is more comfortable. A strange pang of weakness disturbs him and reminds him that he is hungry.

In irritation, he stands up and tries to force himself to think of something else. He picks up a map of the world. With an unusual air, he looks at the strange, unfamiliar names of different places. He is unimpressed by them. So, he crumples the map up and throws it into a corner of the kitchen. He tries to breathe calmly and deeply and the rain slowly falls in a continuous curtain outside the hut.

The kitchen is bare. There is no food, but there are one or two pots and pans, a few plates, a kettle and not much else. He tries to concentrate on his thoughts. He raises his head upwards and looks at a picture which is hanging on the wall. It is a picture of a Kurdish woman. She is wearing the beautiful traditional costume of the Kurds and she is embracing her unique-looking child. Reflections from the beams of light, which are grey in this black and white photograph, illuminate her face to create an image of life which enchants him. He shuts his eyes as he sits down and continues on his voyage, as he pictures another spot in his memory.

Kurdestan. He is entranced by the picture of it in his mind’s eye. He thinks to himself, ‘What does it mean, Kurdestan?’ Then he answers writing, ‘The land of the Kurds, the land of freedom fighters, the land of harsh mountains and the land of soft, fertile earth. The land of valleys, and agriculture, the land of poverty...’ Again he is irritated and he drops his pen to the table. He gets up and goes over to the old primus stove. After filling the kettle with water, he struggles to turn the primus on. After a few minutes, he gets it alight. He mutters angrily, ‘No oil in the land of oil.’ In his frustration he clenches his fist and strikes out to smash the air before him. ‘In spite of the industrialisation, we don’t even have access to our own gas!’ He yells at himself angrily, as his frustration increases, ‘Shut up you and make your bloody glass of tea!’

With sharp movements he swiftly returns to the old chair. The noise of the primus disturbs his concentration. Tensely, he grabs the chair, to complement his annoyance. He sits there, and rests his head on his arm, as he waits for the water to boil. He looks outside through the window at the distance. On the street, cars race one after another, as if in a competition. The rain blurs them from his view and quickly they pass from his field of vision. The sound of their splashes resounds in his ears. ‘I wish I knew where they were going,’ he muses. He rubs his eyes and then looks over at the primus. ‘That bloody old thing.’

On this spring day, the weeping willows waltz and the rain and the trees show off as though to tell the willows ‘We can dance too!’

It is afternoon. He tries to calm down, but the noise of the primus won’t let him. Suddenly an image of the village appears. He tries to capture it but suddenly it vanishes as it had appeared before.

‘It is difficult to make a connection,’ he says.

‘The product of what?... He smiles when he thinks of the word, ‘...of nothingness.’ Finally, he is pleased to see steam rising from the kettle.

His mind now focuses on the kettle and he goes over to fill the teapot, the old, ancient teapot. He puts the tea in it and then pours in the boiling water. As he turns the primus off he yells at it, ‘You old bastard!’

He sits and waits for the tea. The rain pours down constantly creating new walls around him. He pours the tea into a glass.

He picks up the pen again and writes, This is illusion. ‘No.’ He changes his mind. It could be an illusion for me to believe that I would ever be able to introduce myself to you completely, in relation to what I write... because if I try to explain the sign first. He trails off. ‘The sign... that’s too technical. But I pretend to talk technically don’t I?’ He says, ‘Leave it there.’

‘The sign is a word I have in my mind. I am frustrated enough to change it though... but this is naturally me. Me - who seems to know what it means to say what I am producing.’

He stops and looks at the picture of the Kurdish woman. He becomes entranced again. ‘Ordinary language...’

The face of the woman frightens him. It is so strong, so painful, so clear. It is the vision of an ordinary human being who has an ordinary language.

‘Any person must be able, in the first place, to listen to his or her own voice,’ he muses. ‘I mean, before writing their ideas down on paper, they should be able to listen to themselves.... It is there, in relation to speaking, that I will meet myself. It is a completely different relationship to when I’m writing.’

As he thinks to himself he looks at the view out the window. He thinks of when his brother walked into the room. His face is drawn and tired. It reminds him of one of the local beggars.

It never occurred to him that his brother would be hanged many years later. There was no indication of it, just now. There was an image of death there, though. And of the excitation of language, the being of the family and the voyage.

His heart started beating faster and harder. He put his hand on the table and stood up to look outside once more. He could see the images of the outside pictures and he sees the unjust court. He walks away from the chair, taking two or three steps forward and then he turns back.

‘The blood responds to the mountains and the valleys and to that vast land. The land of no roads...’ He stops in frustration.

He begins to picture everything that happens around him as if he weren’t there. He tries to interpret the picture of the valleys. He comes from the desert, but that picture is green, fertile and alive There is a lone tree in the middle of this picture. It is as green as possible, with its picturesque shadow, and the rich desert obeys it. He cannot sort out why the tree is there.

He returns to the side of the chair, thinking, ‘What would it be like to be prosecuted and to be waiting for the following morning to be hanged or shot?’

A strange fatigue invades him and seems to take over his whole existence. He stands motionless, near the chair. His wide eyes shorten the distance, the blurred distance. He sits down and begins writing.

Before talking to others, I talk to myself. Before trying to impress others, I listen to myself. I have inherited this from you - prisoner of justice.

I am writing to you, so that I can listen to myself properly. I know you are going to be shot tomorrow morning. I am not agonising over this event. We have experienced the fact that when justice fights against injustice, death is always there. They will kill you because you have listened to your own language. The sounds of justice have been cemented in your voice and in your ears, so the power of language is unable to deceive you.

He puts the pen down. Again he is irritated. ‘I cannot write and I cannot connect.’ He stands up and imagines, ‘The firing squad grab him by the hair...’ Suddenly he asks himself, ‘What has that village done to us?’

He picks up the pen and drops it again, repeating, ‘I can’t write.’ He leaves it there. It is all too painful.

Back to top