I Will Never See the World Again

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In fact, the world seems to be headed in the other direction. You are either with us or against us! has been uttered by world leaders, populists, demagogues. This was an underworld completely unknown to the people circulating above. It reeked of stone, sweat and damp. It tore from the world all those who passed through its dirty yellow walls, which resembled a forest of sulfur. I grew up in a house full of books. My childhood was spent among them. Books were the wood sprites in a forest the essence of which I couldn't quite grasp, one that looked quite complex and boring to me. I liked the fairies bright charm, their air of mystery, their promising smiles more than the forest itself." Scaling Everest remains a perilous task even for veteran mountaineers. Nearly one in three who attempt it fail; at least 11 people died on the mountain in 2019 alone. In 2001, Erik Weihenmayer, an American, became the first blind person to stand on the 8,849-meter summit. Since then, only two other blind climbers — including Zhang — have been able to reach the top.

Then, with the compassion of a father feeling sorrow for a child, the voice added: ‘He is afraid of the sky.’ Altan sa vo väzení stretáva s ľuďmi, ktorí nechcú svoju slobodu a možnosť nižšieho trestu vymeniť za udavačstvo.Dawn arrived. The sun rose behind the hills with its rays spreading purple, scarlet and lavender waves across the sky, resembling a white rose opening. Nu uită să ne spună și despre agresivitatea cu care regimul încearcă să domolească intelectul temerar: It was as if someone inside me, a person whom I could not exactly call ‘I’ but nevertheless spoke with my voice, through my mouth, and was therefore a part of me, said, as he was being transported in a police car to an iron cage, that he only smoked when he was ‘nervous’. Viewed from outside I was one old, white-bearded Ahmet Hüsrev Altan lying down in an airless, lightless iron cage.

The book opens on a quiet morning. Altan is in his pyjamas. The police are at the door. He lets them in and they turn over his whole house searching for something—they flip the mattress, pull out the drawers, cut open the bottom of the sofa. Altan’s seen this before, because 45 years earlier his father, who was also a writer, had been arrested on some trumped-up charges as well. So Altan just makes himself a bowl of muesli and sits there eating while it’s all happening. I will never see the world again" is a memoir made up of a series of essays written by Ahmet Altan, a journalist and a writer who's now imprisoned in the aftermath of the 2016 failed coup in Turkey. In fact, the book was put together thanks to notes the writer managed to smuggle to his lawyers.

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This book is one of the most powerful books I have read. Maybe because of his situation but mostly because of Altman’s attitude. It’s funny. It’s very wise. It is very humane. It mad me mad but also made me stop and reflect. I always thought the two things the made the world a worse place is politics and religion. We need them but all to often, they are used for the wrong reasons. We are living in this time.

Zhang comes from humble origins. He grew up in a poor village outside central Chongqing, a megacity in southwest China. As a child, he often had to act as a guide for his father and uncle, who had both lost their sight to glaucoma. He still recalls the judgmental looks their neighbors gave them as they passed by.

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Later in the book, his cellmate shares a story with him about a happy episode that happened in his life 10 years ago on a snowy day. Altan envelops himself in the other man’s story, imagining the snow landing on his face. He transports himself outside the prison walls.

Altan descends into a ghostly underworld. “Here in depths without light, the police, with each of their gestures and words, carved us out of life like a rotten, maggot-laced chunk from a pear, severing us from the world of ‘the living.’” He and the other prisoners are in between worlds, in a narrow gap between the living and the dead. Through the peephole I could see six policemen on the landing, sporting the vests worn by counterterrorism teams during house raids, the acronym ‘TEM’ stamped in large letters on their chests. I will never see the world again; I will never see a sky unframed by the walls of a courtyard. I am descending to Hades. I walk into the darkness like a god who writes his own destiny. My hero and I disappear into the darkness together.

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On 15 July 2016, members of the Turkish armed forces attempted an overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. They cited the increasingly authoritarian nature of Erdoğan’s presidency and a dismantling of the officially secular nation-state formed by Mustafa Atatürk in 1923. The coup was a failure. A sweeping purge ensued, with thousands of army officials, civil servants, teachers and journalists put in prison. I followed a policeman into the hallway, dragging my feet in my laceless shoes. He opened an iron door and we entered a narrow corridor where an oppressive heat grasped you like the claws of Ahmet Altan is a Turkish writer and journalist that was detained and then received a life sentence because he was believed to have taken part of the failed military coup that tried to overthrow Erdogan's regime in 2016 Turkey. Ahmet Altan would be erased and replaced with the name on the official certificate, Ahmet Hüsrev Altan.