The Day of the Imprisoned Writer
This year, the English Centre of International PEN chose to mark this important date in its calendar with three linked events, presented in association with Literature & Talks at the South Bank Centre and Barcelona Forum 2004.
Silenced Voices
The day kicked off with Daniel Baker, vice-chair of the Gypsy Council and a committee member of Travellers and Gypsies UK. An artist with many exhibitions to his name, his painting explores questions of cultural identity and boundary formation. Daniel delivered a presentation which illuminated various apects of the rich artistic and cultural traditions of the Gypsies, particularly emphasising the many ways in which traditions and information are handed down from generation to generation in visual and verbal forms, rather than through a written culture.
Daniel Baker was followed by Louise Doughty who read from her novel Fires in the Dark, which recounts the mass killing of Romany tribes during the Holocaust. Louise described the creative impulse behind this novel as both a wish to explore and present her own Romany ancestry (which can be traced to the Cãldãrari (Kalderash – Tin and coppersmiths) of Wallachia, Romania) as well as to portray this least-documented aspect of the many horrors perpetrated by the Nazis.
Siobhan Dowd, editor of Roads of the Roma and Programme Director of English PEN’s Readers and Writers programme chaired the ensuing discussion. Discussing the future of Roma/Travellers in the UK and how best to overcome the ingrained racism and ignorance of Gypsy culture, Daniel Baker clearly felt that increased intercultural understanding should be fostered in school. Another area of discussion drew attention to the perhaps surprising lack of homogeneity in gypsy culture. For a racial group burdened by almost overwhelmingly negative stereotypes the variety of gypsy culture is enormous, consisting of many different tribes spread all over Europe who speak over 80 dialects, not all of which are mutually intelligible.
The event was an enlightening start to the day, highlighting a group whose voices are still stifled in almost every country in which they reside, a fact which is further compounded by the Gypsies’ traditional lack of a written tradition.
Countries in Conflict
This discussion began with readings from two writers whose work deals with the effects of conflict on the sons and daughters of a nation as well as the ‘national conscience’ itself. Christian Tyler, an ex-Financial Times staff writer, began by introducing Rachel Seiffert, who read her International PEN David T.K Wong prize-winning short story The Crossing – a taut, concise narrative which explores issues of trust and betrayal when humans are in extremis.
Aminatta Forna then read a short extract from her book The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Memoir. The passage she chose told in a vivid, present tense, through her own ten-year-old eyes, of the moment when her father was taken away – eventually to be hanged – for making his dissident stand against the tyrannical Sierra Leonean government of Siaka Stevens.
Christian Tyler, whose book Wild West China: the Taming of Xinjiang has earnt him the status of persona non grata in China for its whistle-blowing of the Han Chinese authorities’ repression of Uighur culture, led a discussion which initially explored the conscience of the individual when faced with thuggish and despicable rulers. A member of the audience posed the question of whether writers had a moral responsibility to stand up in the face of such aberrations; to document, record and question the actions and reactions of a time, as well as the impact of this on the following generations. Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room deals explicitly with these such questions within one family; however, she felt that the writer had no more or less of a duty than any other individual to take on such courageous acts.
On a member of the audience’s observation that the Day’s featured writers were predominantly female, Aminatta Forna surmised that the pen was often the ‘weapon of choice’ for many women, pointing out that the researches into her father’s death would in all likelihood have been more problematic had her elder brother chosen to take on the family mantle and tell the story of her father Dr Mohamed Forna.
Despite all three writers’ willingness to address such dark, testing and often intensely personal subject matter, the event forcefully carried the message that writing about such traumatic events could have beneficial repercussions for all readers, no matter which time or country they reside in.
Asiye’s Story
The final event of the day drew a large crowd, as Asiye Zeybek Guzel – an ex-honorary member of English PEN – presented her book Asiye’s Story. It details her arrest, torture and rape at the hands of the Turkish police. Her crime had been to edit a socialist magazine which was sympathetic to a (subsequently banned) Marxist group.
Anne Sebba, a longstanding member of English PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee, had been involved with Asiye’s case from the outset. She described the atmosphere of intense fear in the courtroom during one of the three hearings of Asiye’s case in Ankara. She also talked of her frustration with the case, Asiye remaining in prison on remand for 5 and a half years before being temporarily released and finally obtaining asylum in Sweden. Asiye was sentenced to 12 and a half years in absentia, rendering her unable to return to Turkey or to see her husband and family. While in custody she committed evidence of her rape and torture to paper, and the resulting diaries were smuggled out and made into a book – published, extraordinarily, while she was still in prison in Turkey.
Joan Smith, Chair of the WiPC, chaired the discussion. The ever-compelling Juliet Stevenson read an extract from Asiye’s Story, the subject matter of which was at times harrowing. Asiye herself then read a section in Turkish and answered questions from the audience through her translator Richard McKane. This final discussion of an extraordinary day revealed a woman of remarkable endurance, whose strength and resolve remain undimmed despite the trauma of her past and uncertainty of her present.
Report by Tanya Andrews
Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/events/reportsonrecentevents/englishpenmarksdayoftheimpriso/