I Will Never See the World Again

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I knew that my life from now on would be a series of opposing fires. I would surround those started by my jailers with the fires of my mind. When the Victorian prisons that we still use today were first built, they were based on a sort of monastic ideal. Prisoners would have to live in strict silence and were only allowed to read religious literature. The state believed that in such focused conditions people would be seized by their conscience and reflect on how to atone. Remember the name Ahmet Altan! Add him to the great voices writing from prison across the centuries – Boethius, Cervantes, Gramsci, Soyinka, Solzhenitsyn – and be moved to tears and indignation by his story." - Ariel Dorfman

V imagines that today her father’s soul is trapped, spinning in an infinite void, as if he is in a sort of limbo. Her imagery reminds me of that Brodsky quote, “Prison is essentially a shortage of space made up for by a surplus of time; to an inmate, both are palpable.” She writes The Apology in his voice. He tells the story of the sexual and emotional abuse with painful precision, only V has endowed him with something he never had when he was alive—the capacity to recognise what he’d done, to feel empathy and remorse and the desire to apologise. 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. He gets pulled into the interrogation office. The police officer sits down and offers him a cigarette. Altan says, “No, I only smoke when I’m nervous.”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. I became so self-enclosed,” he says. “I always wanted to do something different to prove myself, but I’d never found a direction that would allow me to make such a breakthrough.” 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. Thinking that I would die had a calming effect on me. A person who is going to die does not need to fear the things that life presents.

With the wind howling, there wasn’t time for arguments. Qiangzi gave Zhang a final push, and Zhang marched on. Also, there’s a long history of people having their freedom removed for doing exactly the kind of thing that philosophers do. I’m not saying all the people that you taught were like this, but many people historically have been ended up in prison for challenging received opinions. Altan cita de memória Saramago — "There is no consolation, my sad friend, humans are inconsolable creatures" — a partir do livro "Jangada de Pedra" (1986:60)Though the expedition is over, Zhang says his adventure is just beginning. He’s determined to continue pushing himself, hoping his feats can inspire blind people around the world. The guides only needed 20 seconds to tie a climbing knot, whereas it might take me a few minutes,” says Zhang. “But as long as our safety and schedule weren’t compromised, I did it by myself. It was my own experience.” I was surrounded by the horrible sounds of icefalls,” says Zhang. “It was nature warning me that Mount Everest is totally different from other mountains.” I saw two eyes. Two eyes with a cold, cruel, almost hostile look in them, shiny as glass, like the eyes of a wolf chasing his prey in a rustling forest. Those eyes were inside me, keeping watch on my every move. At the time, the idea sounded ludicrous — even to Zhang himself. “I had never seen a snowy mountain before and I didn’t have any experience of outdoor sports,” he says.

Once Qiangzi had left, the ascent became even more challenging. Zhang, who couldn’t speak English, struggled to communicate with the Sherpas. The instructions narrowed down to one word: “Up.” During this dark period, Zhang attempted to kill himself multiple times. Even with his girlfriend’s support, it took years for him to accept the hand fate had dealt him and find a new purpose in life, he says. 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.I didn’t have the right to be scared or depressed or terrified for a single moment; nor to give in to the desire to be saved, to have a moment of madness, nor to surrender to any of these all-too-human weaknesses. One question that comes out of The Apology and the four other books we’ve spoken about is, ‘Does writing have the power to set you free?’ Both V and Altan would say yes. Reid and Betts aren’t so triumphalist. Levi’s relationship with writing was poisoned by his survivor shame. Levi wrote to bear witness, but the fact he could do so reminded him that he had survived while others hadn’t. Bearing witness reinforced his shame.