I was on my way to a meeting. A glint of sunshine caught my eye. The glint itself was caught in a spider web. Amen for that, because there wasn’t much to say amen about at the meeting.Topic:  dysfunctional lives, the folks caught in them, those you can help, those you can’t.

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Reading Rod Nordland’s piece in The New York Times this morning left me dismayed. Asli Erdogan is sick, imprisoned and threatened with a life sentence. So is seventy year old national treasure Necmiye Alpay, Turkey’s living dictionary. And what does the title say? Turkey’s Crackdown Curiously Spares the Literary World. Why? Because, the article informs us, the jailed ones aren’t in jail because of their literary work. They’re in jail for their political opinions. Ah. So. Bottom line: if you don’t share their political opinions, it’s OK for them to rot in jail?

I understand full well this is not Mr Nordland’s opinion but such hair-splitting as the basis for a full article strikes me as odd, especially seeing the fate handed out to Turkish journalists imprisoned for their political stances. It goes without saying that should ever the Turkish government imprison Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk, subtle distinctions between literary works and political commentary will get brushed off the table. FREE ORHAN PAMUK, they’ll cry and they’ll be right to do so.

Nordland is a top-notch journalist with top-notch creds. As such, he has the immense privilege of splitting whichever hairs he so wishes, to as wide a readership as that offered by The New York Times.  I’m a nobody on a nowhere blog. I express my dismay for what it’s worth and repeat my customary message about freedom of speech and freedom for Asli Erdogan, Necmiye Alpay and all other writers, journalists, teachers and/or nobodies, jailed for expressing their opposition to Turkey’s current leadership.

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Now, I’ll put my dismay aside, and go attend to the day. But not before I express my gratitude to translator André Markowicz for his translation of Dostoevsky’s The Gambler. I don’t know how it reads in its English translations and I know my first reading of it some fifty years ago hadn’t left much of an impression on my mind. This time, Le Joueur* feels fresher and more alive than yesterday’s news. Merci, Monsieur Markowicz.

Onward, and so on.

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And, please, if a click here and there doesn’t put you out too much, this petition or another may not free Asli Erdogan or any other jailed one. But doing nothing at all doesn’t strike me as an option either.

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*Dostoïevski, Le Joueur, roman traduit du russe par André Markowicz, Babel Actes Sud 1991 pour la traduction française