Asli,

Is there any point in trying to understand?

A man stands in the night. Another films him so he can share his message with the world. He has said goodbye to his wife and children, he says. If it is God’s will, he will die. But with God’s help, he will kill first. He will kill to defend his beloved country against the God-deniers, the idealists, the intellectuals, the Kurds, the Jews, the… He looks happy. He repeats words about his beloved country, over and over again.

Dear Asli, I fear for you in jail, I fear for you outside of it. You are forty-nine – two years older than my daughter. Necmiye Alpay is seventy – my age. Years and years ago, I experienced police interrogations. The memory has never left me. Years and years ago, I experienced the sound and the feel of truncheons, and saw friends and strangers  pounding on doors in search of shelter. You never forget such moments.

Of Istanbul, I have nothing but memories now – of meetings with actors, of small children painting old tires with boot black, of impossibly high sidewalks and the throat-singing stench from chimneys spewing black smoke. Of the splendors too, of course, contrasted with the warren of dismal rooms in which women were stabled in the sultan’s harem.

Is there any point in trying to understand the killing seasons and the ones who gloat over them?

We think of you. We read your words and share them with others. We invite friends and strangers to sign petitions for your release  and to join us on Facebook.We read, we write, we draw, we paint, we sing.

We live and think of you, of Necmiye and of all the others.

Renée Lucie Bourges, Graulhet, France