"Mountain Language" by Harold Pinter

On November 6 the Book Club discussed Mountain Language, a short play by Harold Pinter. 

Mountain Langauge is set in a prison in an unnamed country. The prisoners are not permitted to  speak their mother tongue.  The name of their language is not given. Harold Pinter visited Turkey in 1988 and witnessed the conditions of Kurds in prisons there; he wrote this play upon his return. He claimed it doesn’t relate to Kurds, but it concisely describes situation of Kurdish prisoners.

Our Book Club organizer Yüksel Serindag invited Aysel Çürükkaya to this session because in the 1980s, during the dictatorship, she spent several years in the brutal Diyarbakir prison. The play corresponds to many of her experiences there.

Aysel grew up near Dersim and was a friend of Sakine Cansız from middle school. They were both arrested in 1979, imprisoned, and experienced torture. After six and a half years in prison, Aysel was released. In the early 1990s, her sister was the victim of an extrajudicial killing. Aysel went to the mountains, where she fought for seven years against the Turkish occupation. She fell out with the PKK leadership and left the party, then went to  Europe, where she lived in hiding for 10 years. She currently lives with her husband Selim in Hamburg.

Aysel Çürükkaya spoke to us in Turkish, her words translated by Yüksel and by Xeyal Qertel. This record of the discussion has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Did you read the Pinter play?

In my early years I read a lot but not Pinter. In prison, we didn’t have any opportunities to read books. Later, when I lived in Europe, I was able to read and also to research Kurds. I learned the language and raised my niece-in-law, and now I’m retired.

While you were in prison in Diyarbakir, what language did you use to speak to each other?

I was one of four women who were arrested in 1979. Then after the 1980 coup in Turkey, Kurdish women who sympathized and supported the PKK were sent to the prison. Many of them didn’t speak Kurdish. Those who were educated could speak it and became translators.

 In her memoir, Sakine Cansız, who was with you in prison, describes resistance to Turkish oppression even while incarcerated. What were some of the ways you resisted?

We women were separated from the male prisoners. We had no communication or contact with the men.

One notorious officer had a dog named Jo. He would come into the prison with the soldiers. [The military ran the prison, so the guards were soldiers, not civilians—ed.]  He demanded that we stand up. We did not stand up. Again he ordered us to stand. Again we refused. Then he let the dog loose on us, and the soldiers beat us with batons. While they were beating us, they demanded that we say the words “I am Turkish.” We refused.

Later they separated us women, putting each of us in a different cell, so we were in isolation.  Sometimes they forbade us to see visitors. They cut off our hair with shears used for animals.

For months we weren’t allowed to take baths or showers. Then when they finally let us to take showers, they would turn up the hot water to scalding. Afterward, when we stepped out of the showers, still naked, they sent the soldiers in to torture us and beat us.  It was really sadistic. The soldiers kept beating us.  

For years they continued to beat us, but we did not capitulate, we did not accept their demands. We resisted by refusing to comply with their demands. We set up barricades in our cells to obstruct them from entering.  Finally we went on a hunger strike, a death fast, to fight these methods.

And when they started hitting us, we could counterattack.

How did you do that?

First, we tried to talk to them about their feelings for their wives and sisters. But that kind of talk had no result. Then we physically attacked the by kicking them.  By now we were 60 women of different ages.

Once an officer came into our [group] cell with his dog and demanded that we stand up whenever he entered. We refused. He then said if we didn’t stand up upon his entry, he would send in a group of soldiers at midnight to rape us.  That evening we talked and decided that if they attacked us, or tried to sexually violate us, we would hit back. We took apart an iron bedframe to use the pieces as iron bars to attack them with. That night the officer told the soldiers to go into our beds. When they got to our cell, we held up the iron bars and said, “If you violate us, we will beat you, we will resist you.” They left, seeing that we would resist.  

In the wall of the women’s cell, there was a hole, an opening, through which officers and soldiers, standing on the other side in the hallway, could inspect our cell. Occasionally they would bring male prisoners into that hallway to watch us. Then they raped the male prisoners with the batons.

Another thing we did was to burn our mattresses. Once a woman prisoner used a knitting needle to poke out a soldier’s eye. After that they separated us. One of the notorious officers, called Esat, divided us into sections of Turkish prisoners and Kurds, including women who were frequently put into isolation cells. Sakine Cansız was one of them.

The prison was located in a residential neighborhood. If you screamed while you were being tortured, the people in the neighborhood could hear you. To silence the women prisoners’ screams, the officers would demand that the men prisoners sing the Turkish national anthem, to drown out the screams so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.

We were often told to sing Turkish hymns and Turkish nationalist songs.

What about the mothers, sisters, other relatives of you and your fellow prisoners?  What did they do when they saw the situation in the prison?

The Turkish government would contact our relatives to try to get information about us. As much as we were tortured and resisted, they were tortured too, and they too resisted.

Our parents were the only ones who supported us. No one else did. They would come and visit us every week, no matter what happened. But they didn’t know Turkish, and in prison you’re not allowed to speak Kurdish at all. So when they came, they couldn’t talk to us. We could only stare at each other.

Sometimes when they got to the prison, they weren’t permitted even to see us. They had to stand outside the door. They still came anyway, week after week. The days around September 12, 1980, the coup, were a time of great fear. The state exerted a lot of pressure on our parents, economic pressure, pressure not to visit or communicate with us.

And sometimes our parents’ neighbors stopped talking to them, because we were in prison. So it wasn’t only the Turkish state that oppressed us.

Once Sakine and I and two other women (Gonul Atay and Fatma Celik) resisted through a death strike. It lasted 49 days—we were close to death. Imagine it: you are resisting, you refuse to eat or engage in any, you only have your body to resist. While we were in the midst of this resistance, the Turkish state refused to admit  our families. Imagine the psychology.

There were many things that I can’t talk about.

How did you keep going?

We fought for Kurdistan and for the ideal of Kurdistan, while the Turkish military was trying to get us to give up our ideals.  Sometimes we lost our fight, but we never gave up our ideals.  And we resisted.

After you were released, what did you do to heal yourself?

My biggest fear was that after all those long years of torture, I would never be able to laugh again, or even smile. How could I ever have anything positive on my face?

My biggest supporter was my daughter. She would tell me I looked angry and that it frightened her.  She would take me in front of the mirror and say “You look ugly when you furrow your brow.” She helped me regain my smile.

With all your knowledge and wisdom today, in retrospect would you do anything differently?

My cause is righteous, and despite all the torture, I never said the words “I am Turkish.” I continue to believe in the struggle for a beautiful future.

But at the time, we thought Marxism /Leninism was a science. Now when I look back in hindsight, it’s not so. Looking back now, I would try to approach things more scientifically or conscientiously.

And if I had today’s mindset back then, I would never have submitted to dictatorship in any way.  We created our own dictator, and when we obeyed his methods, we were serving. If I had today’s mindset at that time, I would never have done that.

When I was young, I was easily scared, If someone knocked on the door I would jump. I could not even express my own thoughts. I often ask myself, why not? So many ifs. But then I learned about the Kurdish nation, the colony. Physically I’m not so vigorous anymore but my mind is.

It’s important to believe in something. You have to be patriotic and love your country. If I didn’t have that belief, I could not have continued the struggle. I could not have been on a death strike for 49 days. I could not have lived in hiding in Europe for 10 years. The belief kept us going. I endured it all because I believe in something. If you’re not convinced of your belief, you will not be able to resist oppression.