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The Washington Post
Aug 26 2014
A love letter from a jailed activist to her imprisoned husband
"The hardest part is not being with you."
By Leyla Yunus, an activist in Azerbaijan.
Arrested within days of each other in late July and early August,
Leyla Yunus and her husband, Arif Yunus, have not been allowed to talk
to one another.
Leyla Yunus, one of Azerbaijan's best-known activists and a fierce
critic of the government of President Ilham Aliyev, has also
reportedly been refused medical assistance despite suffering from
diabetes and kidney disease.
She has been charged with high treason, spying for Armenia and other
crimes. Arif Yunus has been charged with treason and fraud.
To circumvent the communications ban, Leyla Yunus has written an open
letter to her husband, reasoning that it will "somehow" reach him.
Below is a translated version:
My dear Arif,
Well, after 36 years of life together we're in different cells in
different prisons ...
My dearest, perhaps you're unaware, I can bear it all: Terrible
physical pain (I'm already coming down with pneumonia from the cold
water), pressure from a hardened prisoner (by the way, she's from
Ganca -- our Ganca has let us down again) and even visits from those
jackals in the prosecutor's office. I endure the lack of communication
(I know that you are completely without communication, without a
change of clothes and medicine). I am also without food and medicine.
Just imagine, these jackals, these [Interior Minister Ramil] Usubovs
and [prosecutor Ibrahim] Lemberanskys -- they're so base, that in these
airless cells they would also leave us starving and without medicine.
But most difficult of all is that you are not nearby. For 36 years we
have almost never been apart!
I can't take being denied the right to communicate with you even
through letters, so I decided to write you through these open letters.
Somehow they will reach you.
You know, together we have read it all -- [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn,
Varlaam Shalamov, [Vasily] Grossman and [Vasily] Aksyonov. Together,
we often discussed how spouses who had been arrested together felt.
And in 1937 there were a great many of them.
We just never would have predicted that the 21st century would bring
the repression of the 1930s. Yesterday I recalled the words of
[Vasily] Grossman in his "Life and Fate." He writes about the
consciences of prisoners: "An awful anguish is replaced by a foolish
opium -- optimism ..."
How accurately he spoke about optimism in the prisons of an
authoritarian apparatus. And even then, Jews, in prison camps in 1942,
assuredly passed each other information: "Hitler has been given an
ultimatum -- immediately free all of the Jews!"
And the people believed ... They believed because they clung to this
foolish opium -- optimism.
We are both realists. "Politics is dirty work." We are fully conscious
of this. However life turns out -- the hardest part is that I can't see
you. And this is our 37th year together.
Hugs,
Leyla
(Translation by Glenn Kates)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/26/a-love-letter-from-a-jailed-activist-to-her-imprisoned-husband/
From: A. Papazian
Aug 26 2014
A love letter from a jailed activist to her imprisoned husband
"The hardest part is not being with you."
By Leyla Yunus, an activist in Azerbaijan.
Arrested within days of each other in late July and early August,
Leyla Yunus and her husband, Arif Yunus, have not been allowed to talk
to one another.
Leyla Yunus, one of Azerbaijan's best-known activists and a fierce
critic of the government of President Ilham Aliyev, has also
reportedly been refused medical assistance despite suffering from
diabetes and kidney disease.
She has been charged with high treason, spying for Armenia and other
crimes. Arif Yunus has been charged with treason and fraud.
To circumvent the communications ban, Leyla Yunus has written an open
letter to her husband, reasoning that it will "somehow" reach him.
Below is a translated version:
My dear Arif,
Well, after 36 years of life together we're in different cells in
different prisons ...
My dearest, perhaps you're unaware, I can bear it all: Terrible
physical pain (I'm already coming down with pneumonia from the cold
water), pressure from a hardened prisoner (by the way, she's from
Ganca -- our Ganca has let us down again) and even visits from those
jackals in the prosecutor's office. I endure the lack of communication
(I know that you are completely without communication, without a
change of clothes and medicine). I am also without food and medicine.
Just imagine, these jackals, these [Interior Minister Ramil] Usubovs
and [prosecutor Ibrahim] Lemberanskys -- they're so base, that in these
airless cells they would also leave us starving and without medicine.
But most difficult of all is that you are not nearby. For 36 years we
have almost never been apart!
I can't take being denied the right to communicate with you even
through letters, so I decided to write you through these open letters.
Somehow they will reach you.
You know, together we have read it all -- [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn,
Varlaam Shalamov, [Vasily] Grossman and [Vasily] Aksyonov. Together,
we often discussed how spouses who had been arrested together felt.
And in 1937 there were a great many of them.
We just never would have predicted that the 21st century would bring
the repression of the 1930s. Yesterday I recalled the words of
[Vasily] Grossman in his "Life and Fate." He writes about the
consciences of prisoners: "An awful anguish is replaced by a foolish
opium -- optimism ..."
How accurately he spoke about optimism in the prisons of an
authoritarian apparatus. And even then, Jews, in prison camps in 1942,
assuredly passed each other information: "Hitler has been given an
ultimatum -- immediately free all of the Jews!"
And the people believed ... They believed because they clung to this
foolish opium -- optimism.
We are both realists. "Politics is dirty work." We are fully conscious
of this. However life turns out -- the hardest part is that I can't see
you. And this is our 37th year together.
Hugs,
Leyla
(Translation by Glenn Kates)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/26/a-love-letter-from-a-jailed-activist-to-her-imprisoned-husband/
From: A. Papazian