So, what’s new in the country of human rights? I wonder if he’s being sarcastic, but no. I try to keep up with the French press, but it seems outrageously useless and self-centred if you don’t live in the middle of Paris—if you are, for example, on a balcony in the middle of Istanbul. What are today’s big headlines? Two ministers resigned last week—economy and culture. Major political crisis, split within the left, big drama. And now we learn they’re together and have chosen, as their first political act following their revolution, to take a romantic selfie in San Francisco.

No kidding? I show him a photograph of the two ministers taking selfies on a hill overlooking the water. He squints, visibly disappointed, oh, I thought it’d be two men, that would’ve been at least a little bit interesting. Then he quotes Nietzsche, this little pedant: “Is the press anything more than an everlasting false alarm?”

Seriously, what does France even represent in the world nowadays. Human rights? We’re rotting in decadence, lobotomized by television and fear, kitsch everywhere all the time, culturally and politically dead as a doornail, yet still there are people turning their ears to us as if we’re some big, beautiful humanist voice?

He rolls his cigarettes with care, bites his lips out of impatience to smoke while trying to listen to me, tapping his foot to the rhythm of a song that must be playing in his head, behind all my bullshit. It’s early and I’m still in pyjamas, coffee on the table, taking my time before really starting the day—for which I have barely anything planned in the first place. After reading some of the paper I’ll do my daily Assimil Turkish lesson, I study without progressing through dialogues in which one learns how to apologize for not having prepared dinner for one’s husband and how to not get angry in a traffic jam; since I neither cook nor drive, I don’t retain a thing. I’d like to be able to read at least Twitter, which, in the absence of free press, is the only properly updated news source in this country. He’s already tied his sneakers and put rings on his fingers when he tucks the first rolled cigarette behind his ear. He’ll smoke it downstairs with the tea vendor before taking his motorcycle out of the room that serves as a garage, it’s an expensive BMW he bought on a whim, an impulse born of childish frustration that his revolution didn’t work out. He rolls another cigarette for later, after which he’ll go to the Muz, a former squat turned café that also houses a satirical newspaper.

What makes France such an important symbol that the whole world rose up for Charlie? I pronounce Charlie with the French accent, the soft ch and the open a, Charlie which most Turks simply call Hebdo. He grimaces. That had nothing to do with France. I’m not so sure. But then again, what kind of response would have been the right one? He pauses, checks that he has his keys and lighter in his pockets, gets up. What can we do for freedom, art, love? It’s a simple question, isn’t it?

[…]

I have a question—I know I’m disturbing him at work, he doesn’t answer but instead turns toward me, as always the door is open to my whims despite a subtle, barely perceptible impatience, an early sign of weariness, a look that asks if it’s really the time, and I feel this, I do, but since I never know how to stop when I should stop I sit down at the counter. He goes on doing whatever he was in the middle of doing, sorting receipts, it appears, and Anna grabs a cup, do I want a coffee, I nod yes—in your opinion, if you had to give just one reason, right now, for why Charlie, what would you say? You mean, why everyone cared about the Hebdo attacks? Yes. Freedom of expression. But that makes no sense, I tell her there’ve been close to a dozen similar incidents that ought to have been even more galvanizing. Such as? Hrant Dink. Who? I can’t even say his name right. Hrant Dink, founder of the first bilingual Turkish and Armenian newspaper, Agos,thecharismatic and indefatigable promoter of peace, assassinated by a nationalist on the street in Istanbul in 2007. Everyone knows Hrant here, they just call him by his first name, which is, for me, so completely impossible to pronounce. He could have been a universal symbol, no? Why at that moment did the entire world not rise for freedom of expression? That could have carried greater weight than protesting ISIS; at least Erdoğan, until proven otherwise, is someone we can talk to. Just then he stops, looks over at me, shoots a sarcastic smirk of thanks for having had the bright idea of coming to discuss the comparative merits of Charlie and Hrant Dink, ISIS and Erdoğan, during a rush at the bar. And what if, he ventures, you talked about all this with Georgi. He made some tribute for Hrant I think. What if you did that instead of getting in my way.

Georgi is an artist. I’m not familiar with his work other than the canvas that looms above our bed, an oil-painting-cum-newspaper-collage that depicts Stalin playing violin with a sickle. I don’t love the thing, but no one has asked me what I think about the apartment’s decor. Georgi is Bulgarian and speaks French okay, English very well, Russian ideologically and Turkish perfectly, all of this in addition to his first language. As far as I know, he does pretty well for himself—very well, even, judging by the amount of time he spends having breakfast on the terraces of Cihangir. It must be said that Turkish breakfast is an institution. Especially when accompanied by cheeses from Van, an Eastern city, the last stop in Turkish territory on the Silk Road. I want to know more about this work made for Hrant Dink. Georgi’s at his regular table, talking to a young woman I don’t know. He is an incorrigible seducer. Knows how to put himself at the mercy of all women without difficulty, nothing to lose—never hiding, by the way, the fact that he’s madly in love with his wife. Why hide it anyway, girls don’t care. Quite the contrary, some see it as a challenge, others a sign of honesty—I’m telling you, not one chick out of ten is put off because I’m married. Georgi motions for me to sit down as he simultaneously orders a cup of tea, placing in front of me various dishes of cheese and jam, some cucumber, too. I announce that I’ve found a new occupation, that I’ve decided to become interested in the story of Hrant Dink. Obviously he makes me repeat H-rant Din-k, too, and I wonder aloud whether it’s not for this stupid reason of the aspirated h followed by an unpronounceable r that his name hasn’t already become known throughout the world. Pardon me for saying this, my dear, but there are names that travel the world without passing through Paris. No, he didn’t know him, saw him on TV of course, the man everyone would’ve loved to have as a friend, big brother, president. He knows the piece about Hrant I’m talking about, but he didn’t make it, Erdağ Aksel did. The girl knows who Erdağ Aksel is, one of the signatories to the “I Apologize” campaign, which called for collective apology for the “Great Catastrophe” in Armenia and demanded an end to state negationism in 2008. A symbolic gesture never before seen on so great a scale, which followed Hrant’s assassination and prompted many Turkish intellectuals, writers, and professors to come forward in an attempt to break the taboo that had just claimed yet another life nearly a century after the 1.5 million lost to the Armenian genocide.

Georgi explains to his companion that I’ve already written one book, a sort of inventory of methods to kill oneself—at this, the girl looks perplexed—then says to me, delighted, so you’re going to do the same with us? One big gallery of political assassinations! You know the one who blew himself up with a car bomb in 1993, remember, he asks the girl, who nods yes but says nothing more, Uğur Mumcu. A Kemalist. There’s a plaque in Beşiktaş. And the guy who died in front of your place, what was his name? The one who died for a snowball. Georgi snaps his fingers, annoyed that he can’t remember, only the name of the sculptor who did the memorial comes to mind. The girl knows the sculptor, and if I understand correctly, the birdcage at the end of my street is indeed this very memorial. The guy was a journalist and activist, he was at Gezi, by the way. He was having a snowball fight in the street, broke a window, everyone got angry and he was stabbed. He died saying, please let this be a dream. Nuh Köklü! That’s his name. I write it down just in case but then I steer us back to Hrant, to the piece by Erdağ Aksel. Aksel designed the statuette that is presented each year by the International Hrant Dink Foundation to honour activists who have distinguished themselves in the fight for human rights, freedom of expression, dialogue across differences. I’m surprised that a well-established foundation exists, and Georgi says luckily this country is at the very least capable of a little memory, otherwise what would we be, the nightclub of the Middle East and that’s it? I nod as if this were an obvious point, then think of the line from writer Murat Uyurkulak, “If we had no memory, how would fear perpetuate itself?” Georgi takes my notebook and removes a marker from the big pencil pocket of his cargo pants, then draws an H with serifs, the bottom of the letter wider than the top, as if the letter were lying down, and he asks if I know that photograph of Hrant, the one taken just after his assassination, his body on the ground under a white blanket, his feet sticking out. A hole in the sole of his right shoe. Needless to say, the H he draws takes the shape of that body on the ground, feet turned inward. The H is a piece of metal made to measure, he explains, returning to the statuette by Erdağ Aksel, embedded into a wooden rectangle split in the middle. The H holds the piece of wood together and light comes through the crack. Georgi hands me the sketch and there is a pause. It’s clear I’ve killed the breakfast mood. But then he adds, do you remember that girl who did those performances at Gezi, the one who disappeared overnight? She made an installation for Hrant, too. Sentences from his texts traced onto pigmented Anatolian soil. What were the sentences? How do you expect me to remember, what sentences.

At the Muz, I find an envelope with my name on it containing a biography of Hrant Dink, along with a note from Anna, the server: I had this at my house, thought it might interest you. I take it back to the apartment, though it’s been months since I’ve opened a book. So much new information every day, I’m constantly on the alert, too tense to take the time to read. But here I am, Hrant’s close-up portrait before me, his head so big it barely fits on the cover, every pore visible, bushy eyebrows, just a few white strands in his otherwise dark hair, and thin lips that nearly kiss the name of the book’s author, Tuba Çandar. I put the book down on the table, walk around the room, smoke a cigarette, prepare some tea. Then I flip through it. The middle insert with photographs, the timeline. Killed by gunshot on January 19, 2007, in front of his newspaper, Agos, in Osmanbey, a lively neighbourhood on the European side of Istanbul. Killed by a young nationalist, seventeen years old, who wanted to rid the country of this insolent Armenian, the “enemy of the Turks.” Witness reports from the family. “I saw that the street was completely blocked, I got out of the taxi and ran. I thought, I understood, that if he’d just been injured, there wouldn’t have been traffic like that,” his son reported. I would have preferred to read Hrant’s story the same way we tell our own: without knowing where it leads. Not merely waiting for it to end with his body on the pavement of that all-too-familiar boulevard. His own story cut short, it’s those of his loved ones that fill the gap and their memories take hold of my hand, arms, throat. The stuttered accumulation of the same scenario, the same meticulous description repeated ten times over of whatever dumb thing someone was doing when the phone rang, when so-and-so came into the room looking sullen—absurd regrets, terrible ironies, denial. I feel some sort of nervous tic in my jaw. Ece Temelkuran recounts the screams of Dink’s wife, Rakel: “We trusted you, we stayed in this country. We trusted you! And now this?” “It’s we who were defeated that day,” adds Ece herself, “in the heart of Istanbul, in broad daylight.” A witness recounts that Hrant’s last words were for his murderer: “Don’t do this, son, stop.” I don’t hear the key turn inside the lock, nor the sound of the door opening, but suddenly I see a figure in the hallway put down his keys, take off his shoes, quickly I try to compose myself but it only makes things worse and when he enters the living room he finds me short of breath, in tears. He stands there, unmoving. I stammer I don’t know what, holding the book as if it’s an explanation, then throw it on the floor, at his feet, I wish I’d never read that. His gaze is hesitant, hovering somewhere between sympathy and anger. He picks up the book and runs his hand almost tenderly over Hrant’s face and the now-damaged cover.

I call Yemliha in Marseille. At this hour I’m not sure if she’ll still be at work. The museum gets abysmal reception due to the concrete cage that surrounds the building, basically requiring one to exit onto the outer pathways to hear anything at all. I call anyway, hoping for her sake that she isn’t working this late and she picks up right away, her relaxed voice indicating she’s alone and not too busy.  She says she’s just about to leave. I hear her high-heeled footsteps on the passageway and the strong wind rushing through it. Yem, what would you say if I sent you a proposal for an exhibition about an Armenian journalist from Turkey assassinated in Istanbul in 2007? How can I put this—she doesn’t slow down—you’re joking, right? Given the fact that your job, it seems to me now, is to write books and this seems to be a better subject for a book than an exhibition, no? And you really think this type of subject, a Christian assassinated by a Muslim, in the current political climate, right before the elections— Believe me, you don’t want to give this to a public institution. So yeah, sure, write a book about this Dink guy, that’s a good idea. How’s Istanbul, otherwise? You seem to be enjoying yourself, as far as I can tell.

She’s not wrong. But writing is so stupid, so solitary, you’re slouched in front of a computer all day, I don’t know how other people concentrate but it takes almost nothing to distract me, there’s always something to read or a video to watch or a message to respond to, never any shortage of interruptions. Plus I don’t understand how I always end up with the most miserable subjects—I’d rather dance, drink, have sex. “You think it’s so easy to write a book? It ruins your life,” even Murat Uyurkulak says so. Now I’ve got Hrant looking out at me from his grave, from the corner of Tuba Çandar’s book. I tell Yemliha that I’m going to email her a pitch anyway, just in case. That’s exactly right, she quips. Write two hundred pages and cc your editor.

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The Furrow is available now from Invisible Publishing. You can order a copy here.

Valérie Manteau is a French writer, editor, and activist based in Marseille. Her novel The Furrow won the 2018 Prix Renaudot and has sold over 100,000 copies in France. She is also the author of Calme et tranquille (2016) and Entre chiens et loups (2025), and was formerly a contributing editor to Charlie Hebdo.

Claire Foster is a writer, bookseller, and literary translator from French. Her translations include works by Bertrand Schefer, George Sand, and Isabelle Eberhardt, as well as Pierre Clémenti’s 1972 prison memoir A Few Personal Messages (Small Press, 2022). Born and raised in Ohio, she lives and works in Toronto.