Nasan was born in a slum. Her father died in an accident; therefore, her mother earned a living through working as a cleaning woman for the whole family of four members, including Nasan and her two younger sisters. Nasan is now aged 18, suspends her study and becomes a cleaning woman of a home of a couple of Doctors. One day, when she went to work, she was stuck in a traffic jam owing to the protest. She got off the bus, heavily hurt by tear gas and sent to the hospital. The Police raid on the hospital and arrested all the patients. Finally, she was imprisoned for six months though she knew nothing about the protest.

Sounds familiar? But it did not take place in Hong Kong. It’s a short story written by Selahattin Demirtas, a Turkish politician of Zaza Kurdish descent. He is concerned with feminism, rights of LGBTQ and liberal values. He was the candidate of the HDP (the left-wing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party) in the 2014 presidential election, coming in third place with 9.77% of the votes. Since 2016, he has been detained in a prison of high security. The story of Nasan came from his first collection of short stories written in prison, titled Seher (Dawn, in English).

Selahattin’s short stories are concerned with the fate of women, especially in Islamic countries. There are also horrible stories like a girl being gang-raped and then killed by her family. The girl is a victim of ‘honour killing’. The most stunning of his stories is the weight of reality. You know it’s not fictional. They are all true. There is an impressive scene of Nasan’s story: As her father loved cars and collected a lot of car magazines, she could identify all kinds of cars since her childhood. While she was detained in a prisoner transport vehicle, she still recognized that the car next to her was an Audi Q7. The driver looked happy and turned the volume of music very high. Two cars carried two different fates. One normal and the other tragic.

Here comes Christmas in Hong Kong; nevertheless, the mood for celebration is almost absent. On one hand, we keep on with our normality; on the other hand, there are protesters being caught, sued and imprisoned every day. The 12 Hong Kong youths are still detained in mainland China. It’s an awkward situation that everything is ill-defined. You call it peace, but there’s still a War proceeding; you call it a War, but you still go to work or school every day. It’s just like what Nasan experienced in the prisoner’s vehicle.

Some compare the pandemic to World War 3. Hong Kongers should have a great resonance since we have already experienced it in 2019. World War 1 & 2 are well-defined as there’s a War out there. The year 2020 is already a post-post-modern era. Everything can be obscure and hard to be defined. However, the danger may suddenly come to you. The illusion of peace might desensitize us for safeguarding ourselves or taking a further step. It seems to be the shape of the wartime of our time and we have no room for relaxation yet.

^ Seher I have at hand is a Taiwan’s translation. Thus, ‘Nasan’ might not be spelt as Nasan in the Turkish original and English translation.

(Pat To Yan, Active in Hong Kong and German Theatre. Playwright, Director, Lecturer. Elected Council Member and the Chairman of the committee of Literary Art of Hong Kong Arts Development Council.)

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