24 Dec 20 | Opinion, Ruth's blog
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115942″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]2020 will undoubtedly be a year studied for generations, a year dominated by Covid-19.
A year in which 1.77 million people have died (as of this week) from a virus none of us had heard 12 months ago.
We have all lived in various stages of lockdown, some of our core human rights restricted, even in the most liberal of societies, in order to save lives.
A global recession, levels of government debt which have never been seen in peacetime in any nation.
Our lives lived more online than in the real world. If we’ve been lucky a year dominated by Netflix and boredom; if we weren’t so lucky a year dominated by the death of loved ones and the impact of long Covid.
Rather than being a year of hope this has been a year of fear. Fear of the unknown and of an illness, not an enemy.
Understandably little else has broken through the news agenda as we have followed every scientific briefing on the illness, its spread, the impact on our health services, the treatments, the vaccines, the new virus variants and the competence of our governments as they try to keep us safe.
But behind the headlines, there have been the stories of people’s actual lives. How Covid-19 changed them in every conceivable way. How some governments have used the pandemic as an opportunity to bring in new repressive measures to undermine the basic freedoms of their citizens. Of the closure of local newspapers – due to public health concerns as well as mass redundancies of journalists due to a sharp fall in revenue.
2020 wasn’t just about the pandemic though.
We saw worldwide protests as people responded under the universal banner of Black Lives Matter to the egregious murder of George Floyd.
In Hong Kong, the CCP enacted the National Security Law as a death knell to democracy and we saw protestors arrested and books removed from the public libraries – all under the guise of “security”.
The world witnessed more evidence of genocidal acts in Xinjiang province as the CCP Government continues to target the Muslim Uighur community.
In France, the world looked on in horror as Samuel Party was brutally murdered for teaching free speech to his students.
Genuine election fraud in Belarus led to mass protests, on many occasions led by women – as they sought free and fair elections rather than the sham they experienced this year.
In America, we lived and breathed the Presidential Election and witnessed the decisive victory of a new President – as Donald Trump continued to undermine the First Amendment, the free press and free and fair democracy.
In Thailand, we saw mass protests and the launch of the Milk Tea Alliance against the governments of Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan, seeking democracy in Southeast Asia.
In Egypt, the world witnessed the arrest of the staff of the EIPR for daring to brief international diplomats on the number of political prisoners currently held in Egyptian jails.
Ruhollah Zam was executed by his government for being a journalist and a human rights activist in Iran.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. From Kashmir to Tanzania to the Philippines we’ve heard report after report of horrendous attacks on our collective basic human rights. 72 years after United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we still face daily breaches in every corner of the planet.
While Index cannot support every victim or target, we can highlight those who embody the current scale of the attacks on our basic right to free expression.
Nearly everybody has experienced some form of loneliness or isolation this year. But even so we cannot imagine what it must be like to be incarcerated by your government for daring to be different, for being brave enough to use your voice, for investigating the actions of ruling party or even for studying history.
So, as we come to the end of this fateful year I urge you to send a message to one of our free speech heroes:
- Aasif Sultan, who was arrested in Kashmir after writing about the death of Buhran Waniand has been under illegal detention without charge for more than 800 days;
- Golrokh Emrahimi Iraee, jailed for writing about the practice of stoning in Iran;
- Hatice Duman, the former editor of the banned socialist newspaper Atılım, who has been in jail in Turkey since 2002;
- Khaled Drareni, the founder of the Casbah Tribune, jailed in Algeria for two years in September for ‘incitement to unarmed gathering’ simply for covering the weekly Hirak protests calling for political reform in the country;
- Loujain al-Hathloul, a women’s rights activist known for her attempts to raise awareness of the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia;
- Yuri Dmitriev, a historian being silenced by Putin in Russia for creating a memorial to the victims of Stalinist terror and facing fabricated sexual assault charges.
Visit http://www.indexoncensorship.org/JailedNotForgotten to leave them a message.
Happy Christmas to you and yours and here’s to a more positive 2021.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
09 Dec 20
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115833″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Index produces regular podcasts on freedom of expression issues around the world.
We have a regular podcast series called What the Fuck!? in which a guest – a free speech activist, celebrity, politician or someone in the news – tells listeners what is making them angry in the world and the words they say when they do.
What the Fuck!? guests come from across the full range of opinion on the key freedom of expression issues shaping the modern world. Each guest talks about the work they are currently doing or admire relating to artistic, academic, media or religious freedom.
We then move on to a current situation affecting freedom of expression that fills them with horror and why. The podcast ends with our guests telling us your favourite sweary expression and why it makes them feel the way it does.
We also publish a quarterly podcast to mark the launch of the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine where we interview some of our writers and contributors about what is going on in their part of the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”115824″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/index-on-censorship-magazine-what-the-f-k-podcast/id1001981183?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”115827″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbmRleG9uY2Vuc29yc2hpcC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”115826″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://open.spotify.com/show/77TFEOwqLkgmAzeNSPAxBu?si=HoLIxNpzRumkvi9OrPRSzw”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”119099″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship podcast episode 18
A panel of people who all once called Hong Kong home share their thoughts and experiences on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the handover from Britain to Beijing. On the panel are Benedict Rogers, the CEO of Hong Kong Watch, Hong Kong journalist Kris Cheng, Mark Clifford, President of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, Evan Fowler, a writer and researcher on Hong Kong and China, and activist and author Nathan Law. The discussion is chaired by Index on Censorship’s editor-in-chief, Jemimah Steinfeld, who has lived in China.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116406″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 17
Index’s editorial assistant Benjamin Lynch talks to comedian and author Andrew Doyle about his new book, Free Speech and Why It Matters. They discuss incitement and his thoughts on why President Donald Trump shouldn’t have been removed from Twitter, as well as the state of free speech on the left and right.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116390″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 16
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been in prison in Iran for the past five years. He talks about the end of her house arrest, what has got her through solitary confinement and the attitude of the British government to her case and other Britons imprisoned in the country.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116343″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 15
Index’s Benjamin Lynch talks to author, historian and modern China expert Jeff Wasserstrom about why China censors, the Chinese Communist Party’s growing influence and what their censorship policies mean for the rest of the world.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116312″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 14
Index’s Mark Frary talks to actor and barrister Shereener Browne about the drill music scene and her fight to stop censorship of the genre by the government and Metropolitan Police. She talks about how the black community has been singled out by the authorities and how banning the music, which often has violent lyrics, does not solve the problem of gang violence. (Drill extracts by Chi Smurf and Yamaica.)
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116275″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 13
Index’s Mark Frary talks to Rahima Mahmut, Uighur singer and UK project director of the World Uyghur Congress. She discusses why the world is afraid of China’s power and the plight of the Uighur people. She also talks of the importance of cultural memories, including song and poetry, and her concerns for the future.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116239″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 12
Index’s Mark Frary talks to Dr Tunc Aybak, programme leader of the international politics degree at Middlesex University, about the trials of Alexei Navalny in Russia, Putin’s Palace and the golden toilet brush revolution. He discusses political technology and the state of the media in the country.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116179″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 11
Index’s Benjamin Lynch talks to youth activist Thay Graciano, co-founder of Skaped, about the importance of young activism and people self-censoring themselves on US college campuses, as well as the problems caused by Jair Bolsonaro in her birth country of Brazil. She also talks of working with arts organisations in Belarus.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116125″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 10
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to groundbreaking electro-pop artist LAYKE, who has worked with Snoop Dogg and is an activist fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights. We discuss racial equality in a Black Lives Matter world, the task facing Joe Biden, growing up in Texas and her pansexuality.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116142″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 9
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to Kirstin McCudden, managing editor of the US Press Freedom Tracker ahead of the inauguration of Joe Biden as 46th President of the United States. McCudden talks about attacks on the press during the Black Lives Matter protests, the storming of the US Capitol and Donald Trump’s legacy.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116144″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 8
Index’s head of content Jemimah Steinfeld talks to freelance journalist and Index contributor Issa Sikiti da Silva ahead of the upcoming Ugandan presidential elections which are expected to return President Yoweri Museveni to power once again. Issa talks about the role of social media and the future of the free press in the region.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116145″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 7
Index’s editorial assistant Benjamin Lynch talks to Director of International Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, Rebecca Vincent.
She shares the stories and cases that continue to motivate her today, including the time she was kicked out of Azerbaijan as well as the importance of the Julian Assange case.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116146″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 6
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to singer, poet and writer Amyra about her collaboration with the Tongue Fu collective.
Amyra talks about Black Lives Matter and her anger over the lack of resources for women, especially women of colour. She talks about how she wants her work to be empowering to others and why she wrote the children’s book Freedom, We Sing.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116147″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 5
Index’s head of content Jemimah Steinfeld talks to Tom Grundy, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hong Kong Free Press.
Grundy talks about how Hong Kong has changed since the publication was founded, media freedom in the shadow of China’s National Security Law and the challenges that his journalists work under to get the news out with many critics of the Chinese Communist Party being jailed.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116148″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 4
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to Dr Emese Pásztor, director of the Political Freedoms Project at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.
Pásztor talks about the Hungarian government’s ban on the freedom of assembly, making it against the law to make political protests. The ban comes as Viktor Orban’s majority government is trying to make changes to the country’s constitution which requires families to bring up their children “in a Christian spirit” and which only protects an individual’s rights to self-determination if they live their lives as their biological sex dictates.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116149″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 3
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to punk, poet and activist Penny Rimbaud, who founded anarchistic punk band Crass in the 1970s.
He talks about why the battle isn’t against Donald Trump but against all American presidencies and why the British are the most repressed in the world. He says the Sex Pistols and the Clash were only playing at being angry.
He says everyone should change their name and why his poetic namesake is the inspiration behind his new work.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116150″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 2
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to actor Natalia Tena, known for playing Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter movies as well as Lana Pierce in the YouTube science fiction series Origin and Osha in Game of Thrones.
Tena talks about female genital cutting, a practice that affects millions of girls and women around the world, and why she is walking the Santiago de Camino for The Orchid Project.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”116151″ img_size=”260×260″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s What the Fuck!? podcast episode 1
Index’s associate editor Mark Frary talks to photographer and artist Alison Jackson, who is renowned for her explorations into how photography and the cult of the celebrity have transformed our relationship to what is ‘real’.
She talks about her latest work, a sculpture of President Donald Trump in a compromising position with Miss Universe, the US elections and the very real challenges of artistic censorship.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content_no_spaces”][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115815″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://indexoncensorship.libsyn.com/website”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
29 Oct 20 | News and features
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A George Floyd protest in Los Angeles, USA. Credit: Mike Von/ Unsplash
“Blacks known merely to talk about voting in certain towns in Alabama or Mississippi could get fired or have their businesses wrecked.”
This was six decades ago but harassment of black voters continues in today’s USA, writes acclaimed author Darryl Pinckney in his book Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. Originally published in 2016, the book has been republished this October with a new essay reflecting on Juneteenth, racial justice and protest in the context of Covid-19 and the death of George Floyd.
Pinckney, speaking to Index just days before the US elections on 3 November, says harassment can take several forms.
“You can have a boss who thinks you’re going to vote the way he doesn’t like, so he will tell you things that aren’t true. If you don’t have the resources or the imagination to look it up yourself you will believe him. [The boss might say] that if you owe child support and you to the polls they will arrest you when they have your name. And so you won’t go.”
Pinckney adds: “Election day is not a [public] holiday. It would be difficult to document but some bosses tell people ‘If you’re not back in an hour you’re fired’. You can’t wait in line – you’ll lose your job.”
Intimidation, he says, also happens at the polling station, all of which has contributed to low voter turnout in 2016, particularly amongst black people living in the key swing states. It’s for this reason, as Index reported earlier this year, that many organisations have emerged dedicated to improving transparency and information around how to vote.
As news comes in that already 70 million people have voted early, we may finally be seeing a positive shift, or at least a return to 2012 when Pinckney says an “enormous black voting block” contributed to Barack Obama’s second term win.
“There’s much better information today,” said Pinckney. “People are so alert to the possibilities of intimidation and voter suppression.”
“Early voter turnout is so overwhelming, probably for a number of factors, one being not trusting the process entirely so wanting to get in there. People are standing in line, two hours, three hours, five hours,” he said.
Pinckney believes that the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd have also played a role in this early voter turnout. We discuss how several years ago Index published an article from one of the leaders of Occupy Wall Street in which he was concerned that the movement would not have a lasting impact (compared to the rights movements of the 60s and 70s, he felt that the ease of gathering a crowd today due to the internet actually worked against its long-term goals). Pinckney believes that this year’s protests have managed to bypass this problem somewhat.
“The huge early voter turnout and maybe a higher youth vote than ever is a direct result of signing people up at the George Floyd protests. People were turning the protests into a registration drive,” he said, adding:
“The walk from the street to the voting booth got a lot shorter this summer.”
While Pinckney doesn’t know what exactly will happen this coming Tuesday, he says that he lives “with an optimist and so I have latched onto his wagon”.
“You have to not be a prisoner of history and know that history is manmade.”
Pinckney has written before about “Afro-Pessimism”, the deliberate withdrawal of political and social consciousness by black people. Today the situation feels different.
“I think that the Black Lives Matter movement and the police protests and by extension this examination of the part racism plays and how society is constructed is very much not Afro-Pessimism,” he said.
“A kind of activism is in the air.”
At the end of Blackballed Pinckney writes that there “are new names to learn: Li Wenliang, and then Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Shu Kei, Nathan Law, Isaac Cheng. We must act out our freedom, one masked, unnamed girl said in English to a camera during demonstrations on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China.”
What made Pinckney chose to highlight those who have been persecuted by the Chinese government as a note to end on?
“The George Floyd protests were global. But look who is really up against it, look who is putting themselves and everything, their lives, on the line. These really innocent-looking people in Hong Kong. They’re up against this authoritarian state. You must remember them and their names.”
He adds:
“That kind of state is around the corner for a lot of us if we don’t say something now.”
Darryl Pinckney is the author of High Cotton, Black Deutschland, Out There and Busted in New York and Other Essays. His 2016 book Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy has just been republished with a new essay for October 2020. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
06 Oct 20 | Volume 49.03 Autumn 2020, Volume 49.03 Autumn 2020 Extras
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”The award-winning writer speaks to Rachael Jolley about the inspiration for her new short story, written exclusively for Index, which looks at the idea of ageing, and disappearing memories, and how it plays out during lockdown.”][vc_column_text]
British-Canadian writer Lisa Appignanesi has found lockdown a difficult time to write, but despite this she has created a new short story exclusively for Index.
Appignanesi, a screenwriter, academic and novelist, said: “It’s very hard to move within the instability of the time to something imaginative.”
Her story, Lockdown, focuses on an older man, Arthur, who reflects on his past in Vienna during the period between the two world wars.
Appignanesi has a long relationship with the Austrian city.
“I’ve done an awful lot of work on Viennese literature and, indeed, on Freud, so Vienna always feels very, very close to me and I lived there for a year,” she said.
“Vienna is a fascinating place. It was a great city – first of all head of an empire with many, many immigrant groupings in it, and then when it lost its imperial status in World War I it was a very impoverished city.”
She says the period of lockdown focused her mind on the restrictions imposed upon the elderly. “I have long thought about what happens to the mind within the body, people’s relationship to time in that sense. You grow old and stuff happens to your body and, initially at least, it doesn’t seem to affect your mental capacity and the way you grow through time as you are living it.”
She is also interested in the idea of people being present in different ways and how, for instance, the potential anonymity and the disembodied nature of Twitter means that people can unleash their anger differently from how they would if they were in the room with someone.
“Some of the rampant emotions of our time, particularly anger,” she said, “were to do with the fact that people on Twitter are not only anonymous but they are disembodied.”
In an article for this magazine in 2010, Appignanesi wrote: “The speed of communication the internet permits, its blindness to geography, seems to have stoked the fires of prohibition. The freer and easier it is for ideas to spread, the more punitive the powers that wish to silence or censor become.”
Appignanesi, a long-time campaigner for freedom of expression, was born in post-war Poland as Elżbieta Borensztejn. Her Jewish parents had what she has described with understatement as “a difficult war”, hiding under different aliases to escape arrest. The family moved then to Paris, which she remembers, and later to Montreal, Canada. She once told BBC Radio 3 that she “grew up with the ghosts of those that died in the concentration camps”. Given the family history, it is no wonder she worries about authoritarian governments and restrictions on speech.
She is now concerned about how governments are changing the rules of freedom of expression while the world is distracted by Covid-19, and the threats that may manifest themselves. “Your attention is distracted by something – something happens behind the scenes, and usually the same people are doing the distraction. This time it was the virus.”
One news item that grabbed her attention recently was about the closure of Guatemala’s police archives (see page 27), a library of information about the country’s civil war. Her concern is that “those archives are about the disappearances of people under the dictatorships, which were lethal”.
As others track governments who want to control the national story, Appignanesi says we must learn from history.
“It’s very important for our documents in Britain to be interpreted in different ways, and supplemented by stories we don’t know.
“There are always new histories to discover.”
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Lockdown by Lisa Appignanesi:
Arthur was old. Very old. So old that when the word “lockdown” had made its way onto the radio news he was listening to with only half an ear – and even that half tuned to inner voices – he had thought they were talking about him.
It seemed the world was joining him now. In lockdown.
But the whole country had been in metaphorical lockdown for some time, he reflected, its politicians preventing every connection between a fragmented people except angry sparks or empty boasts.
Lockdown was a perfect word to describe his present condition: confined to his cell for his own good by a greater authority. If he promised not to riot, he was allowed out for exercise at regular intervals.
Yet the notion of exercise took all the pleasure out of movement. He preferred to think of it as a walk, better still, a passeggiata. He always dressed carefully for the occasion – a suit, perhaps a silk waistcoat, a bow tie. The joy of a stroll was in part that people looked at, and greeted, each other – even smiled. So no stretchy joggers and sweatshirts for him of the kind his grandchildren wore. He liked form. He had always been something of a dandy, though these days, as he heaved what seemed to be boulders rather than legs along the streets, it was harder to turn a casual half smile on the world and appreciate its offerings. But then his senses, too, were in all but lockdown. His new glasses had him stumbling, the ground far closer than where he had last left it, as if he had shrunk back to childhood and well below what was once an adequate height for a man of his generation.
His first grandson had once asked him if he was named after King Arthur since he had a round table and Arthur hadn’t liked to contradict him – but the only table that had featured in his own childhood had been the one at the Professor’s house in Vienna. He played happily under that while the adults talked and occasionally the Professor would put a hand below the edge of the tablecloth and tousle his hair, then pat him as he did his dogs. He liked the Professor, who gave his name a proper ‘T’ – Artur. In fact, it was the writer who was called the professor’s “doppelgänger” who was responsible for Arthur’s name.
Doppelgänger was a word he learned early. Another, heard from beneath the table, was Zensur. He had thought that had the word hour in it, had thought maybe it meant ten o’clock, zehn Uhr. Amidst the chatter of the adult voices, he saw TEN blotting out all the hours that came before, a censoring hour.
Maybe that’s why he had this odd relationship to time now, as he reached his midnight. He was convinced that at this late age he finally understood, was indeed living, what Einstein had meant about time slowing in the presence of heavy objects. Arthur was so light now, his bones s0 hollowed out, that time didn’t slow for him. It sped.
Or maybe its racing effect was linked to the fact that there was so little of time left that what had once been full and slow was now racing towards an end. The thought of death could no longer be censored or repressed. No bonfire could destroy it. But then it hadn’t really worked for the books either. They had sprung up in other editions and elsewhere.
Arthur had been born in Berlin just weeks after the great conflagration of books the Nazis had staged and only a few months after the Reichstag fire. His mother had been walking near the Staatsoper on the night of the book burning. She had loved Arthur Schnitzler’s work and had known him a little, so he had become little Arthur.
It was as well the Professor was still alive or he might have become Siggy, since his books were in that bonfire too.
Was that why he had spent his life in books and collected so many in the process? He looked up at the study’s walls lined in first editions, one side leather bound, the other brighter in their contemporaneity.
“Arthur?”
He checked that the voice was real and forced himself into the present.
In the doorway stood the young woman he liked to think of as his companion, though his granddaughter, Mia, had called her – in insisting on the need for her – an au pair plus. Stella was certainly more than his equal, not only as tall as he once had been but with poise and a razor-sharp intelligence he sometimes thought could penetrate his thoughts without him needing to speak.
So she knew he liked the fact she was decorous and she hadn’t – at least not yet – upbraided him for it, as his granddaughter would. Stella was completing a PhD at Cambridge, and with a rueful smile admitted that she had been completing it for an unconscionable while, which most recently had included divorcing her husband. That was why she found herself in need of a room and an extra wage. No one had imagined lockdown.
Now she wanted him up and ready to begin the Sisyphean task of the morning passeggiata.
His study door opened onto a terrace and from there down into communal gardens, a square where the trees today were in full glorious flower. He was a lucky man. Doubly lucky that his granddaughter had somehow gifted him this magnificent creature.
“We’re going to begin today,” Stella said when they paused for him to catch breath beneath the flowering cherry. The sky between its branches was a Mediterranean blue. The blackbirds were in full throat. The young Americans with their twin toddlers weren’t out yet.
“I’m not ready.” Arthur heard the plaintive high pitch in his own voice and rushed to blur it in a cough.
If you wish to read the rest of the extract, click here.
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Lisa Appignanesi is an award-winning writer and campaigner for free expression. She is the author of many books including Memory and Desire, Losing the Dead and The Memory Man.
Rachael Jolley is the former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship magazine. She tweets @londoninsider. This article is part of the latest edition of Index on Censorship’s autumn 2020 issue, entitled The disappeared: how people, books and ideas are taken away.
Look out for the new edition in bookshops, and don’t miss our Index on Censorship podcast, with special guests, on Soundcloud.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_custom_heading text=”Listen”][vc_column_text]The autumn 2020 magazine podcast featuring Hong Kong-based journalist Oliver Farry, who discusses the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in the region
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