#BORDERLANDS 3 REDUX FREE#

Refik endeavored to steer closer to the ship while Nâzım shouted up several more times to the crew in Russian and French. The little motorboat was pummeled by the waves that were churned up by the much larger vessel. Refik changed course and the Chris-Craft slowly approached the Plekhanov, with the brothers-in- law now waving excitedly at the ship’s surprised crewmembers. As was the case with Bulgaria, Romania was an ally of the USSR, which meant that boarding the Plekhanov could conceivably be just as useful to Nâzım as traveling all the way into Bulgarian waters.Īfter a brief conversation, Nâzım and Refik decided to audible. Getting closer, the brothers-in-law could see that it was a Romanian cargo vessel called the Plekhanov. Riding the choppy tide of the Black Sea toward Bulgaria, Nâzım and Refik noticed that a ship had appeared in the distance. Someone had rained down blows upon the bespectacled novelist’s head, crushing Sabahattin Ali’s skull with a bat. On April 16, a Turkish shepherd discovered his decomposing body near the frontier. Weeks passed, however, and Ali never showed up on the Bulgarian side of the border. In March of 1948 the author of Madonna in a Fur Coat pa id a guide to lead him from Kırklareli, Turkey to Burgaz, Bulgaria. For an idea of what could go wrong, Nâzım needed to look no further than at the example of his fellow le ft ist writer Sabahattin Ali. In recent years, the Turkish–Bulgarian border had emerged as a potential Cold War flash point, with the two countries positioned in opposite camps across a burgeoning superpower divide. The frontier between Turkey and Bulgaria was now a death-zone for those attempting to cross illegally.

#BORDERLANDS 3 REDUX FREE#

Yet Nâzım and Refik, the husband of Nâzım’s younger half- sister Melda, were proposing something even more challenging than just riding the potentially treacherous seas on such a small craft. They were also hoping to somehow make their way past the patrols of Turkish navy and coast guard vessels and enter the territorial waters of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, some 130 miles away. The idea was for them to do an end-around past the Iron Curtain, enabling Nâzım to go and live as a free man, he hoped, in the USSR or elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc. On the face of it, their plan was insane. The Black Sea is notorious for its rough waves and strong current. Arriving at the pre- arranged spot, he exited the car and made his way down to the Bosphorus, the turquoise saltwater strait that divides Istanbul-and Turkey-between continental Europe and Asia.2 The Bosphorus would this morning serve as the highway that Nâzım would take in his escape, just as he had done when he had fled British-occupied Istanbul at the age of nineteen. This time, Nâzım’s brother-in-law Refik was spiriting him out of the country on a small Chris-Craft motorboat. Creeping out of his home on the Anatolian (or “Asian”) side of Istanbul, he had walked down to the main road and flagged a taxi. Nâzım Hikmet would remain trapped inside no longer.Īs he would later recount to his debriefers in Romania, Nâzım had started this day well before dawn. His once reddish-blond locks were showing hints of grey and Nâzım’s face was now creased with age, but still he was seeking to add chapters to his life. At forty-nine years of age, Nâzım was making one more reach beyond his grasp, seeking to escape from the prison that Turkey had become for him.

It was an early Sunday morning-June 17, 1951-and Nâzım Hikmet was awakening into darkness. Turkey’s best-known poet was fleeing his country, heading north to Bulgaria.

Borderlands 3 redux