Since adolescence Nazim has been forced to answer questions, many of them accusatory, designed to incriminate him, asked under interrogation and accompanied by acts of torture. He is a Kurd, born and raised in a remote village in eastern Turkey. His life has been marked by regular instances of detention and violence at the hands of Turkish authorities and forces. Before being referred to the Medical Foundation in early 2001, following a period of hospitalisation, he had not communicated his painful experiences to anyone, not even his family. He explains he grew up in a culture where people did not feel safe talking about such things.

He remembers he was 6 when his paternal grandfather died while being held as a political prisoner. Aged 7, Nazim watched as soldiers brought a body down from the mountains to his village. Adults were made to gather round to identify the dead man who had been shot in the head and chest. Nazim saw the dead man’s parents look on without acknowledging that the corpse was that of their son. He understood and accepted their need for keeping silent, but links this incident to the loss of any chance he might have had to grow up in the way he believes children should.

When he was 8 or 9 Nazim first witnessed his home being raided by Turkish forces. At around this time his uncle was shot while out working in his fields. Kurds in his village were pressured by guerrillas to provide food and threatened if they did not. Turkish authorities used terror to prevent any support being given to guerrillas.

At 15, for no particular reason, Nazim was detained and tortured by heavily armed paramilitary police. He recalls being led, handcuffed and blindfolded, to an interrogation room from which he had heard the screams of other detainees. During interrogation he was hit on his right wrist by a truncheon with such force that his wrist was broken. He was also hit with a wet rope on his back and made to endure falaka – beating on the soles of his feet. As a precondition for the torture to cease he was encouraged by his interrogators to admit to being a terrorist. Nazim was not, and has never been, a member of any political organisation advocating violence.

Nazim describes his response to torture: “Your whole soul changes. You were a clean, innocent kid and you became a rough child out to protect yourself… Your way of looking at other people changes. You don’t trust closeness. You can’t tell anything to even the closest people.”

These changes in mental outlook meant that Nazim found his experiences extremely difficult to recount, and yet common enough as to seem unworthy of note. His psychotherapist at the MF Paul Burns explains: “Nazim appeared to accept that his experiences of detention and torture were normal. It was important that he appreciate his experiences were significant personal events, even though many others have also been mistreated.”

Early on in the process of recording his life-story, Nazim would often become unresponsive, staring down at the floor during therapy, saying nothing. At the time he was facing accommodation problems, “he was in a very bad space” says Paul. To increase his chances of recovery, and to provide documentary evidence supporting his application to stay in the UK, it was necessary for Nazim to communicate his experiences as fully as possible. Yet at times Nazim was too distressed to talk about traumatic events. A less direct way of working with his experiences was needed.

Working closely with Nazim and Paul was Richard McKane, a poet with fifteen years experience of interpreting at the Medical Foundation and a leading translator of Turkish and Russian poets. Paul and Richard noted and appreciated Nazim’s use of images to describe his thoughts and emotions. ‘Symbolic Modelling’ was chosen as part of Nazim’s therapy to assist him to identify and explore the metaphors that had come to represent his experiences. Paul was encouraged to try this approach with an interpreter because of Richard’s interest in this approach and his experience as a translator of poetry.

Paul has not used the Symbolic Modelling approach with other MF clients in the past, due to the demands placed upon the interpreter in dealing with such subtleties of language. Fortunately the three mainstays of Richard’s life, poetry, translating and interpreting converged to offer particular assistance in this case.

Nazim seems embarrassed to be described by Paul and Richard as “naturally poetic”. He argues that this description belongs to great Turkish writers such as Oktay Rifat and Nazim Hikmet, (the latter providing a fitting pen-name for our client). Nazim recalls these poets, both of whom have been translated by Richard, with deep respect. He identifies particularly “His fate is clear,” he says, referring to the poet’s years in exile. “The last words of Hikmet were ‘my country, my country’.”

Below we publish Nazim’s written account of his early life, translated by Richard. Writing mostly alone, but also as part of Sonja Linden’s writing group at the Medical Foundation, Nazim says he “wants to hold up before people the conditions we [Kurds] live in.” He describes his style as “realistic and simple” but this does scant justice to his evocative recollection of childhood, in which the reader is made to see through a child’s eyes the “world’s badnesses, uglinesses and beauties.” In Nazim’s imagination birds are seen to “celebrate” and nature is described as “festive.”

In spite of Nazim’s humble protestation that “poets have to be inspired”, his bittersweet recollection of home is filled with the same compelling details, visual and immediate, that tumble out of him in conversation. He is a quietly spoken man, speaking tentatively, with deliberation rather than calculation; reluctant to answer until he is sure he has fully understood a question. When talking with him, one is struck by his natural use of metaphors, pregnant with meaning, which combine to form whole and distinctive pictures of his sense of self and his understanding of what torture has done to him. Paul adds, “Nazim is unusual in the extent to which he uses graphic metaphor and the way in which he develops themes around his images.”

To limit their influence on Nazim’s metaphors both therapist and interpreter used ‘Clean Language’. Clean language questions encourage a client to explore metaphors without leading or interpreting. One advantage of this, Richard explains, is that, “the session is one that is perceived by the client as the total opposite of an interrogation under torture.”

While not seeking to create ‘art’ clean language therapy does often lead to poetic speech. When asked about his emotions, following an initial rejection of his asylum application, Nazim says he feels like “prey in the lion’s claws, and the lion can tear me apart at any moment.” Paul is confident that a successful appeal will aid Nazim’s recovery, and is hopeful that since UK authorities have accepted Nazim was tortured, from documentation provided by the Medical Foundation, he will be allowed to find a safe home here.

Only the Medical Foundation provides the combination of treatment, support and advice that Nazim continues to need. He also benefits from an MF psychiatrist, GP and legal advisors. He evidently enjoys a warm rapport with his therapist, “Paul and I get on very well – I don’t know why,” he says to general laughter. Although Nazim has made some positive progress there are still days when he is depressed and less able to communicate. He wishes to continue to write and says his new and much improved accommodation is helping him to think more clearly.

Asked if there is anything he would like to say to our supporters, Nazim talks about the Medical Foundation staff, invoking a startling image worthy of William Blake. “I would say, support these angels and their wings so that they can fly freely. Then they will capture more souls out of the clutches of the Angel of Death.”

[Below is Nazim’s story]