[Les Carnets de Camargo] The Snail

by Sibel Horada
April 2020

My visitor at Camargo was a garden snail. It was attached to the rotting cucumber I’d purchased a week ago from the Algerian grocer. When I took it out of the fridge and held it under running water, it woke up and started dancing.

This was the snail that had visited Osman Kavala in his prison cell. They lived together in isolation until Osman was acquitted from the fabricated trial that held him captive for more than two years without a sentence. He took the snail with him when he got out. However, before they left the prison complex, he was detained again with a new offence attached to the same dubious evidence. The trial was part of Turkish government’s efforts to criminalize the Gezi uprising of 2013. In the indictment, a theatrical work, an unfinished film and works of performance art were presented as crimes. Osman, an art philanthropist, was accused of orchestrating it all. Now accused of espionage, the nightmare was starting over.

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