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WHAT DID THEY WRITE ABOUT HIM?
Abidin Dino (1913-1993)
"One day, little naughty Nâzım had broken a window.
" 'Why did you break the window?' The answer of the boy was telling:
" 'To make an airplane out of glass!'
"These words may be deemed the beginnings of a new poetic genre. Much later, the imprisoned poet would call the Prison of Bursa an 'Airplane of Stone'. Nâzım was going to have a strange relationship with planes. For example, his sudden adventurous return to Moscow after the heart attack he had in Beijing.
"His flight to Havana was delightful, on the other hand; during his flight to Tanganyika his heart throbbed with pain. Of course, it was not right for him to go there. What jerks had asked Nâzım to make this trip? On its way to Lebanon the plane passed over Turkey; it was flying so high that Turkey looked like an ashen rug.
"Nâzım said with the deepest grief that he had watched scenes of his own native land from the plane's porthole. He had watched those plains, mountains, rivers, valleys with love and for the last time." (From "Foreword to an Unwritten Book," 24 September 1990.)
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