Hava Shala interview sequence

Hava Shala was seventeen years old when she was imprisoned because of her political beliefs. To keep herself sane she sang, and emerged from prison as a leader of the Blood Feuds Reconciliation Movement.

 


The warden came near me, very close to my face, with a very cynical grin… after the ceremony of visiting hours was over, people were still outside, but they had withdrawn a little. And he said, ‘What would you do with me, if your time were to come?’ Since I was very hurt, because of Vezire, and I was in a very particular emotional state, I said to him…. I said it in a way that I never thought I would, absolutely. First, I never thought that I would have the opportunity to say it to him. Second, I never thought I would say it so calmly. Absolutely, I never thought I would.

I did not think at all about what I said, but I was one hundred percent convinced that it had to be that way, I have no explanation of how I have…it was irritating having him come so close to me, so cynical, so…inhumane. Instead, I said it in a very, very calm way, extraordinarily calm way. I cannot explain it to myself. I said, ‘I would have killed you.’ […] For example the song, “Come friends, let’s drink,” a whole sequence, of course I cannot reproduce it all, ‘Come friends let’s drink, let’s drink one glass, let’s drink one glass of raki. Come friends let’s drink because we will not become any younger, because years fly, they fly one by one, girls become old women, our youth doesn’t come back anymore.’