Alan Cumming read the following letter from 2017 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award-winner Oleg Sentsov at the 2017 Literary Gala.
Finding yourself in prison, you learn to live on hope, even when there is none. But there is time to think. Long, and about many things. About how you lived and what’s left after you, and if it still remains. You begin to look at yourself as though from the other side, at the one who stayed there in freedom. The you of today looks back at the you of yesterday, more sober, more shrewd, and in some ways even more cruel. The portrait from the outside does not seem so attractive from the inside. How could anyone want to communicate with such a person?
You want to become better than him. And all that is superfluous, exaggerated, and superficial disappears. And the main thing begins to come through, that which is really worth living for. About which you can only learn here or at war. Understanding that those close to you, the time that you spent with them, and the warmth that they gave you—this is the most important thing in life. Only this remains—all else disappears and is forgotten. You don’t yearn for anything as much as you yearn for this. Earlier it seemed unimportant and natural, like air, which you don’t notice until it is taken away. Children, even other people’s children, even those that you meet one time, will always be dear to you. And this is why it is so unbearable to hear children’s voices, which sometimes the wind carries in from beyond the [prison] fence.
The last time I went to the Maidan, where people had already begun perishing, my mother said, “Why are you going there? You have two children!” I answered that it was precisely because of that that I was going there—I don’t want them to live in a country of slaves. We won then, but it proved not to be the end. And the struggle continues, but now without me. I’m in prison, and like any prisoner, it is very difficult for me to answer a simple childish question: “Daddy, when are you coming home?”
