The chapter “Ahmet Atlan: My Country Has Not Imprisoned My Mind” narrates about Ahmet Altan, a dissident, and a future imprisoner that describes the morning of his arrest. The reader easily understands the main character was expecting the police to come as he had a bag of clothes prepared to leave. Six policemen entered the apartment asking for Altan’s brother’s location. The author called Mehmet and offered the officers some tea, joking that it was not a bribe. Same words Altan’s father said to the police arresting him forty-five years ago. Thinking about this moment, Ahmet describes it as a sign of no changes in the country as everything went back to “the dawn and the raid.” While policemen were searching his apartment, Altan was showing calmness and peacefulness. Afterward, policemen put him in the car, and the author compares himself with a dead person according to Anatolian mythology that understands he is dead hitting his head on the coffin lid. Similarly, Ahmet realized he was dead when he could not open the door of the car.
While driving, the narrator reflects on his future life being fully controlled by others and one phrase changes his attitude to ongoing events. Refusing to take a cigarette from the policeman, Ahmet said: “I only smoke when I’m nervous.” The author explains his feelings about the phrase as a conflict between external look and internal feelings. The new reality hit Ahmed, and he was getting used to the new flow of circumstances being very calm from the outside. The reality is accepted by the author also because he sees the smile of his father, his vast knowledge of history, and what he taught him.
Ahmet confirms that he fought the fears of reality, and calmly went to the prison cell. He described the road to it as gradually getting dark. Faces of prisoners were like wax masks, and their clothes reminded the shipwrecked pieces with no shape. Laying on the floor of the prison cell, Ahmet emphasizes that the reality was different for him. Policemen thought they locked him, but he was far away dreaming about historical figures his father narrated and he read about in childhood. The phrase “I only smoke when I’m nervous” becomes an important detail going through the story.