Here's the link to the interview - I'll pull out relevant parts...as it is quite long...
http://www.sikhchic.com/people/the_voice_of_a_free_man_ryszard_kapu_ci_ski Alicja has lovely sunny eyes and a warm disposition.
She took the chair at the head of the table. ‘It is my habit,’ she said.
Q You might be getting many visitors, don’t you get tired?
A I quite enjoy it actually. I try not to take more than one visitor or a group a day but I like it that readers come and connect with their writer. I see it as my job to preserve his legacy: both his work-place which was our home, and the hundreds of agreements with publishers, translation rights, rights to reuse pieces, and now have a prize in journalism instituted in his name. I find it my job to preserve the writer’s legacy, I do all I can to keep him as fresh as he comes across to his wide variety of readers.
(The Kapuściński award for literary reportage was instituted on the journalist’s third death anniversary in 2010 by the City of Warsaw and the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.)
Q You are a doctor (a paediatrician) ...
A Yes, I worked at the hospital for 35 years and have now been retired for over a decade. But I remain much more busy than I was at the hospital. In the Communist years, hospitals were hard places to be in, especially with children where there was a scarcity of food. I like this work, keeps me engaged. It is the idea that I am preserving his legacy. Then I have my grand-children and now great grand-children.
Q Did you ever accompany Kapuściński on his duties?
A The authorities let me go to take care of him at times when he fell very ill. A few times in Africa. Then when he was posted in Mexico as a News Attaché he took me along. I worked in the hospitals there and was appalled to see the size of the babies:
so small, so malnourished. I worked there for three years feeding them, nursing them.
Q Kapuściński saw so much violence, millions dead. How many revolutions?
A 27 (and she laughs). We change with just one or two … He did see a lot. Four times he got the death sentence. Many times he was caught in fights and was threatened with knives and bombs and guns. We never kept count of how many times he was arrested or detained by police and military. His work was risky but he wanted to do it.
Q Did witnessing all the horror, all the deaths, depress him?
A No. He believed he had a task at hand and he went about doing it. He believed in his work and he fulfilled it.
Q Even Mother Teresa is reported to have doubts. She wrote notes in her diary to God. How did Kapuściński escape the feeling?
A In every situation he documented, he knew both sides: those who killed and those who were being killed. He chose to tell the story of those who were being killed.
Q How often did he revise his stories?
A All the time. He would write long hand. He would look at his long hand piece and be dissatisfied. He would cut, change, make the whole piece so shabby. Then he would move to the typewriter. Then again cut and change. He never stopped. But
he never took to the computer. He felt it destroyed rigour. The good thing was he had an agreement with a newspaper that he would write columns for them. He had deadlines. Else, he would have never have finished...
Q Who did he read to?
A To me. Always to me. He read to me everything he wrote.
Q Did you comment on his writing?
A Sometimes. (She feels shy.) Very rarely I would suggest something. He would consider it. It would be incorporated in the next draft.
Q Where did he write?
A In this house, upstairs. In his study. He was always there, working. Working all the time.
Q Did he write in a routine?
A He just worked and worked. Reading, writing. He used to tell his students: to write one book you must read at least a hundred. He asked me to remove his telephone. I had to answer all his calls: Mr. K is busy. Mr. K will call back. Mr. K will
respond.
Lidia's Q How did you meet, the both of you?
A He and I were students of history at the Warsaw University. It was after the Second World War, we were under Communism. Friends used to say that at dances we both would dance only with each other and not look and talk with anyone else. Guess that was our love. He encouraged me to study medicine, to become a doctor. (She sits up, pauses, and then continues.)
Within a year of meeting we were married. Within a year of marriage I was pregnant. He was still living with his family and I lived in the ladies hostel. His mother was ill. Luckily, she recovered and he got a job as a reporter. Then he was allotted a small apartment and we moved in.
Lidia's Q And then?
A Slowly he started travelling and I was extremely busy with my work at the hospital. Even when he came back from travels there would be one or two nights a week when I would be on 24-hour shifts. But it all worked out. He would tend the home when I was away. We shared a deep friendship and from it, love.
Q What, if you now look back and wonder, would you say made the marriage work?
A I never told him to not to do something he wanted to do ... that's all. I never stopped him or questioned him about what he wanted to do. I guess we had that trust.
Q Did Ryszard believe in an idea of Justice? Or, did he consider it his task to bring to the world the stories of the dispossessed people?
(Lidia tries to translate but Alicja raises her hand and looks at me point-blank, and says ...)
A The latter. He believed there are many who wish to be heard but are not heard. He wanted to bring to the world the messages of those who are not heard. That was how he defined his role to himself.
* * * * *
We go up to see the study. At the door are grass shoe covers, the kind used by people in Plinsk, where Kapuściński was born, to cover their shoes from the always slushy ground. Some pictures from Africa that he took. The study is an L-shaped room, about as big as a badminton court. It is lined with books. There are thousands of them, so it looks small.
Q When did he start working from this study?
A We bought this house around 22 years before. Before that we lived in apartments. When we bought the house Ryszard was thinking of writing about Idi Amin, Uganda. But then Glasnost and Perestroika happened and the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republic crumbled. So he went to Russia for 13 months to report on the break up of the Soviet empire. I took permission from the municipal authorities to renovate the upstairs of the house and created this study. He came back and loved it. Since then, for next last 20 years he lived here and worked here most of the time.
Q How did he deal with fame?
A When The Emperor was translated and the world press came looking for him, he was taken aback. But he remained modest. Once at a book function, the organisers closed the doors on some readers because they had an official dinner scheduled for him. He got angry and asked the organisers to open the doors. He said, these people have travelled hundreds of miles to come and be here and you want to prevent them? This love for people kept him going. When he met people he would ask them what they did, who was in their family, the names of their children, what work they did, simple small questions. In fact, journalists had it the toughest with him when they came to interview him. They would joke: With him we do not know who is interviewing whom.
She explains that Kapuściński did not only start his journeys with India, he even ended his touring with India. His last visit was about a year before he passed away but he could not travel for too long. He went from Delhi to Dharamsala and fell ill so had to come back.
"In fact," she said, "I can’t recollect if he went anywhere after that trip. So his world exposure started and ended with India."
"And the books," I said.
She gave a wide smile.
Q How many passports did he finally have?
A Just one. Issued after the Solidarity Movement (1989). Earlier whenever he had to travel he would request the authorities and they would call him for an interview. It would be a long interview, 3 hours, 4 hours. Then they would issue him a new passport. When he came back, they took the passport back and interviewed him again. He did not know his interviews were being recorded. That is why the biographer found a huge file on him (she holds her hands apart about 18 inches) in the state archives and accused him of being a supporter of the Soviet regime. It was just a job. He had to face the interviews.
In fact, when the revolution broke out in Zanzibar, he was the first journalist in the world to report it. Even at Angola he was the only journalist for almost three months.
But the Soviets did not believe him. So, he had to ask the TASS (Soviet News Agency) reporter to send the story. Typically, a case of the Soviets believing what they heard from their own sources.
Q Did he ever have to work in an office? Or was he always on the field, reporting?
A No, he was either reporting or he was at home. After the Zanzibar incident the Soviet authorities asked him to take over as editor, do an office job. He refused. He wanted to report and he kept doing that or writing columns.
Q So, can we say, that in the Soviet regime, behind the Iron Curtain, he was the only free citizen who could live the way he wanted to live?
A (She laughs.) That is true. In spite of the regime, he was a free man.
