[Bookstoprisoners] Fwd: [radcaucus] The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher

[Brian Dolinar]

<http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress/books/2007-fall/falpoefro.html>
Poems from Guantánamo
The Detainees Speak
edited by Marc Falkoff
preface by Flagg Miller, afterword by Ariel Dorfman

<
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118217520339739055.html?mod=mm_main_promo_left
>
The Prison Poets
Of Guantanamo
Find a Publisher
Military Security Clears 22
After Checking for Code;
What's Lost in Translation
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
June 20, 2007; Page A1

Inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, used
pebbles to scratch messages into the foam cups they got with their
meals. When the guards weren't looking, they passed the cups from cell
to cell. It was a crude but effective way of communicating.
The Journal's Yochi Dreazen speaks with defense attorney Marc Falkoff
about poetry written by Guantanamo Bay inmates, which has been
restricted by guards concerned about its potential to transmit illicit
messages.

The prisoners weren't passing along escape plans or information about
future terrorist attacks. They were sending one another poems.

For years, the U.S. military refused to declassify the poems, arguing
that inmates could use the works to pass coded messages to other
militants outside. But the military relaxed the ban recently and
cleared 22 poems by 17 prisoners for public release.

An 84-page anthology titled "Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees
Speak" will be published in August by the University of Iowa Press,
giving readers an unusual glimpse into the emotional lives of the
largely nameless and faceless prisoners there.

"When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees/Hot tears covered my face,"
Sami al Haj wrote in one poem. The al-Jazeera cameraman has been held
at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 on suspicion of aiding Islamic militants.
"When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed/A message for my son," he
went on.

The collection, translated from Arabic, was compiled by Marc Falkoff,
a defense lawyer with a literary bent. Mr. Falkoff, who got a Ph.D. in
English before he went to law school, represents 17 Yemeni prisoners
at Guantanamo Bay, and he dedicated the book to his clients,
describing them in the inscription as "my friends inside the wire."

The approximately 380 prisoners at Guantanamo are being held
indefinitely; just two have been charged with crimes. Military
officials are dismissive of the inmates' poetry, which they say is
aimed at garnering public sympathy.

"While a few detainees at Guantanamo Bay have made efforts to author
what they claim to be poetry, given the nature of their writings they
have seemingly not done so for the sake of art," says Cmdr. J.D.
Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman. "They have attempted to use
this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against
Western democracies."
[Moazzam Begg]

Mr. Falkoff's involvement with Guantanamo Bay began in June 2004,
shortly after the landmark Supreme Court decision in the case of Rasul
v. Bush gave Guantanamo Bay inmates the right to challenge their
detentions in federal courts. He has since made 10 visits to the
prison. He has also traveled to Yemen to interview his clients'
relatives and friends.

In the summer of 2005, he received a poem with a religious theme from
one of his clients, Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman al-Hela. A few weeks
later, a second client, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, sent him a poem
called "The Shout of Death." Both men are accused of belonging to al
Qaeda.

The two had included the poems in their regular letters to Mr.
Falkoff, which are by military regulation first sent to a government
facility near Washington to be reviewed by security officials. The two
poems remain classified.

Intrigued, Mr. Falkoff emailed other Guantanamo Bay lawyers to ask
whether any of them had clients who wrote poems. They did. Mr. Falkoff
began putting together his collection.

Writing poetry was both difficult and dangerous for the prisoners, who
weren't given pens or paper until 2003. Some former inmates say they
used dabs of toothpaste as ink. Other inmates, including Moazzem Begg,
a British citizen held at Guantanamo Bay until 2005, say they
scratched their poems into foam cups with spoons or small stones. Like
most of the approximately 395 inmates freed so far, Mr. Begg was never
charged with a crime.

Any poem found by the American prison guards was confiscated and
usually destroyed, the former prisoners say. According to Mr. Falkoff,
most of the poetry he is aware of was written by prisoners who had not
written poetry before being arrested.

The obstacles meant that prisoners like Mr. Begg composed their poems
without any real hope that they would ever have an audience outside
the prison. "I never thought my words would leave Guantanamo, but I
wrote them anyway," Mr. Begg said in an email. "Like a message in a
bottle."

Martin Mubanga, a British citizen who was released from Guantanamo Bay
in 2005, says writing the poetry was a helpful release. "You had all
of this anger and frustration that would build up, and poetry was a
way of getting it out of you," says Mr. Mubanga, who had been accused
of plotting attacks on Jewish targets in New York. "It was a way of
staying sane."

Many of the poems are explicitly religious, beseeching Allah to free
their authors or relieve the authors' loneliness. "Oh, God," writes
Abdulla Thani Faris al Anazi, a double amputee who has been imprisoned
since 2002, "Grant serenity to a heart that beats with oppression/And
release this prisoner from the tight bonds of confinement." He is
accused of being an Islamic militant.

Others are sentimental. The poetry of Osama Abu Kabir, a Jordanian
relief worker arrested in Afghanistan and accused of belonging to al
Qaeda, expresses his dreams of being reunited with his family.

"To be with my children, each a part of me/to be with my wife and the
ones I love/to be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts," he
writes. "I dream to be home, to be free from this cage."

Most of the poems carry political messages denouncing the Bush
administration. "America, you ride on backs of orphans/and terrorize
them daily," writes Mr. Haj, the al-Jazeera cameraman accused of
supporting al Qaeda. "I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'."

U.S. authorities explained why the military has been slow to
declassify the poems in a June 2006 letter to one of Mr. Falkoff's
colleagues. "Poetry...presents a special risk, and DOD standards are
not to approve the release of any poetry in its original form or
language," it said. The military says poetry is harder to vet than
conventional letters because allusions and imagery in poetry that seem
innocent can be used to convey coded messages to other militants.

The letter told defense lawyers to translate any works they wanted to
release publicly into English and then submit the translations to the
government for review.

The strict security arrangements governing anything written by
Guantanamo Bay inmates meant that Mr. Falkoff had to use linguists
with secret-level security clearances rather than translators who
specialize in poetry. The resulting translations, Mr. Falkoff writes
in the book, "cannot do justice to the subtlety and cadences of the
originals."

For the military, even some of the translations appeared to go too
far. Mr. Falkoff says it rejected three of the five translated poems
he submitted, along with a dozen others submitted by his colleagues.

Cmdr. Gordon says he doesn't know how many poems were rejected but
adds that the military "absolutely" remains concerned that poetry
could be used to pass coded messages to other militants.

IS IT TRUE?

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?
Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?
Is it true that birds will migrate home again?
Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?
It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.
But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?
Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?
I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.
To be with my children, each one part of me;
To be with my wife and the ones that I love;
To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.
I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.
But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?
We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.
Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still
Justice and compassion remain in this world!
-- Osama Abu Kabir
Copyright (c) University of Iowa Press. Used with permission.

HUMILIATED IN THE SHACKLES

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.
When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.
Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.
The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.
They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.
They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.
Their temptations seize
My attention like lightning in the sky.
But their gift is an empty snake,
Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,
They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.
But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.
America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.
Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.
To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.
Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.
I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?
After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?
My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.
I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.
Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous.
-- Sami al Haj
Copyright (c) University of Iowa Press. Used with permission.

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen at wsj.com
--
Yoshie

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-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
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