[Newspoetry] The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher

[Spineless Books]

> <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
>
>