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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118217520339739055.html?mod=weekend_leisure_banner_left
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 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."
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.
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 © University of Iowa Press. Used with permission.
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."
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 © University of Iowa Press. Used with permission.
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." any 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.
