Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

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Sat Jan-31-09 09:47 AM
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Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Poetry gives voice to Guantanamo Bay detainees

Several years ago, an "enemy combatant" at Guantanamo handed his New York defense attorney a sealed envelope. It was a list of what he wanted to discuss at their next meeting, he said. Then Jumah al-Dossari returned to his solitary confinement cell, where he lived 24 hours a day for years. • The lawyer, Josh Colangelo-Bryan, suddenly remembering something he wanted to tell his client, got permission to go to his cell. There, he found al-Dossari dangling from the bars, having fashioned his sheet into a noose. The lawyer yelled for guards to cut down the 30-year-old Saudi construction supervisor. • When he regained consciousness, the lawyer asked why. • "I'd rather die than live dead," whispered the prisoner. • That night Colangelo-Bryan opened the sealed envelope and found a suicide note from al-Dossari. • "Take my blood. Take my death shroud and the remnants of my body. Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely," it began. • It is this note, along with other writings, that became the only intimate voice of the isolated Guantanamo prisoners. • They scratched words into Styrofoam cups with pebbles and etched them into napkins with their fingernails. Eventually their words became a 72-page book of poetry, Poems from Guantanamo, The Detainees Speak . . .

excerpt from 'Is It True?'

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Is it true that the flowers will rise up in the spring?

Is it true that birds will migrate home again?

Is it true that the salmon swim back up their stream?

It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.

But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantánamo Bay?

--by Osama Abu Kabir

Kabir is a Jordanian water truck driver. After joining an Islamic missionary organization, he traveled to Afghanistan, where he was detained by anti-Taliban forces and handed over to the U.S. military. One of the justifications offered for his prolonged detention was that he wore a Casio digital watch, a brand supposedly favored by members of al-Qaida. Kabir was never formally charged and was released in late 2007. He lives with his family in Jordan.

excerpt from 'Humiliated in the Shackles'

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'.

--by Sami al-Haj

Al-Haj, a Sudanese national, was a journalist covering the conflict in Afghanistan for the television network al-Jazeera when, in 2001, he was taken into custody and stripped of his passport and press card. Handed over to U.S. forces in January 2002, he was tortured at both Bagram air base and Kandahar before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in June 2002. Al-Haj was never charged and released in the spring of 2008. He works for Al-Jazeera and lives with his wife and son in Doha, Qatar.

read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/perspective/article972057.ece