CAIRO — Poems scratched on paper cups and written with toothpaste by detainees at Guantanamo will soon be out in a book, giving in rare insight into their harrowing dilemma and fading hopes, The Independent reported on Thursday, June 21.
"What the military fears is not so much the possibility of secret messages being communicated, but the power of words to make people outside realize that these are human beings who have not had their day in court," says Marc Falkoff, the book editor.
The 84-page volume "Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak" will hit the shelves in August, combining 22 poems by 17 detainees.
Falkoff, a Law professor at the US Northern Illinois University and attorney for several detainees, said the idea came out in 2005 when he received two poems written in Arabic from his clients.
He contacted other lawyers and discovered that they had received poems from other detainees.
Some of these works were originally scratched into foam beverage cups with pebbles, and had to be recreated from memory when the cups were confiscated.
Falkoff said the US Department of Defense did not approve the release of poetry in its original language and the works were translated into English under stifling censorship.
The US military even prevented publication of many other poems.
"These are the same military censors who in 2004 tried to stop me receiving allegations of abusive treatment of my clients who were being subjected to intense heat and cold and forced to remain standing."
The US has been holding hundreds of detainees in the notorious detention center since 2002.
In a new stunning blow and embarrassment to the Bush administration, US military judges dropped on Monday, June 4, all war crimes charges against the only two detainees facing trial.
Tortured Souls
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"Mohammad, I am afflicted," Hai says in his poem, addressing the son he has never seen.
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Falkoff said the book is an attempt to give voice to the detainees and convey their plight to the world.
In one of the works, "death poem", Bahraini Jumah al-Dossari, held in solitary confinement since 2003, reveals his torment.
The 33-year-old has tried to take his own life 12 times since his being thrown into Guantanamo.
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
Other poems fature feelings of homesickness and missing loved ones, like one written as a conversation with the surrounding sea.
"Do our chains offend you? ... You are taunting us in our captivity," reads the poem.
"I want to dive into you and swim back to my home."
In his poem, "Humiliated in the Shackles", Sami al-Haj, who was covering the Afghanistan war for al-Jazeera at the time of his arrested in 2001, addresses the son her has never seen.
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 word.
To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.
Mohammad, do not forget me.
Click to read some of the poems
