Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak Review

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Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak ReviewIt must be said at the outset that there are no great poems in this collection. Some are not even good, as poetry goes. But who would judge the poetic attempts of children in a hospital? The same sort of sympathy must apply to poems composed in solitary confinement. The publisher could have printed the bars of a cage over each one, for each bears the imprint of prolonged and tormenting isolation. None can be read as a purely artistic composition, without an awareness of the author's biography and suffering. Linguist Flagg Miller, in an analytical preface, relates these works to traditions in Arabic poetry, which is enlightening, but concludes that aside from rhyming couplets they have little in common with formal conventions. Likewise, they do not fall into the category of political or jihadist verse. Rather, they strike a popular and universal chord as cries from the heart, arranged in separate lines. They might simply be called poetical statements.
The analogy with children is not too far wrong, for all of these poets by necessity have been reduced to the most basic wants and desires. Some were poets before their arrest, others not. The translations in English tend to even them out, so that, with one or two exceptions, it appears that all of the poems were written by the same man, a generic man, maybe an Everyman of the Muslim world. This man wants to see his loved ones, to see God's--or Allah's--justice restored, to see--as poet Ariel Dorfman notes in his Afterword--the ocean, which he can smell in his tiger cage and hear roaring out of sight every day. (Think of it: it would drive you mad.) Above all, the "detainee" in "Gitmo," like every other long-term prisoner, wants to step out and breathe the free air, to stop being shackled and confined, to stop being tormented.
One of the poems, "First Poem of My Life," by Mohammed El Gharani, arrested at age 14, tortured by both Pakastani and American soldiers, and confined at Guantanamo since 2002, was obtained and translated by pro-bono lawyer and editor Marc Falkoff, who supplies three notes on the original. These notes are sufficient to indicate untold richness in the Arabic, especially word associations which cannot be converted into English. Possibly the other poems as well were written on a higher level than would appear at first sight. As Falkoff explains in his Preface, the Pentagon feared that releasing original texts would endanger national security, presumably because the Arabic could contain hidden messages. This ruling pertained to couplets written in toothpaste or etched with a pebble on a styrofoam cup. Only government linguists with high-level security clearance were permitted to see and translate the hundreds of poems composed at Guantanamo, and of these only a tiny fraction were declassified and released to the prisoners' insistent lawyers. Other poems were reconstructed from memory by the lucky few who were released.
The result is a book consisting of 22 poems written by 17 prisoners. For the most part, one author is represented by one poem. The "First Poem," mentioned above, tells a story: "They surrounded the mosque, weapons drawn,/ As if they were in a field of war./ They said to us, 'Come out peacefully,/ And don't utter a single word.'/ Into a transport truck they lifted us,/ And in shackles of injustice they bound us." Adnan Latif's "Hunger Strike Poem," featured in the Fall 2007 issue of Amnesty International, protests: "They are artists of torture,/ They are artists of pain and fatigue,/ They are artists of insults and humiliation." Jumah Al Dossari's "Death Poem" advises his tormentors to "Take my blood./ Take my death shroud and/ The remanants of my body./ Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely." He wants these sent to "the judges and people of conscience," who must "bear the burden, before their children and before history,/ Of this wasted, sinless soul."
We, the readers, are the judges and people of conscience, who must wonder how the US military authorities, holding a man in absolute confinement and isolation for five years, have been unable to determine whether he is innocent or guilty of anything and should or should not be brought to trial. What they have determined, as Falkoff reports in his preface, is that they are able to accuse fewer than half of the total 775 detainees of committing any hostile act against the United States, a mere eight percent of being members of Al Qaida and a mere five percent of being on the battlefield in Afghanistan. That means that probably eighty percent or more were wrongly arrested or sold out by others for a bounty. The whole thing is a violation of international law, American democracy and human decency. This book is only one of those that will reveal the US national disgrace in the years to come.
The University of Iowa Press is to be highly commended for making this collection available to the world, but I have a small quibble. In a volume of 75 pages there is no reason to print texts in 9 and 10-point type. Miniscule may look chic, but these poems are not dainty and should be printed in standard 11-point or even 12-point type. Let the words released from prison be seen!'Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak OverviewSince 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo. If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry "forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change," these verses—some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys—are the most basic form of the art. Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari 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. And let them bear the guilty burden before the world, Of this innocent soul. Let them bear the burden before their children and before history, Of this wasted, sinless soul, Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors or peace." Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year old Bahraini who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.

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