The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher

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.

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 © University of Iowa Press. Used by YaleGlobal 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 © University of Iowa Press. Used by YaleGlobal with permission.