Guantanamo's Only Justice Is Poetic

"I have composed these lines

For the day when your children have grown old."

— Abdullah Thani Faris al Anazi, Guatanamo detainee

 

When law professor Marc Falkoff volunteered in 2004 to represent some of the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, he figured they were as horrible and dangerous as the Bush administration made them out to be.

"I assumed that all of them really were enemy combatants who wanted to kill Americans," Falkoff said. He is an expert on habeas corpus and just wanted to make sure the detainees had due process.

Then he met some of the 17 Yemenis he had agreed to represent. Suddenly, they had names and faces. And virtually no evidence against them.

"If I was allowed to tell Americans what was in those files, they'd be saying, 'Are you serious? We've kept this guy for six years on this ?'" he said from his home in Chicago.

U.S. military documents show that of the hundreds of detainees, only 5 percent were picked up on a battlefield fighting U.S. troops. Only 8 percent are even accused of being al-Qaida fighters. Virtually all of the 500 or so who were returned to their home countries left as free men. Fewer than a dozen have been charged with crimes.

As Falkoff points out, journalists have not been allowed to interview the detainees. But he found a way for the detainees' voices to be heard by compiling a slim anthology titled "Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak."

The prisoners first started writing poetry by chipping out verse with pebbles on plastic foam cups. After about a year, they were allowed to have pencils and paper. That's when their poetry found its way into the hands of their lawyers, including Falkoff.

The poems focus on the suffering and abuse they have endured through years of incarceration without charges. Most express anger at America, but they also write about sorrow, hopelessness and humiliation. Many — such as Osama Abu Kabir, a Jordanian water truck driver — long for their families:

 

"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."

 

Pentagon officials stopped approving the translation of poems after they figured out that Falkoff was planning a book, which was published last August by University of Iowa Press.

It is now in its third edition, with 10,000 copies in print. Impressive sales for poetry. Falkoff donates his share of the profits to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The hate mail from the far right, however, has been relentless.

"One blogger called for my death," Falkoff said. "My college alumni magazine ran a few of the poems, and the next issue ran 2 1/2 pages of vitriol from readers."

Three of the detainees committed suicide in 2006. Dozens more have tried, including Jumah al-Dossari, a 33-year-old Bahraini. He has been in solitary confinement since late 2003 and has tried to kill himself at least a dozen times. In his "Death Poem," he writes:

 

"Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely. …

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 of peace.'"

 

Falkoff is "really, really, really frustrated" with the slow process of justice at Guantanamo. He insists, though, that he will continue to speak out for the many innocent detainees.

In the book, one of the poets, a 28-year-old Yemeni named Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, seems to give voice to Falkoff's own growing despair:

 

"Where is the world to save us from torture?

Where is the world to save us from fire and sadness?

Where is the world to save the hunger strikers?"

 

Latif ends, though, with a sense of calm that eludes Falkoff:

 

"But we are content, on the side of justice and right,

Worshipping the Almighty.

And our motto on this island is, salaam."

 

"Salaam" is Arabic for "peace."

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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