Poems from Guantanamo
March 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am
Lawyer Marc Falkoff gave a harrowing description of life in Guantanamo at the Rothko Chapel in Houston Thursday. Falkoff who is part of the foundation’s speaker series, represents 16 Yemeni prisoners in Guantanamo. Of the 800 prisoners that were detained in Guantanamo, 500 have been released. The Europeans and Saudis have all gone home, he said, and those that remain are primarily Yemeni. Unfortunately, their government has little interest in lobbying the United States for their release.
He illustrated life in detention there through one of his clients Adnan who has deteriorated over the past five years into a shell of a man. Currently, on a hunger strike, Adnan is being force fed through a tube in his nose. Adnan, had been in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border seeing a doctor when 9-11 happened. After 9-11, the CIA dropped thousands of flyers over the region saying it would pay $5,000 a head for any Al-Qaeda member. Pakistani Security Forces under Pervez Musharraf rounded up anyone who looked Arab. Adnan was detained by the Security Forces and flown to Guantanamo in 2002 where he was kept outside in a cage. He has never been formally charged and is still waiting for his day in court.
Falkoff said over the years, he has tried to keep Adnan’s faith in the American legal system alive. “Death would be more merciful,” is what Adnan told him during their last meeting. Falkoff said he and other lawyers representing Gitmo detainees are having a hard time believing in the system themselves.
“Many of us lawyers feel we are fighting for America’s soul and the rule of law” he said.
Falkoff is currently part of a lawsuit to see whether his emails and phones are being tapped. “I believe the NSA has been monitoring my emails and phone for some time,” he said. One thing Falkoff has done to remind the American people about the plight of the detainees is to release a book of poems written by them called: Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. Any written scrap of paper Falkoff collects from the detainees must be kept in a classified high security building in Virginia. All of the poems for the book had to be cleared by the Pentagon first.
The following poem is from detainee Jumah al Dosarri, a 33-year-old Bahraini national. The father of a young daughter, he has been held at Guantanamo more than five years. Falkoff said he had tried to kill himself 12 times, and on one occasion, his lawyer found him hanging by his neck and bleeding from a gash to his arm.
DEATH POEM
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 of peace.”
March 1st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
a life in perpetual anger
has a cost, but it’s own just reward
to slash at the constant injustice
wielding the double-edged sword
take care not to get cut to pieces
the scars can take so long to heal
aim at the hardiest of dragons
remember they’re certainly real
when another may take up your sabre
though you may have done the least
you’re a part of the continuing effort
to once and for all slay the beast
Man has potential for greatness
It’s ourselves we must overcome
Perhaps one fine day we’ll be worthy
But I fear we have only begun
stephenhsmith
29nov2002