RED HOT POEMS Gorged with news of terrorist acts all over the world, an ordinary newspaper reader thinks that the men lodged in Guantanamo camp are just beasts who started it all. The common man in the West believes that these men are behind the killing of 300 innocent people in the twin towers and they don’t need our sympathy. I agree. They don’t need our sympathy, but let’s remember that they are human beings who were brainwashed into believing that what they were doing was good for their religion. To say the least, they are not worse than serial killers in USA itself who get a fair trial, go through the process of appeal after appeal and are not put away, without trial, to suffer in loneliness the way these inmates of Guantanamo Bay are. Now comes a book that tells us that these inmates are people who feel and suffer the way we all do. Some of them are poets. The book that I’m going to write about has just come out. It is called Poems From Guantanamo and is translated and edited by Mark Feilkov. Indeed, I’m not sure if the translations are good because the original languages in which the poems were written are Arabic, Kurdish, Urdu and Darri. The compendium has 22 poems – and, let me say it frankly, some of these are indeed very good – not as pieces of literature, but as the true expression of feeling and suffering. Shall we look at one poem? The poet is Ibrahim Alrubiaysh and the poem is addressed to the sea. To save the space in this column, permit me to lay it out in continuous format. O, thee limitless ocean! / Why do you get angry with the change in us? / We’re but helpless / We didn’t come here on our own, nor would we go that way / Do you know what sin have we committed? / Do you know why we suffer from this sorrow? / O, thee limitless ocean! / You sully our name because we’re imprisoned / You’re in cahoots with our enemy, and watch us like a sentry / Don’t the rocks in your bosom tell you what tortures we suffer? / Doesn’t the wasteland of Cuba tell you what atrocities we endure? / We’ve been incarcerated here, right in front of you, for years / And what do you get, O, limitless Ocean, from us except words written in fire…. / Hearts like live coals! Dear readers, can you suffer reading another poem? It is by Jumma Aldusari, a prisoner from Bahrain. Well, here it is! Take away my blood / Take away also my shroud / If my bones are left, take them away also / If my dead body is left in my grave, click your camera for its snapshots / Spread them out in the world / Let those who sit in judgment over us, see them / Show them also to those whose conscience is still alive / Tell them that this innocent man’s soul wants justice for his spilt blood / Justice, indeed, from the world, from the coming generations, from history! / What was this innocent man’s sin? / Why was he killed? / This innocent man was killed by guardians of peace in the world! The inmates of the camp prison were never given a pencil or paper. Some of them wrote on cups and saucers with the edge of a spoon, knowing fully well that these utensils would be thrown away in the garbage. Some wrote on the walls of their sparse bathrooms with toothpaste. Then, through the good offices of the International Red Cross, they were allowed paper and pencils to write letters. First the authorities thought that these poems were a secret code and experts worked assiduously to break the so-called code. Then the jailers finally accepted it as poetry. Well, I began this column about feeling and suffering. My readers… if you’ve really suffered, and also felt that suffering, the panacea is keep on suffering but don’t say a word.(Some material was gratefully culled from Saqleen Imam.) (2007)
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 18:41:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015