Poems from Guantanamo »

Marc Falkoff is an assistant professor at the Northern Illinois University College of Law and attorney for seventeen Guantánamo prisoners. Flagg Miller is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean American poet, novelist, playwright, and human rights activist who holds the Walter Hines Page Chair of Literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University.

This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantanamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantanamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantanamo, in legal limbo.

Acknowledgments     ix
Notes on Guantanamo   Marc Falkoff     1
Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry   Flagg Miller     7
They Fight for Peace   Shaker Abdurraheem Aamer     19
O Prison Darkness   Abdulaziz     21
I Shall Not Complain   Abdulaziz     23
To My Father   Abdullah Thani Faris al Anazi     24
Lions in the Gage   Ustad Badruzzaman Badr     27
Homeward Bound   Moazzam Begg     29
Death Poem   Jumah al Dossari     31
They Cannot Help   Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost     33
Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost     35
Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost     35
Two Fragments   Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost     36
First Poem of My Life   Mohammed el Gharani     37
Humiliated in the Shackles   Sami al Haj     41
The Truth   Emad Abdullah Hassan     44
Is It True?   Osama Abu Kabir     49
Hunger Strike Poem   Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif     51
I Am Sorry, My Brother   Othman Abdulraheem Mohammad     53
Terrorist 2003   Martin Mubanga     55
I Write My Hidden Longing, Abdulla Majid al Noaimi, the Captive of Dignity     58
My Heart Was Wounded by the Strangeness, Abdulla Majid al Noaimi, the Captive of Dignity     61
Ode to the Sea   Ibrahim al Rubaish     64
Even if the Pain   Siddiq Turkestani     67
Where the Buried Flame Burns   Ariel Dorfman     69