{"id":154,"date":"2006-04-03T08:16:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=154"},"modified":"2006-04-03T08:16:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T16:16:00","slug":"return-my-work-says-guantanamo-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/return-my-work-says-guantanamo-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"Return my work, says Guant\u00e1namo poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

From today\u2019s Guardian, here is an article on poetry stolen by the US Government:

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The Americans can\u2019t return the three years that Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost lost, locked in a cell in Guant\u00e1namo Bay. But they could at least give back his poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease help,\u201d said Dost, who says he penned 25,000 lines of verse during his long imprisonment. \u201cThose words are very precious to me. My interrogators promised I would get them back. Still I have nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lost poems are the final indignity for Dost, a softly spoken Afghan whom the US military flew home last year, finally believing his pleas of innocence.<\/p>\n

Accused of being an al-Qaida terrorist, Dost had been whisked from his home in Peshawar, northern Pakistan, in November 2001. Five months later he was shackled, blindfolded and flown to Cuba. Wearing an orange jumpsuit and trapped inside a mesh cage, the Pashtun poet crafted his escape through verse. \u201cI would fly on the wings of my imagination,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThrough my poems I would travel the world, visiting different places. Although I was in a cage I was really free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inmates were forbidden pens or papers during Dost\u2019s first year in captivity. So he found a novel solution \u2013 polystyrene teacups. \u201cI would scratch a few lines on to a cup with a spoon. If you held it up to the light you could read it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when the guards collected the trash they threw them away.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was only when prison authorities provided awkward rubbery pens \u2013 so soft they could not be used as weapons \u2013 that Dost wrote in earnest. His themes were love of his homeland, poetry and his children, and especially his hope of release.<\/p>\n

Sitting in his library, he quoted a couplet from a favourite poem: \u201cHandcuffs befit brave young men\/Bangles are for spinsters or pretty young ladies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dost lampooned his military captors, mocking what he perceived as ridiculous \u2013 women with men\u2019s haircuts, men without beards. \u201cIn the American army I could not see a real man,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they talk rudely about homosexuals, which is very shameful to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The satires delighted fellow inmates, who passed them from cage to cage using a pulley system fashioned from prayer cap threads. Some even passed Dost their two-sheet paper allowance so he could write some more. But invariably the poems were confiscated during cell searches.<\/p>\n

Early last year Dost was brought before a military tribunal \u2013 which he describes as a show trial \u2013 and then flown back to Afghanistan in shackles, with 16 other detainees. The US military said he was \u201cno longer an enemy combatant\u201d. Dost was allowed to keep his final sheaf of poems and was told the rest would be returned on arrival at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. But they were not, and he was set free without apology or compensation. His brother had been freed six months earlier.<\/p>\n

Now Dost has written his an account of Guant\u00e1namo, The Broken Chains, which is being translated into English. He estimates $300,000 in losses, mostly from confiscated gemstones and cash that were never returned. But his greatest loss was his writing. \u201cIt is the most valuable thing to me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Declan Walsh in Peshawar
Monday April 3, 2006
The Guardian<\/a><\/b> <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From today\u2019s Guardian, here is an article on poetry stolen by the US Government: The Americans can\u2019t return the three years that Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost lost, locked in a cell in Guant\u00e1namo Bay....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}