Writing poetry was the balm that kept Guantanamo prisoners from going mad

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 7/17/5 | Thomas Coghlan

[SmithL]

Peshawar, Pakistan -- During three years in Guantanamo Bay, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost says that poetry kept him from losing his sanity. By the time of his release this spring, he had written more than 25,000 lines in his Cuban prison cell.

During the first year of his imprisonment, the 44-year-old Afghan prisoner didn't even have paper or a pen. Instead, he scratched lines of verse with his fingernail into Styrofoam cups.

One poem reads: "Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body, so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life. Those who have no courage or honor consider themselves free, but they are slaves. I am flying on the wings of thought, and so, even in this cage, I know a greater freedom."

"Poetry was our support and psychological uplift," said his brother and fellow Guantanamo inmate, Badruzamman Badr, in an interview at the family home in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, where they have lived as expatriates since 1975. "Many people have lost their minds there. I know 40 or 50 prisoners who are mad. But we took refuge in our minds."

Dost was already a respected religious scholar, poet, journalist and author of 19 published books before his arrest about a month after the Sept. 11 attacks. His prison writings would significantly increase that number, he said.

Along with thousands of poems in his native Pashto, he completed a book intended for future poets with an alphabetical list of all the rhymes in the Pashto language. He also wrote a book of Islamic jurisprudence in verse form and translated Arabic poetry into Pashto.

Both brothers deny that they ever supported al Qaeda. They admit they felt initial enthusiasm for the Taliban

[SmithL]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You're a terrorist at Gitmo
So it sucks to be you.

[dagnabbit]

The Left celebrating our Nation's enemies. What a surprise.

[Dog]

And the media wonders why the public hates them.

[peyton randolph]

Reminds me of an old Eddie Murphy skit on SNL.

Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
C-I-L-L my landlord

[bitt]

big smile.

[SlowBoat407]

Terrorist balms?

[inkling]

"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as the beheading of a Zionist infidel pig.
ALLAHU AKBAR! DEATH TO AMERICA!"

[NormsRevenge]

I smell a Nobel Prize for Literature, NOT!

[dts32041]

T leads to all sorts of ideas that ted kennedy and nancy pelosi and braniee the frank would approve of.

[claudiustg]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Kill an infidel
It's the right thing to do.

[zencat]

I'm thinking this has to be worse than Vogon poetry and perhaps even that of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.

[dts32041]

This is what really po's them "The Battle of Tours:
732"

[True_wesT]

This post lacks the appropriate barf alert.

Hey Abdul, I have your balm right here!

[kromike]

Call me confused, but isn't Islam pretty much the religious sanctuary for the already murderously-insane? So, if these sexually-repressed psychos are already unstable with bloodlust when they're captured, how does Gitmo drive them mad?

[Windsong]

"Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body, so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life."

John Donne, he aint.

[RichInOC]

AHMED: WHAT HAPPEN?
ABDUL: SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BALM.

[tet68]

Along with thousands of poems in his native Pashto, he completed a book intended for future poets with an alphabetical list of all the rhymes in the Pashto language. He also wrote a book of Islamic jurisprudence in verse form and translated Arabic poetry into Pashto.

Amazing, just amazing, I understand that while they were
all there, they typed out the complete works of Shakespeare too!Ooops, pardon me ALMOST the complete works of Shakespeare, they still have a few hundred years to go.

[doug from upland]

As I sit here I'm feeling such dread
I am tired of the bugs in my bed
But if I should escape
I will pillage and rape
And will cut off the infidels' head

[inkling]

C-I-L-L my landlord

LOL -- that was a classic!

[Reaganesque]

He will be publishing his poems in the upcoming book, "Die Infidel, Die!" In fact there's enough material for a second book tentatively titled "Zionist Pig-Dogs Must Die!" He's even thinking about writing poems for a children's book to be entitled "Make The Streets Run Red With The Blood Of The Jews and their Imperialist Lap Dogs" which, according to the author, will be similar in style to the Dr. Suess book "Green Eggs and Ham."