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Writing poetry was the balm that kept Guantanamo prisoners from going mad
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 7/17/5 | Thomas Coghlan

Posted on 07/17/2005 12:44:23 PM PDT by 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

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: terrorpoets
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Roses are red
Violets are blue
You're a terrorist at Gitmo
So it sucks to be you.
1 posted on 07/17/2005 12:44:24 PM PDT by SmithL
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To: SmithL

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


2 posted on 07/17/2005 12:45:47 PM PDT by dagnabbit (Vincente Fox's opening line at the Mexico-USA summit meeting: "Bring out the Gimp!")
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To: dagnabbit

And the media wonders why the public hates them.


3 posted on 07/17/2005 12:47:04 PM PDT by Dog ( Is Joe Wilson is just a character Rove created?)
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To: SmithL

Reminds me of an old Eddie Murphy skit on SNL.

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


4 posted on 07/17/2005 12:47:49 PM PDT by peyton randolph (Warning! It is illegal to fatwah a camel in all 50 states)
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To: SmithL

big smile.


5 posted on 07/17/2005 12:48:29 PM PDT by bitt ('We will all soon reap what the ignorant are now sowing.' Victor Davis Hanson)
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To: SmithL

Terrorist balms?


6 posted on 07/17/2005 12:48:43 PM PDT by SlowBoat407 (A living affront to Islam since 1959)
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To: SmithL
"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as the beheading of a Zionist infidel pig.
ALLAHU AKBAR! DEATH TO AMERICA!"
7 posted on 07/17/2005 12:50:14 PM PDT by inkling
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To: SmithL

I smell a Nobel Prize for Literature, NOT!


8 posted on 07/17/2005 12:50:45 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... "To remain silent when they should protest makes cowards of men." -- THOMAS JEFFERSON)
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To: SlowBoat407
T leads to all sorts of ideas that ted kennedy and nancy pelosi and braniee the frank would approve of.
9 posted on 07/17/2005 12:50:59 PM PDT by dts32041 ( Dear Senator Durbin, I am not an Illinois Nazi. (US ARMY RET))
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To: SmithL

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


10 posted on 07/17/2005 12:51:07 PM PDT by claudiustg (Go Sharon! Go Bush!)
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To: SmithL

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


11 posted on 07/17/2005 12:52:04 PM PDT by zencat (The universe is not what it appears, nor is it something else.)
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To: SmithL
This is what really po's them "The Battle of Tours:
732"
12 posted on 07/17/2005 12:52:20 PM PDT by dts32041 ( Dear Senator Durbin, I am not an Illinois Nazi. (US ARMY RET))
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To: SmithL

This post lacks the appropriate barf alert.

Hey Abdul, I have your balm right here!


13 posted on 07/17/2005 12:52:27 PM PDT by True_wesT
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To: SmithL

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?


14 posted on 07/17/2005 12:53:57 PM PDT by kromike
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To: SmithL
"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.

15 posted on 07/17/2005 12:53:59 PM PDT by Windsong (FighterPilot)
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To: SmithL

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


16 posted on 07/17/2005 12:55:34 PM PDT by RichInOC (RUMS: HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN!! ALL YOUR SLAM ARE BELONG TO US. HA HA HA HA....)
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To: SmithL
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.
17 posted on 07/17/2005 12:55:35 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: SmithL
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
18 posted on 07/17/2005 12:56:53 PM PDT by doug from upland (The Hillary documentary is coming)
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To: peyton randolph
C-I-L-L my landlord

LOL -- that was a classic!

19 posted on 07/17/2005 12:58:26 PM PDT by inkling
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To: SmithL
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."
20 posted on 07/17/2005 12:58:35 PM PDT by Reaganesque
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