In a Jail in Cuba Beat the Heart of a Poet [Pakistan]:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Among the old leather volumes in the library of Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost is a black plastic binder full of rumpled letters he wrote, sent from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At the bottom of each form is a perfunctory salutation. The rest is taken up with the poems that helped Dost keep his sanity during nearly three years of confinement.
"Bangle bracelets befit a pretty young woman," begins one of the poems. "Handcuffs befit a brave young man."
The letters were one in a series of measures the Afghan-born author said he took to record the torrent of imagery and insights that flooded his brain nearly every day of his captivity.
At first, deprived of paper and pen, Dost memorized his best lines or scribbled them secretly on paper cups. Later, he was supplied with writing materials and made up for lost time by producing reams of poems and essays -- only to have all but a few of the documents confiscated by the U.S. government upon his release. [...]
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