Claire Berlinski I knew this lockdown business was serious when they cancelled my convocation. I had a convocation—a summons—to renew my carte de séjour. I had been told to present myself at exactly 8:35 a.m. at the Préfecture de Police in the IVe arrondissement on March 16th, 2020. The annual convocation at…
Ivar Ekeland and Sara Roy A new kind of politics is emerging in Western democracies, perhaps best characterized by fragmentation. The political debate is increasingly digital, visual, and incoherent—without structure or boundaries—and therefore transitory and ephemeral. The historian Martin Conway argues1 that the longstanding political contract between the citizen—who voted,…
Excerpts from Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row Tiyo Attallah Salah-El, edited by Paul Alan Smith Or Books (Sept. 2020) ISBN 9781682193044 Tiyo Attallah Salah-El died in 2018 on “Slow Death Row” while serving 43 years of a life sentence in a prison system he detested…
Excerpt from Guantánamo Voices: True Accounts From the World’s Most Infamous Prison A graphic novel, edited by Sarah Mirk, with an introduction by Omar El Akkad Abrams ComicArts (June 2020) ISBN 9781419746901 Sarah Mirk First let’s talk about language — is Guantánamo a prison? The language we use to describe our…
India Hixon Radfar A Dove In Free Flight, Selected Poems of Faraj Bayrakdar Edited & introduced by Ammiel Alcalay and Shareah Taleghani Upset Press (October 2021) ISBN: 9781937357009 The truth is that poetry is the antithesis of prison, just as life is the opposite of death […] The moment of…
Excerpts from Memoirs of a Militant, My Years in the Khiam Women’s Prison By Nawal Qasim Baidoun, translated by Michelle Hartman & Caline Nasrallah Olive Branch Press/Interlink Books (October 2021) Nawal Qasim Baidoun In order to carry on with life in prison, you must believe you will be…
Zakaria Zubeidi is not just a single person but a whole generation of Palestinians in the West Bank who are caught up in an impossible dilemma, having to choose between a painful, but real, struggle for freedom and political compromises, which, in Zakaria’s own words, “have achieved nothing.” …
Anthoney Dimos Before midnight, on November 17, police officer Pavlos Petros found Evangelina Christodoulaki, a college student, from the village of Katerini in Sfakia on the island of Crete, hanging by a belt from a light fixture on the ceiling of the soundproof detention center. It was his…
Accused of terrorism against the state for aiding and abetting fellow Syrians fleeing Homs for Damascus, former prisoner X talked to TMR about his long journey to asylum in Belgium. TMR: You say that even though you’ve found yourself in a good situation and while other Syrians are often…
Rifqa, poems by Mohammed el-Kurd Haymarket Books (Sept. 2021) ISBN: 9781642595864 India Hixon Radfar Poet Mohammed El-Kurd often plays by pairing his words, thus doubling or halving their meanings. He is himself a twin. You could easily miss it. Three short lines hold the story: “I /and my…
Lawyers Beyond Borders, Advancing International Human Rights Through Local Laws and Courts By Maria Armoudian University of Michigan Press (Sept 2021) ISBN 9780472132560 Mischa Geracoulis “The human rights cases in these pages are among the most unlikely ones slated for victory.” Dismantled in a manner more dictatorial than democratic by…
The following text by Khalida Jarrar first appeared in These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, by Ramzy Baroud (Clarity Press, 2019). Ramzy Baroud Khalida Jarrar was born in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank on February 9,…
Fadi Kattan When I think about food and incarceration, the stories of the late Palestinian community leader, Daoud Iriqat immediately come to mind. He was always a lesson in optimism and perseverance, carrying his political ideals high and proud through the shifting sands of our regional history. Spending long…
Ara Oshagan I am walking along the narrow and labyrinthine Armenian neighborhoods of Bourj Hammoud in Beirut—spaces with names like Nor (new) Marash, Nor Sis, Nor Yozgat. These are the namesakes of towns that hearken back to a distant past, to places and lands from which these communities, my communities…
Twelve Gates Arts and the Collective for Black Iranians are hosting “Hasteem: We Are Here” from September 3–24, 2021. Maryam Sophia Jahanbin Content warning: enslavement, land and labor acknowledgement. Consistent with their desire to uplift South and West Asian diasporic artistic voices, Twelve Gates Arts (12G), a gallery in Philadelphia,…