[Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun and Arfan Usman star as the “Tipton Three” in Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO. Photos courtesy of Roadside Attractions.]

Everyone needs to go see The Road to Guantanamo, about the Tipton Three at Guantanamo Bay.

Special thanks to 2Scoops, who first brought the film to my attention weeks (months?) ago, and to my sister’s friend S, who told us about the free screening at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive, where we saw The Road to Guantanamo early last week.

I originally shared the following Washington Post article (via Sepia Mutiny) with selective friends/family through email last week, and just realized that others might be interested in reading this as well. As I mentioned in my email, I first read this because I’m Pukhtun myself. But this is a moving and beautifully written account, and a thought-provoking one, so check it when you get a chance – the Guantanamo diary of a Pukhtun law student, by Mahvish Khan.

Ali Shah Mousovi is standing at attention at the far end of the room, his leg chained to the floor. His expression is wary, but when he sees me in my traditional embroidered shawl from Peshawar, he breaks into a smile. Later, he’ll tell me that I resemble his younger sister, and that for a split second he mistook me for her.
.
.
.
I don’t know exactly what I had expected coming to Guantanamo Bay, but it wasn’t this weary, sorrowful man. The government says he is a terrorist and a monster, but when I look at him, I see simply what he says he is — a physician who wanted to build a clinic in his native land.
.
.
.
As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when hundreds of men were rounded up and thrust into a black hole of detention, many with seemingly no proof that they had any terrorist connections, I felt that my own country had taken a wrong turn.

While writing this post, I came across another heartbreaking article, one I’ll have to share with my father the Gardener Extraordinaire: Wilting Dreams At Gitmo – A Detainee Is Denied A Garden, and Hope is the story of an innocent Saudi Arabian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who digs a garden using spoons.

…He said, “We planted a garden. We have some small plants — watermelon, peppers, garlic, cantaloupe. No fruit yet. There’s a lemon tree about two inches tall, though it’s not doing well.”

“The guards gave you tools?”

He shook his head.

“Then — how do you dig?” I was struggling to grasp this.

“Spoons,” he said. “And a mop handle.”

The soil in Camp Iguana is dry and brittle as flint. And I’ve seen the spoons they give our clients.

“But the spoons are plastic — aren’t they?”

Saddiq nodded. “At night we poured water on the ground. In the morning, we pounded it with the mop handle and scratched it with the spoons. You can loosen about this much.” He held his thumb and forefinger about a half-inch apart. “The next day, we did it again. And so on until we had a bed for planting.” He shrugged. “We have lots of time, here.”
.
.
.
For all that, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Maybe the History of Guantanamo will have a few uplifting footnotes. America denied them seeds and trowels and they created life anyway. We tried to withhold beauty, but from the grim earth of Guantanamo they scratched a few square meters of garden — with spoons. Guantanamo is ugly, but man’s instinct for beauty lives deep down things.

I originally shared the following Washington Post article (via Sepia Mutiny) with selective friends/family through email last week, and just realized that others might be interested in reading this as well. As I mentioned in my email, I first read this because I’m Pukhtun myself. But this is a moving and beautifully written account, and a thought-provoking one, so check it when you get a chance – the Guantanamo diary of a Pukhtun law student, by Mahvish Khan.

Ali Shah Mousovi is standing at attention at the far end of the room, his leg chained to the floor. His expression is wary, but when he sees me in my traditional embroidered shawl from Peshawar, he breaks into a smile. Later, he’ll tell me that I resemble his younger sister, and that for a split second he mistook me for her.
.
.
.
I don’t know exactly what I had expected coming to Guantanamo Bay, but it wasn’t this weary, sorrowful man. The government says he is a terrorist and a monster, but when I look at him, I see simply what he says he is — a physician who wanted to build a clinic in his native land.
.
.
.
As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when hundreds of men were rounded up and thrust into a black hole of detention, many with seemingly no proof that they had any terrorist connections, I felt that my own country had taken a wrong turn.

While writing this post, I came across another heartbreaking article, one I’ll have to share with my father the Gardener Extraordinaire: Wilting Dreams At Gitmo – A Detainee Is Denied A Garden, and Hope is the story of an innocent Saudi Arabian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who digs a garden using spoons.

…He said, “We planted a garden. We have some small plants — watermelon, peppers, garlic, cantaloupe. No fruit yet. There’s a lemon tree about two inches tall, though it’s not doing well.”

“The guards gave you tools?”

He shook his head.

“Then — how do you dig?” I was struggling to grasp this.

“Spoons,” he said. “And a mop handle.”

The soil in Camp Iguana is dry and brittle as flint. And I’ve seen the spoons they give our clients.

“But the spoons are plastic — aren’t they?”

Saddiq nodded. “At night we poured water on the ground. In the morning, we pounded it with the mop handle and scratched it with the spoons. You can loosen about this much.” He held his thumb and forefinger about a half-inch apart. “The next day, we did it again. And so on until we had a bed for planting.” He shrugged. “We have lots of time, here.”
.
.
.
For all that, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Maybe the History of Guantanamo will have a few uplifting footnotes. America denied them seeds and trowels and they created life anyway. We tried to withhold beauty, but from the grim earth of Guantanamo they scratched a few square meters of garden — with spoons. Guantanamo is ugly, but man’s instinct for beauty lives deep down things.

I recommend you all take a minute (or ten, if you’re slow) to read Sri’s post, March at Harbor. I read it yesterday morning, and it made me want to cry at the depth of human misery – and laugh at the strength of the human spirit.

Make some time to read through Sri’s archives. And the archives over at his older journal. All of them. Hey, that’s what I did one afternoon over a year ago, while I was chillin’ at my hella boring job in downtown Sacramento. So you can, too. What, you think you’re too good? Don’t make me stab you. Get to it.

Just got an email from a listerve I’m on, about how a recent discovery in The Birmingham News archives led to the publication of unseen photographs tracing the progress of the civil rights movement through Birmingham.

The woman who sent the email explained:

The Birmingham News recently discovered a trove of unpublished photos from the early days of the Civil Rights era, and has put up a special section of it on their website to let us all have a look. There is a lot to go through, I’ve only gotten a partial look thus far, but some of these are absolutely amazing. They bring to life both the painful reality of what that generation faced and the incredible bravery of the civil rights workers and their supporters.

Go see.

[All links via Kottke.]

one. Jonathan Rauch’s March2003 article, Caring for Your Introvert:

Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say “Hell is other people at breakfast.” Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.

two. Jonathan Rauch’s February2006 interview with The Atlantic Monthly, which had originally published the previous piece. On the topic of conversation flow and social chit-chat, he says:

I have no gift for that. I have to think about what to say next, and sometimes I can’t think fast enough and end up saying something stupid. Or sometimes I just come up dry and the conversation kind of ends for while until I can think of another topic. This is why it’s work for me. It takes positive cognition on my part.

three. And this is totally my favorite: A weblog entitled Under Odysseus, ostensibly penned by Eurylochus, a Greek dude who seems to be Odysseus’ administrative assistant or something during the Trojan War.

Check this:

Achilles always acts like that when things get serious. He invariably gets more serious. Achilles is the kind of guy that, if you throw him a ball, will dive into the dust to catch it, even if a dive isn’t necessary. He’s got the kind of attitude that would just make him look like an idiot if he weren’t so goddamned skilled. Yet, Achilles is overflowing with skills, and the girls are really into him and his badass attitude. All of us guys simultaneously resent him and wish we were him.

Anyway, after a last hardy slap from Agamemnon, Odysseus, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin I have ever seen on his face, struts over to me.

“Eurylochus, we’ve got a lot of work to do, my boy.” He beams in an annoyingly General-like fashion.

Trying to ignore the “my boy”, I innocently and somewhat militarily asked, “What’s that regarding, General?”

At this, Odysseus paused. By the look on his face, I thought that he was going to drop the authoritarian tone, but then he sort of shakes that off, and in an even more commanding voice, he belts: “Eurylochus, we are going to build a wooden horse, a great wooden horse that is going to enable us to get within the walls of Troy.”

Fucking Zeus, I almost want to laugh, but I say something like: “Oh, like the thing that we discussed last…”

and this:

This morning, I ran into Elpenor on the way to Odysseus’ tent. Actually, he sort of ran into me. He must have known where I was headed. That sorry guy is such a kiss-ass.

I was just delivering some supply papers, and as I didn’t feel like hiking across the encampment, I gave them to him. I told him that they were very sensitive, and that he shouldn’t stop or talk to anyone on the way. This made Elpenor perk up like a homely girl asked to dance. After accepting the papers in an exaggerated military form, he strutted off like he was the head of some goddamned parade. Although I was just being lazy, it kind of made me feel like I had done a good deed.

Freakin’ hilarious, mon.

Via Hypnagogica (and also Superhero Journal, within just a couple minutes of each other), here are some photos to make you smile:

Members of the Pillow Fight Club were out in full force in San Francisco at 6pm on Valentine’s Day.

Background here and here.

Freakin’ awesome, man.

Alright, so I know Eid ul Adha is long gone and that I’m addressing this disgustingly late (as usual), but I hope all y’all had a beautiful, blessed one inshaAllah.

Which reminds me, Zahir over at Fall of Icarus had a post highly pertinent to Eid, entitled “This may be blasphemous/haraam but….”

My favorite part:

Sometimes I wish Muslims would speak more anecdotally. Khateebs often need not to dig through books of hadith, tafseer or fiqh for material. Tell us something that moved you, that inspired you and speak with humility–chances are it will move us too.

And Basit had posted something weeks ago that I had meant to make you all read, an entry that made my breath stop – because it was so beautiful and true and well-written – but then I forgot to share, and so I had to dig through his archives to find it again. Go. And while you’re there, you should check out his archives, too, because if you’re not reading his weblog regularly, you’re seriously missing out.

One more! Sister Scorpion has a poignant entry on teaching her 6-year-old daughter about the significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.