Arrested Movement: Guantanamo Bay

Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari

Take my blood.

Take my death shroud and

The remnants of my body.

Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.


Send them to the world,

To the judges and

To the people of conscience,


Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden before the world,

Of this innocent soul.

Let them bear the burden before their children and before history,

Of this wasted, sinless soul,

Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace.”  

Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year-old Bahraini who has been held at Guantánamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.

This poem is so strong and moving. It reveals his truth. It’s like he’s saying, “You’ve taken everything from me, take it all. Have my life.”

The second verse seems to be sarcastic in the way he says, “to the people of conscience.” I believe he’s saying the people or government that put him there are wrong in their reasons for doing so.

The final verse is so sad. He calls himself a wasted, sinless soul. What have these people done to him, to make him feel this way? The man has suffered, “at the hands of the ‘protectors of peace’.” I believe he is speaking of a government, trying to find crime but in the wrong place. The ‘Death Poem’ is so moving, and disturbing. It’s revealing the final thoughts of a man who wants to die. This man feels he has nothing more of himself, that it’s been stripped away from the people who put him in there.