From captivity to creativity: Pakistani prisoner at Gitmo finds freedom in paint | World News

When Ahmed Rabbani ran out of paint to satisfy his inventive yearnings all through 20 years of incarceration at Guantanamo Bay, he turned to regardless of acquired right here at hand — mud, espresso grinds and even spices akin to turmeric from the jail canteen.

“By the use of painting, I’d actually really feel myself exterior Guantanamo,” the 53-year-old Pakistani talked about this week at an exhibition of his work inside the port metropolis of Karachi.

“Painting was all of the issues for me there.”

Rabbani was detained by Pakistan authorities in September 2002 and handed over to the US Central Intelligence Firm for a bounty of $5,000.

He was “provided” on the thought he was a notorious militant commonly known as Hassan Ghul, nonetheless Rabbani always insisted it was a case of mistaken identification.

He was moreover accused of recruiting his older brother Muhammed into extremist circles.

Every had been on no account charged or confronted trial all through twenty years in detention, and they also had been solely launched in February this yr.

“The US had paid good money and didn’t want to have been taken for a visit,” Rabbani’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, wrote inside the exhibition catalogue.

“One factor neither he nor I knew until the US Senate printed its Rendition Report in 2014 was that Ghul was captured and dropped on the equivalent jail — solely to be launched once more to Pakistan for ‘cooperating’.

“Whereas Ghul went once more to his terrorist strategies and was killed in a drone strike in 2012, Ahmed obtained a one-way journey to Guantanamo Bay.”

– Drawing from espresso, turmeric –

Born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the place his mom and father labored, Rabbani moved once more to Karachi as a teen and was a taxi driver on the time of his detention.

Fluent in Arabic, he specialised in guiding friends from the Middle East — a component which contributed to him being misidentified.

Whereas imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, painting grew to turn out to be an obsession for Rabbani, although years spent on hunger strike meant he was sometimes too frail to even preserve a brush.

If he ran out of provides, he would improvise.

“I’d uncover and change a piece of discarded or torn clothes into canvas,” he talked about.

“Usually I drew from espresso, typically from turmeric.”

In “The Unforgotten Moon: Liberating Paintings from Guantanamo Bay”, spherical two dozen gadgets Rabbani was allowed to take from jail are on present — alongside works by native artists who’ve “re-imagined” work that had been confiscated.

“He’s any individual who has misplaced a variety of his life, so to offer the images of this top quality is a miracle… it's distinctive,” talked about Natasha Malik, curator and organiser of the exhibition.

“Displayed alongside Ahmed’s uncensored work, the artists amplify his protest and creative expression, by recreating the work that most of the people was on no account meant to see.”

Sporting a salt-and-pepper beard and sporting a standard shalwar kameez and waistcoat, Rabbani was the centre of consideration on the exhibition opening.

With a smile and twinkle in his eye, he outlined grand plans for the years ahead.

First up is the publication of a cookery e-book — he rekindled a passion for the kitchen whereas at Guantanamo.

“It will have his memoirs in it — nonetheless inside the setting of a cookbook,” Stafford Smith suggested AFP.

Then he must open a restaurant based totally on recipes he learnt whereas in jail — hopefully using funds raised from product sales of his paintings.

Depicting his hopes and despair, his work is astonishingly achieved for any individual who did solely a smattering of paintings in class.

Some gadgets are obvious expressions of yearnings for freedom — nature seen by way of slender openings, birds flying and infinite oceans.

One different reveals a cage containing vibrant orange fish — the colour of overalls Guantanamo prisoners had been pressured to placed on.

“I spent just a few years in orange,” he talked about.

“I on no account accepted their authorized pointers. I’d always break their authorized pointers.”