Freedom!

Good news! After 50 days of detention, our friend Shubbar was freed. We were in Italy, with limited Internet access, when we got the news, so it took some time to get the word out after we got the updates from Hajar and Shubbar. Sadly, Shubbar's father-in-law and brothers-in-law remain in captivity.

Bahrain remains under a state of siege, as the McClatchy reporter Roy Gutman has shown in a series of informative dispatches from the island, including a recent one on Bahrain's plans to sentence two protestors to death. Pressure from the U.S. may have contributed to a slight easing of the crackdown.

Whatever the cause, we're just glad that our friend is free.

Prison Time and Liturgical Time

Review of Avi Steinberg, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (New York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2010)

As our friend Shubbar sits in his sixth week of arbitrary detention, I've just finished reading Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, by Avi Steinberg. Steinberg's and Shubbar's stories raise two common questions: What does it mean to be deprived of one's freedom? And how does one experience time in captivity?

Steinberg grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Cleveland and Boston. After graduating from Harvard a few years back, he was adrift from the community of his youth and adrift in his career ambitions (like so many young college graduates these days). But when he applied, and got hired, for a job as a prison librarian in a Boston jail, he found his voice and his story. He tells that story with self-deprecating humor, bittersweet pathos, street smarts, and quiet literary elegance. This is a coming-of-age story with unusual depth and richness.

As a blogger and author concerned with how liturgical time can transform our engagement with the world, I found the most eloquent passage in the book in a meditation on the experience of holiday times in jail.

Time has its own peculiar meaning in prison . . . . Although a person in prison always has countless hours, he has no access to time's attendant meanings. When it comes to time, most inmates are like the tragic mariner: water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. There's endless time but not the nourishing kind, no seasons, no holiday cycles. At least, nothing that can be shared with others.

When snow collects in the yard--it is winter. When your cellmate smells particularly rank--it is summer. But these things don't imply anything beyond themselves. Snow doesn't mean sledding with your children, or skiing, or playing football or going to concerts for Christmas. It means snow.

The closest approximations of seasons in prison are the gambling seasons. When the Super Bowl gambling crunch hits, it is winter; when the NCAA basketball tourney happens, it is spring. These are the Christmas and Easter of prison. Aside from these sad interludes, prison time is neither marked nor shared by a community. It is personal and moves toward one holiday: the end of one's sentence. Each individual follows his own private eschatological calendar, which has only one holiday, the Last Day, the End of Days.

This is a very practical matter for those who work in prison. When you leave before a holiday, a well-meaning caseworker instructed me, you don't say "Merry Christmas" to the inmates. It doesn't make sense and, as she added, "It's kind of a slap in the face." In prison, seasons are best left unmarked and unremarked upon (pp. 375-76).

Imprisonment, then, expresses both literally and figuratively what it means to live flat, secular time. There are no seasons and only one holiday: escape. One lives in a private, solitary world, sharing no common times. It's truly hell.

In the meantime, living out of liturgical time, I am praying for an end to Shubbar's current ordeal: for his return to the many festivals and celebrations of the Shiite calendar among the bosom of his family. In this Easter season, surely we can hope in the One who broke down the gates of hell and liberated the first prisoners.

Update on Our Friend

As Americans were getting excited last night over the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I received an email from Shubbar's wife saying that her father and two brothers were arrested yesterday in Bahrain. Her father is Sheikh Mohammed al Mahfoodh, the religious leader of the Islamic Action Society, or Amal (right). 



Needless to say, this leaves his daughter upset, since her husband has already been detained for one month, and now she is without father and brothers. Today, she asked me to convey the following message to President Obama:

Dear Mr President,

 

I am writing to you from Bahrain. First, I would like to congratulate you concerning Bin Ladin. However, I am writing to you concerning my country Bahrain. I am the daughter of Sheikh Mohammed Ali Almahfoodh, the chairman of Amal Islamic Society. I would like to tell you that yesterday he was detained with my two brothers to an unknown destination. A month ago, my husband was arrested as a hostage.

Mr President, this action is your full responsibility, since your policy is to spread democracy. Your administration condemned the dissolving of the societies, and therefore, you have the upper hand to release my father and brothers, and husband. My mother has collapsed as to the news. 

I beseech your help and protection, and whatever happens to my detained family is under your responsibility. 

Finally, I strongly urge your administration to prove to the world that the US respects their values and morals, and not double standards as many people are pointing out currently. I always looked at the US constitution as my aspiration to a better world.
I want to thank you for your time, and I hope something happens to reunite my family again. 

Best wishes,

Hajar Mahfoodh

"Unlike Anything That I Have Seen in My Twenty Years of Investigating Human Rights"

CNN is putting Al Jazeera English to shame with its much-better coverage of the deteriorating situation in Bahrain. (CNN reporter Amber Lyon has thousands of Bahraini admirers because she's taken an interest in their plight.) Yesterday their London and Atlanta studios featured a new report by Physicians for Human Rights, whose head told CNN that the situation in Bahrain was unlike anything he had seen in his twenty years of investigating human rights abuses.



CNN's London studio added a feature with Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch, in which he correctly noted that hundreds of Bahrainis have disappeared. Among them, of course, is our friend Shubbar. On this Holy Saturday, I am praying for Shubbar and the others who are imprisoned.

Holy Week and Suffering in Bahrain

This week between Palm Sunday and Easter is the center of the Christian calendar, re-enacting the surprising events that (Christians believe) usher in the reign of God in human history: Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey (not a white horse), he symbolically re-claims the Temple, he washes his disciples' feet; he gives himself over to betrayal; he stands silently before his judges, torturers, and executioners; he carries the instrument of his own death to the site of his own execution. This--this?--is how the Kingdom is revealed, in the humble face of a suffering servant.

It's also the week of Passover in the Jewish lunar calendar, which is no accident, since the events of this week occurred during Passover, which is why the Christian church has always tied its observance of Holy Week to that calendar (and why Easter never has a fixed date in the solar calendar: it moves with the Jewish lunar months).

Just today, during this week of kairos (deeply meaningful) time, I received a disturbing message from my friend Shubbar's wife:

Thugs and security have attacked us twice, threatening to take my kids as hostages and causing my mum to go through a collapse two times. They stayed for two hours or so and created horror among the women and children in the house. They also took my brother in law and tortured him with electric shock to reveal the place of my father. We don't know where my father is since more than a month, but they are not believing us. I don't know what to do.

Pray for me and I seek your help if you have any idea.

In an earlier message she also said that her little two-year-old, who is just barely talking now, was deeply troubled by the original intrusion of masked security forces and the abduction of Shubbar. In fragments, this adorable little guy said

Mama; they came, they broke the door and the gate; they hurt baba [daddy]; they went; I don't like them; they are not nice; mama I am scared.

How do we even begin to comprehend the fear and anxiety that this family, like hundreds of others, is facing?

I couldn't help but notice some resonances between the suffering of Jesus and his community in Holy Week and the suffering of the Shiite community in Bahrain. Of course, there are many differences between the early followers of Jesus and 21st century Bahrainis, but their stories converge on this point: the Powers seek to crush resistance through force, to disperse opposition through fear, and to deprive their opponents through denying any hope. And ordinary people lose their will to resist; they scatter; and they lose hope. Rome (and the Al Khalifa) appear to have won.

So is there hope for Bahrain or for our friends? I see little, but the story of Holy Week suggests that hope may emerge at the darkest moments. Yesterday, liturgical churches would have read Isaiah 50:4-9, part of which reads

I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty? (vv. 6-9)

The church reads this prophetic, poetic text as pointing toward the drama of what is about to happen to Jesus, who was tortured.

But this suffering, paradoxically, is the way to glory. How can this be? The prayer for Wednesday of Holy Week in the Book of Common Prayer offers a model:

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.

I pray this prayer for our friends in Bahrain. I pray that the path of Jesus--through suffering toward redemption and glory--will be their road as well.

During this week, my Jewish friends say "Next year in Jerusalem," recalling how God liberated them from Egypt. During Ashura, my Shiite friends speak of the way of 'Ali and Hussein as opposed to the ways of Yazid and Mu'awiyya (Caliphs who tried to crush the Shiite movement). And, today and tomorrow, Christians speak of the way of Jesus as opposed to the ways of the Sanhedrin and of Pontius Pilate. We are all praying that justice will be done and that the weak will be vindicated.

May the reign of God triumph here on earth as it is already ruling in heaven. May justice be done. And may the captives be freed, here, today, as in heaven and in the future.

Palm Sunday: Two Weeks: Still No Word . . . And Increasing Tension

I heard tonight (as I do every twenty-four hours) from the wife of my friend Shubbar. After two weeks, there has still been no word about her husband. Nor have family members been able to get word to him. The crackdown on the Shiite community continues unabated, as she makes clear in this message sent tonight:

It is 3.00 a.m and thank God they did not come. But they attacked our village with tear gas and Bang Grenades; my kids couldn't sleep until very recently because they were scared of the sound. As we are at home, tear gas comes inside the houses but with a very little degree. All this is done by the security accompanied by troops to scare people and prevent them from sleeping.

Until today, I don't know anything about my husband. Today professional people were arrested, a doctor, two nurses (females) and other young people (6 or 7). Still, the hospitals and clinics are besieged and people cannot go to receive treatment. On the national TV, it was stated that 51 of University of Bahrain's employees were sacked because they took part in the protests in the roundabout. Many students will also be kicked off the university but the number is not known yet. The ministry of education said that the teachers who took part in the strike were 7000 teachers; so I wonder whether all will be sacked as well. It is worth mentioning that all sacked people are Shiites only. Today they also attacked an elementary school to arrest two teachers but after two hours they were released.

Today, the troops destroyed three mosques in different place, and by this we have 18 mosques destroyed by cranes; all are Shiite mosques. [Several other sources have mentioned the destruction of mosques.]

Tomorrow the strike will begin and many are taking part in the activity.

As an employee of the University, Shubbar's wife is very concerned about her own safety. She said in an earlier message that the Bahrain state TV was singling out people at the university today, so she was worried that she might be arrested tonight.

It's hard to imagine how the situation in Bahrain could turn out well. There seems to be little hope.

But as the Christian world enters into Holy Week, I'm reminded that Jesus and his followers appeared to have been defeated in this week. By Friday, Jesus was dead and his disciples were in hiding. All hope was lost.

But, it turned out by Easter Sunday, passage through death was the way to life; defeat was the way to victory; laying down one's life was the way to gaining it; washing the feet of the lowly was the way to being glorified; betrayal was the way to community; turning aside from power was the way to gaining it; loving one's life meant losing it, and giving up one's life meant gaining eternal life.

As Jesus said early in Holy Week:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life (John 12:23-25). 

Thinking of the Holy Week drama, John Howard Yoder wrote in The Politics of Jesus that the cross was not just a detour or a hurdle or even the way to the Kingdom. Rather, it was the paradoxical Kingdom come. The rule of God came through submission and self-giving service.

In some mysterious way, then, we have to hope that God can work even through the most destructive work of the Powers. I'm praying that the self-destruction of Bahrain might eventually produce many seeds of justice. And I'm waiting impatiently for those seeds of justice to start blooming . . . soon!