Sherry Chandler

“Let us cultivate our garden”

This ending statement for Voltaire’s Candide seems appropriate for this story from the Human Flower Project:

The best gardening story of the Spring comes from behind barbed wire, via Boston lawyer P. Sabin Willett.

Willet is working to defend prisoners the U.S. has locked up at Guantanamo, Cuba. These are the forgotten ones of the Iraq War. Some, like Willet’s client Saddiq Ahmad Turkistani, were cleared of any charges by the military “long ago” but remain in prison. These men are denied their freedom and even such bits of humanity as “newspapers, visits from loved ones, English dictionaries — and flowers.” Willet, who reported taking a bouquet to Saddiq recently, writes that the inmate “likes to draw roses and often asks for gardening magazines.”

Willet and others have also been trying to gain gardening privileges for the men at Camp Iguana, a low-security facility. The request was denied.

But, we learn, Saddiq and his fellow inmates have managed a tiny garden nonetheless. “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,” Saddiq told his lawyer.

The inmates literally scratched out a plot in the hard soil of the prison yard. “At night we poured water on the ground. In the morning, we pounded it with the mop handle and scratched it,” with plastic spoons. “The next day, we did it again. And so on until we had a bed for planting…. We have lots of time, here.”

Seeds? They were saved from mealtimes when the prisoners were fortunate enough to find bits of fresh fruit on their dinner trays.

All things for the best in the best of all possible worlds?

You should read the rest of this post, which expands to talk a bit about a long tradition of POW gardens. Unfortunately, the prisoners at Guantanamo are more disappeared than POW.

Reprieve has undertaken a project to support the Guantánamo Gardeners with a packet of seeds. You can donate here.

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