HOPE

There are some books which leave a lifelong impression on you. You carry it in your heart for the rest of your life. You turn the pages and you are so engrossed in reading it that before you know it is over, you come to the end. It is like you are bidding goodbye to a friend and you have to let go but never forget.

 I came across one such book when I was in my teens. I had borrowed it from my uncle who had in turn borrowed it from a library. I took one look at the book and its size was enough for me to put it down. I didn’t have the patience to read such a fat book! But I did and now I know what it means when we say “Never judge a book by its cover”! That book took me by a storm. I couldn’t put it down; its hold over me was so much. I read it day and night till I came to the finish. I wept, I rejoiced and I wept and I rejoiced. It was a book of human courage faced with the most inhuman conditions imaginable. It was the story of a man and his relentless belief and hope that someday the light will shine on him even in the darkest of moments. It was a book of a man’s struggle for his freedom. The name of the book is “Against All Hope – The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares”.

The memoirs of Armando Valadares in a Cuban prison during the regime of Fidel Castro and the tortures that he went through. He was finally noticed by Amnesty International through his poems written in his blood that were smuggled out of prison. He had no choice but to write poetry in blood because they refused to give him pen, pencil or ink. They wanted to snuff out his spirit and keep the world in darkness of the cruelty and torture and indignities prisoners had to go through every day but they failed. He was finally released as an exchange prisoner and given asylum in Manila. From what I last heard of him was that Manila is his adopted country now and with the help of Amnesty International he helps rescue other POWs and find them a safe and dignified harbor.

I don’t know how many have read this but if you come across a copy just grab it. It is a tale of courage. I leave you with one of his poems written in prison.

They’ve taken everything away from me

Pens

Pencils

Ink

Because they don’t want

Me to write

And they’ve sunk me here

In this cell

But they aren’t going to drown me

That way

They’ve taken everything away from me

-          Or almost everything –

I still have my smile

The proud sense that I’m a free man

And an eternally flowering garden

In my soul

They’ve taken everything away from me

Pens

Pencils

But I still have life’s ink

-          My own blood –

And I’m still writing poems with that.

                                               - Armando Valladares