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The year 2015 saw Talha Ahsan enter the cultural arena alongside fellow authors

The past year saw the first public poetry readings of my brother, Talha Ahsan, since he was freed from a brutal and unjustified eight years of detention without trial and extradited to the United States. He performed as part of ‘The Oranges of Revolution’ at Keats House, Remembering Bosnian Genocide at Rich Mix, and Reclaim Diwali in Brixton, South London. Although he had been publishing poetry as a teenager since the days of Anarchist Angel, Liz Berry’s youth poetry zine, this was Talha’s first ever public poetry reading.

Talha’s nationwide campaign led by myself, as his younger sibling, was to be shortlisted for the Human Rights Award organised by Liberty, noting the significant and innovative use of poetry and the arts in the campaign. His presence in the outside world had been kept alive, even when he was transferred to solitary confinement in a super-maximum death row prison in the state of Connecticut. His words were read by such luminaries as former children’s laureate, Michael Rosen, and upcoming stars, including playwright and poet, Avaes Mohammad, at an anti-racism festival. Novelist A. L. Kennedy wrote very movingly of her correspondence with my brother and was later to become a character witness after writing to US judge Janet Hall, alongside Caroline Lucas MP and the late Mike Marquse. At a #WelcomeHomeTalha rally in 2014 outside the Home Office, Mark McGowan, known by his stage name The Artist Taxi Driver, read Talha’s poem ‘Love Sonnet to Theresa May’ – May being the Home Secretary who executed his extradition.

May’s decision to extradite my brother provoked widespread accusations of racism-fuelled double standards, as she had previously blocked the extradition of white hacker Gary McKinnon who suffered from the same medical condition as Talha. Alongside McKinnon, the campaigns and families of Babar Ahmad, Richard O’Dwyer and Christopher Tappin were in the media circus. This led to notable outcry pointing to the overstretch of the United States’ intrusion into British sovereignty, even among staunchly pro-Atlanticist conservative MPs, such as Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, who were initially among the harshest critics of the Extradition Act 2003.

The media frenzy is dead – for now.

Talha’s first poetry reading was at Keats House in leafy Hampstead on a Sunday afternoon. The curator of the event, poet Clare Saponia, programmed Talha as part of her The Oranges of Revolution book tour, recently published by the leftist poetry house Smokestack. My aspie brother was billed as part of a political line-up alongside the confrontational agitprop performance poet, Chip Grim, as well as poet Niall McDevitt, who delivered highly-charged verses on the Arab Spring, Palestine and anti-capitalism. Meanwhile, Talha came to the podium in an anonymous and understated manner. No reference was made to his case or the abuse he had endured during his incarceration due to his own insistence that his work is judged on its merit. ‘The Nude’, one of the longer poems in a short set of three poems was composed during the two years he spent in an isolation cell, referencing a sexualised doodle by a former cell occupant. Despite the horror that he was subject to, Talha remained empathetic, sensitive and softly-spoken. The birds could even be heard chirping in the surrounding suburb. I noted the irony of this victim of the US-UK extradition treaty having his first public appearance on American Independence Day.

Talha’s next appearance was at a special three-hour event at London’s Rich Mix commemorating the Bosnian genocide and presenting the premiere screening of Assed Baig’s documentary film, Forgotten Genocide. Talha read a poem called ‘Slobodan Bastards’, a point-blank poem on the use of systemic rape by Serb forces against Muslim women in concentration camps in the 1992 – 1995 war. This poem was previously banned from the Koestler Award national competition for prisoners Arts by the prison HM Prison Long Lartin despite the objection of Talha’s creative writing tutor, Pat Winslow. It was read in between Hodan Pankhurst’s poem by refugee women from the Bosnian war and a monologue from The Beekeeper’s Daughter by New York playwright, Karen Malpede, acted out by Pakistani soap star, Alia Butt. Once again, Talha took to the stage as a poet, rather than a victim and survivor of injustice.

Talha’s next significant set was at the ‘Reclaim Diwali’ event, bringing together those of all ethnicities and religions who have been opposing the disturbing state of affairs in a BJP-led, extreme right-wing India. Tribute was paid by the presenter, Sonia Mehta of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, to Talha’s campaigning family and to his resilience against state abuse. Talha read his ‘Love Sonnet to Theresa May’ which was received with warmth and laughter by the audience. More poignantly, perhaps, he also read his unpublished prose poem, ‘Otherstani’, which invokes a borderless national identity in a world locked in border-driven genocidal murder. The poem was influenced by the short stories of Sadaat Hasan Manto, such as Toba Tek Singh, as allegories of the madness of partition-era violence – which I had gifted him in the supermax prison. In 1947, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus were killing each other in genocidal frenzy, and here we were, in 2015,  at the #ReclaimDiwali event sharing words of peace. Talha ended his set with a reading of his most well-known poem, ‘This Be the Answer’, about the relationship between a prisoner and a guard. The piece was described by Catholic peace activist, Bruce Kent, as the most moving poem about “the awareness of the presence of God,” adding, “There are very few people who can communicate as powerfully as this poem does.” When introducing the poem, my brother reminded the crowd that while religion could be misused as a force for divisiveness, it could also be a force for peace, strength and community-building.

Let us hope we will see more of Talha on the poetry circuit in 2016. There are plans for a new anthology by writers who supported his justice campaign. In 2015, Wasafiri magazine awarded a prize to writer Uschi Gatward for her short story based on Talha’s return home, called My Brother Is Back. Despite the cruelty my brother and our family endured at the hands of a callous British and American security state, Talha’s words still have the power to fill a room with love and humanity.

Image from: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/tag/talha-ahsan/