The book covers of Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison by Ahmed Naji, The Shell: Memoirs of a Hidden Observer by Mustafa Khalifa, and The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics: Women Politicians Write from Prison Edited by Gültan Kışanak.
Books
The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary Odyssey (Iran)
The Prison Papers, by Donné Raffat, recounts the life and literary works of Iranian Marxist intellectual Bozorg Alavi, who—along with a group of dissidents—was imprisoned in 1937 for four years. The book features short stories and other written works penned by Alavi during his incarceration, works that are credited with influencing a new genre of prison literature in Iran.
Resistance: My Life for Lebanon, Souha Bechara (Lebanon)
Resistance: My Life for Lebanon is the 2003 memoir of Souha Bechara, a Lebanese woman who was imprisoned in the infamous Israeli-controlled Khiam prison in Southern Lebanon. In 1988, Souha Bechara attempted to assassinate Antoine Lahad, collaborator with Israel and leader of the South Lebanon Army. She was immediately arrested and released in 1998 following an extensive Lebanese and international campaign.
Undesirables, Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber (North Africa)
This graphic novel—published in 2023 by Stanford University Press—chronicles the lesser-known events surrounding the internment of political opponents and Jews in seven camps throughout Vichy North Africa during World War II. To bring this historical ethnography to life, Aomar Boum, a historical anthropologist at UCLA, collaborated with Nadjib Berber (Nad), a well-known cartoonist from Algeria.
Consciousness Molded or the Re-identificatin of Torture, Walid Dakka (Palestine)
Written by Palestinian prisoner Walid Dakka—who died in Israeli prison in 2024 after being denied adequate medical treatment for terminal cancer—”Consciousness Molded or the Re-identification of Torture,” analyzes the purpose of Israeli torture. It argues that the Israeli regime intends not only to inflict pain on Palestinians but also to remold their consciousness and alter their political subjectivities. It was published in English in 2011 as part of the edited volume, Threat—Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel.
Dawn, Selahattin Demirtaş (Turkey)
Selahattin Demirtaş, an imprisoned leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP (People’s Democratic Party), wrote this book of short stories, published in 2019, while in a maximum security jail in Turkey. In the work, Demirtaş, who in 2017 ran for president from behind bars, examines life in a carceral state. Some of the stories deal directly with the prison: the underrage kids who build jails, or a committee reading the notes of inmates. Others focus on people on “the outside”: refugees, political protestors or workers.
That Smell, Sonallah Ibrahim (Egypt)
Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim composed this semi-autobiographical work after serving a five-year prison sentence. The novel, published in 1966, follows a recently released political prisoner adrift in Cairo. The 2013 English-language edition includes a selection from Ibrahim’s prison diary—“a personal archive comprising hundreds of handwritten notes scribbled on Bafra-brand cigarette papers”—annotated by translator Robyn Creswell.
This Blinding Absence of Light, Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco)
This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun (translated from the French by Linda Coverdale and published in 2002) recounts the inhumane and insufferable treatment of “disappeared” political prisoners held in Morocco’s most infamous prison, Tazmamart. Though based on the personal account of a former detainee, Ben Jelloun came under intense criticism from other released prisoners who felt that Ben Jelloun was profiting from their suffering while the Moroccan government continued to ignore their demands for reparations and accountability.
The Shell: Memoirs of a Hidden Observer by Mustafa Khalifa (Syria)
Mustafa Khalifa’s The Shell: Memoirs of a Hidden Observer (translated by Paul Starkey and published in English in 2007) is a novel narrating the violence and torture perpetuated against political prisoners by the Syrian regime. Set in Tadmur prison, the novel is the story of a Syrian political prisoner who was imprisoned for 14 years and subjected to brutal forms of torture while maintaining his defiance.
The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics: Women Politicians Write from Prison, ed. Gültan Kışanak (Kurdistan)
Two years after being elected co-mayor of Diyarbakır, Kurdish journalist and politician, Gültan Kışanak, was arrested by the Turkish state. While imprisoned, she documented her own struggles and gathered writings from over 20 Kurdish women political prisoners. The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics (published in 2022 by Pluto press) is the collection of these prison writings, which serve also as a set of reflections on anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal movement building.
In the Country of Men, Hisham Matar (Libya)
Hisham Matar’s breakthrough debut novel (published in 2006) examines life in Libya’s Jamahiriyyah, where secret police, kafkaesque bureaucratic processes and anti-regime conspiracies abound. Told from the perspective of a young boy witnessing the consolidation of an increasingly suspicious and unforgiving state, Matar examines the lives of those who live in the shadow of disappearance, torture and executions.
Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison, Ahmed Naji (Egypt)
Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison in 2016 for his novel Using Life. In Rotten Evidence, he chronicles the ten months he spent in Cairo’s Tora Prison. The work, translated to English by Katharine Halls and published in 2020, illuminates the innerworkings of incarceration, from the mundane—securing fresh vegetables—to the existential—making “sense of a senseless oppression.”
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, Malika Oufkir (Morocco) with Michèle Fitoussi
Originally published in French as La Prisonnière in 1999, this book—made famous in the United States by its inclusion in the Oprah Book Club—recounts the viciousness with which the Moroccan regime of Hassan II treated its enemies, elites and working-class alike, along with their families. The daughter of a general behind a failed coup, Malika Oufkir spent much of her youth in secret prisons as one of Morocco’s thousands of “disappeared.”
The Trinity of Fundamentals, Wisam Rafeedie (Palestine)
Published in 2024, The Trinity of Fundamentals narrates the story of a 22-year-old Palestinian man who goes into nine years of hiding from the Israeli occupation. Inspired by the author’s own experience, the novel discusses carcerality, captivity and resistance in the Palestinian context.
Prison Notebook, Ibrahim el Salahi (Sudan)
The Prison Notebook is Sudanese painter Ibrahim el Salahi’s chronicle of his experience of imprisonment without trial for six months in 1975, while serving as Sudan’s undersecretary of culture. The work, made immediately after his release was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and featured prominently in its reopening exhibition after the refurbishment. MOMA and the Sharjah Art Foundation published a facsimile of the book in 2018: a bilingual English-Arabic volume, which combines powerful prose with intricate pen-and-ink drawings that includes contemporary insights from the artist.
Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran, Shahla Talebi (Iran)
In this memoir, published by Stanford University Press in 2011, Shahla Talebi recounts her nearly decade-long imprisonment in Iran, where she and her husband faced torture and confinement under both the shah and the Islamic Republic. Through her personal experiences and the stories of her fellow inmates, Talebi explores the harsh realities of prison life while providing an insight into a significant era of social and political change in Iran.
Keys to the Syrian Prison: Words From Behind the Bars (Syria)
In 2012, an Arabic glossary of prison jargon was produced by UMAM D&R based on published memoirs and writings of former detainees in Syrian prisons. In the context of their incarceration, a new language emerged: Terms and phrases were repurposed or used in ways that did not exist outside of the prison walls. An English translation of terms from the glossary is available at MENA Prison Forum. Their website also includes lists and archives of prison-related material, including books, films, podcasts and visual arts.
Films
3000 Nights, dir. May Masri (Palestine, 2015)
Layal is a young newlywed schoolteacher from Bethlehem. When a speeding Israeli military patrol gravely injures one of her students, her teenage brother responds by throwing a Molotov cocktail at the vehicle. Accused of helping him escape, she is incarcerated in an Israeli prison where she discovers that she is pregnant. The film follows her fight to keep her daughter and the struggle of her fellow comrades against the carceral system, as they embark on a hunger strike to demand their rights.
Bonboné, dir. Rakan Mayasi (Palestine, 2017)
An imprisoned Palestinian man yearning to have a child contrives a plot with the help of his spouse. Will his attempt pan out as planned? This short film is a darkly humorous look at the smuggling of sperm by Palestinian prisoners, a practice with a history in Palestine.
The Circle, dir. Jafar Panahi (Iran, 2000)
Similar to popular Western films of the late 1990s and early 2000s (Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, Amores Perros), The Circle follows several stories of women in contemporary Iran seeking variously to survive, resist or accommodate the masculine order around them. Though seemingly connected only through coincidence, we find their lives interlocked, literally and figuratively, through the prison.
Crayons of Asqalan, dir. Layla Hotait Salas (Palestine, 2012)
During his 15 years as a prisoner, Zuhdi Al Adawi transformed his longing for his homeland and family into drawings done in secrecy. In solidarity, his cellmates and their families smuggled crayons for this young artist and later smuggled out more than 70 of his drawings drawn on pillowcases. These colorful images come to life in surreal animation sequences integrated throughout this documentary. The film’s dramatized prison scenes are re-enacted by the relatives of the imprisoned men, including Zuhdi’s former cellmate.
Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite, dir. Tunç Başaran (Turkey, 1989)
In Tunç Başaran’s film, a woman is imprisoned for drug smuggling and brings her young son, Barış, with her to the all-women’s prison. Inside, Barış seeks connection and finds it with Inci, a political prisoner, leading to a touching bond to form between them. The story, adapted from Feride Çiçekoğlu’s 1986 novella, contrasts the harsh realities of prison life—marked by discipline and violence—with the intimate world that Inci and Barış create together.
Ghost Hunting, dir. Raed Andoni (Palestine, 2016)
Being jailed in Israel’s al-Mosccobiya interrogation center at the age of 18 left director Raed Andoni with fragments of memories; he cannot determine if they are real or imagined. To confront the ghosts that haunt him, Andoni rebuilds the interrogation center for this experimental documentary. Responding to a job announcement seeking former prisoners who were interrogated at al-Masccobiya, a large group gathers in an empty yard near Ramallah and re-enacts a story that took place inside the center’s walls.
Hunger Strike, dir. Ashraf Al-Mashharawi (Palestine, 2014)
This Al Jazeera documentary focuses on hunger strikes by Palestinian political prisoners. By reconstructing Ayman Al Sharawna’s time in an Israeli jail, the film examines the strategic use of individual or group-initiated hunger strikes, what motivates hunger strikers, their survival under sustained pressure and the mistreatment of detainees by carceral authorities. The documentary also includes interviews with the 1980s Irish hunger strikers Pat Shean and Brendan McFarlin, Palestinian prisoners like Samer Al Issawi and doctors, lawyers and researchers specializing in human rights and prisoners’ conditions.
Insiders, dir. Hüseyin Karabey (Turkey, 2018)
This Turkish drama, based on Melih Cevdet Anday’s 1965 play, follows a teacher who has been imprisoned for six months without reason. Despite conjugal visits being prohibited, one day he learns he will be allowed to see his wife. The visit spurs an unexpected ethical dilemma. Insiders is not director Hüseyin Karabey’s first attempt to explore the psychology of incarceration. His 2001 documentary, Silent Death, looked at the innerworkings and effects of European prison systems, particularly, isolation.
Khiam 2000–2007, dir. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon, 2007)
In 1999, while South Lebanon was still occupied and no images of the detention camp in Khiam were available, Hadjithomas and Joreige met six prisoners to discuss their experience of detention and the relation they developed to art. In May of 2000, Khiam was liberated and turned into a museum (it was later destroyed by Israeli occupation forces during the July 2006 war). Eight years later, for this documentary, Hadjithomas and Joreige met again with the same six prisoners to talk through the liberation and subsequent destruction of the camp. Their documentary chronicles this story.
The Mauritanian, dir. Kevin Macdonald (United States, 2021)
This movie is based on the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s fight for freedom after being detained and imprisoned without charge by the US Government for years. Slahi finds allies in defense attorney Nancy Hollander and her associate Teri Duncan who battle the US government for justice. Their advocacy, along with evidence uncovered by a military prosecutor, uncovers truths and ultimately proves that human spirit cannot be locked up.
Silent, Rezan Yeşilbaş (Turkey, 2012)
This award-winning short film, set in 1984, follows a Kurdish woman, Zeynep, on a visit to her husband, who has been imprisoned. During the visit, she is only allowed to speak Turkish. Despite not knowing the language, they find a way to communicate.
Shouting in the Dark, dir. May Ying Welsh (Bahrain, 2011) and Breaking the Silence, dir. Mais Albayaa (Bahrain, 2020)
Produced by Al Jazeera English, Shouting in the Dark covers the 2011 uprisings in Bahrain in their immediate aftermath. First screened on August 4, 2011, the film includes protest footage, police crackdowns and interviews with activists and medical professionals, alongside clips from Bahraini state television. In 2020, BBC produced another documentary about the uprisings and imprisonment that followed, Breaking the Silence (directed by Mais Albayaa). The latter film, follows women who participated in the uprisings but were not arrested until 2017, during a crackdown on activists. The women describe their experience of incarceration, including torture and rape. The film also explores US and British complicity in Bahrain’s abuses against prisoners.
The Warden, dir. Nima Javidi (2019, Iran)
This 2019 Iranian mystery drama, directed and written by Nima Javidi, stars Navid Mohammadzadeh and Parinaz Izadyar. Set in 1967, the film follows Major Nemat Jahed, the warden of a prison facing evacuation due to a development project—the construction of an airport—that is encroaching on the space of the prison. Amid the transfer of inmates, he discovers that one of the prisoners is missing.
Waynon, dir. Tarek Korkomaz, Zeina Makki, Jad Beyrouthy, Christelle Ighniades, Salim Habr, Maria Abdel Karim, Naji Bechara (Lebanon, 2013)
Thousands of people who disappeared during the civil war in Lebanon and its aftermath are still missing today. Waynon follows six Lebanese women, representing three generations, who are still waiting for the disappeared. They begin a protest campaign to revive their cause.
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CORRECTION: The initial version of this list misstated the dates around Ibrahim El-Salahi’s Prison Notebook. The work was originally produced immediately after his release from prison, in 1976, and was published, in a bilingual format, by the Museum of Modern Art and Sharjah Art Foundation in 2018.
This issue of Middle East Report, Carceral Realities and Freedom Dreams, has been produced in partnership with the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Security in Context.
Read the previous article in MER issue 312 “Carceral Realities & Freedom Dreams.”
