Page 61 - Arabian Studies (II)

Yemeni Literature in Hajjah Prisons 1367/1948-1374/1955 51
resorted to using reeds and pieces of fire-wood which we shaped into
pens. We used as ink a solution ofghadar (a form of clay) which is a
substance similar to chalk or gypsum, greenish-yellow in colour, and
we used pieces of wood or flattened tin cans to write on, after
blackening them with charcoal or soot. We recorded verses and ideas
so that they would not be lost. Then we would commit them to
memory, wipe them off and write others. Things later improved a
little and we used the thin inside wrappers from cigarette packets and
made ink out of the soot obtained from the smoke of oil-lamp wicks.
The soot was allowed to accumulate on a can or a sherd, then it was
scraped off and mixed with water and gum. It would then become
black ink. After some time, however, we succeeded in bribing some
prison guards and ‘trusties’ who smuggled in paper, ink, pens and
messages for us.
As for messages of a political or confidential nature intended for
outside the prison, we used to write these with the white of eggs.
Messages thus written cannot be seen with the naked eye once dry,
but if brought near the heat of a fire the writing appears in a yellow
colour. The message would then be read and destroyed. Our friends
outside used to send us information in the same manner. They used
to write ordinary letters in ordinary ink but between the lines they
wrote with egg-white. The jailer or censor would read the letter and
then give it to the addressee. Then at night and after the gates were
locked we used to sit around the fire and decode the messages. For
sometimes our friends were not content with writing in egg-white but
also used cyphers, numerals and symbols.
These were the various aspects of literary activity in the initial
period — debates, discussions, secret conversations. All these helped
lessen the burden of imprisonment and the bitterness of enduring it.
When the prison conditions and the prisoners’ situation improved,
when the spectre of the drawn sword vanished and (after a whole
year) the death sentences ceased to be promulgated, when the ban on
books for the prisoners was lifted by the Imam, when the prisoners
and individual prison guards came to know each other better, then
the latter started smuggling in pencils, paper, ink, messages,
newspapers and modern books for them, brought them letters and
passed on theirs — then the sphere of activity widened. The writers
contacted their colleagues in the outside world through their essays,
poems and cyphers; this contact was possible even with those who
had escaped from death and imprisonment and found their way to
Pakistan, Aden, Lebanon and London.
The Hajjah literature even influenced the minds of refugee and
exiled Yemenis. We find people like the poet Muhammad Mahmud
al-Zubairi composing beautiful letters to the Imam beseeching him to