Ali Mattar, an incarcerated person in eastern Oregon, was published in the Quill of Umatilla County Literary Magazine’s second edition. The magazine, created by Pendleton Public Library, accepted his essay in May. Mattar credits his success partly to his childhood environment, where his writing was born.
“Melja!” he said his mother would scream.
This is Arabic for “bomb shelter.” During the Lebanese civil war, Mattar and his family would rush to the basement of a 22-floor apartment building to escape waves of heavy missile strikes in the civilian suburbs.
“I was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, so as we lived in the bomb shelters during skirmishes, I learned to write,” he said. “I learned to write voraciously because that’s the only thing you could do.”
Beirut was occupied by Syrian forces from 1976 to 2005. Lebanon-based Hizballah militia car bombings, Israeli invasion and indiscriminate strikes by Lebanon’s own government were part of Mattar’s childhood. From ’76 to ’93, Mattar sometimes spent months underground.
He said between the ages of 10 and 12 in the ‘80s were the worst for him, and writing was his escape.
“I wrote anything a kid would write,” he said. “At the same time, I’d write about the sounds I’d hear, the bombings and what have you, how that scared me … I’d write about it just to try and forget, to help process it all the best I could.”
The fighting was so intense that at one point a bomb partially penetrated the bunker he and his family were in.
“My mother gave us earmuffs to put on to drown out the sounds, but sometimes it wasn’t enough,” he said. “One year, the bombing was so close to our building that the concussion blasted through almost 10 feet of concrete. I didn’t have my earmuffs on all the way, and it blasted me with the concussion. I’ve had ringing in my ears ever since.”
But weathering wartime horrors wouldn’t be the only application for his writing. Mattar’s craft, born in a bunker beneath bombs, bullets and Lebanon’s smoke-filled sky, now gets him through a different kind of concrete container.
Mattar was incarcerated in 2001, just eight years after escaping war by moving to the U.S. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole.
In his work, “Fuel,” Mattar said writing has been a “way of mentally escaping this aquarium of madness.” The work he submitted to the Quill, however, is a relatively new form of writing to him.
“I’ve only been doing poetry for the last year and a half,” he said. “I usually do essays on several subjects I write about, but this poem was very fun in the moment.”
And despite being a lifelong writer, Mattar’s experience was not a factor for the Quill. In fact, all the submissions were selected through a blind reading.
“The library is thrilled to introduce this collection to Umatilla County residents,” Library Director Jennifer Johnson told Columbia Basin News. “The community is full of talented creators, some of which will be published for the first time through the Quill.”
Institution Work Program Coordinator Ray Peters had encouraged Mattar to participate in the Quill’s submission request.
Peters said, “I’d seen some of his poetry and thought he should try submitting. He’s not just someone interested in writing – he actually writes.”
“Peters has read some of my writing and asked if I wanted to give it a shot,” Mattar said. “I’d told him I publish elsewhere whenever I can, so I said, ‘Why not?’”
But rather than weeks of refining, Mattar relied on a moment’s inspiration for his work.
“After I was approached about this contest, I glanced out my window and wrote about the city of Pendleton,” he said. “It just kind of came to me on Friday, then I worked on it Saturday and Sunday to turn in on Monday.”
Much of Mattar’s writing comes from similar inspiration. His environment continues to play a role in his craft.
“A lot of my inspiration and everything I get is from me sitting on my bunk and looking out the window,” he said.
Back in Lebanon, writing was his window to the outside.
“It helped me get through that moment,” he said. “Every time we went to the bomb shelter, when we had to segregate ourselves from the conflict, writing came to mind. So, I just stuck with it. All that caused me to focus on writing.”
But when first asked about why he entered the Quill’s submission request, he said, “Well, my writing is my hobby.”
What a hobby. | KT