They call it “the black hole” for a reason. The cell is cramped, no furniture or even a bed, the stench of the toilet always lingering. I sit naked in darkness on the concrete floor. They thought they could steal my humanity. In their attempts to break me, they make me stronger, stripping me only of my ignorance. Sentenced to die, I feel more alive than ever. Facing death, I find the power of my own desire and will to live.
The only light I see is when the guards bring my meals three times a day. Each time, I refuse to drink the small amount of water in the tin cup or eat the two slices of bread. The guards pick up my untouched meals. No one asks why I’m not eating. No one else comes. No one seems to care.
It is 1970, and I am 24 years of age. The court has appointed a new attorney to appeal my death penalty sentence. . . .
The paragraphs above are from the opening of Dawud H. Al-Malik memoir, (a work in progress, as edited by James O’Barr) published in Mud Flat Shorts (mostly fiction), a collection of thirty-one great stories by nineteen magnificent writers published by Mud Flat Press.
Gabi met Dawud when he and she were attending the Olympia Friends Meeting (Quakers). Then when we were working on the anthology, we included an excerpt from Dawud’s memoir, “From the Depths of Darkness” which our mutual friend James O’Barr (also in the anthology) was working on with him. This is the short bio of Dawud in the book:
“Dawud Al-Malik, Washington state — The story of his life-long journey, from a rural childhood in segregated Jim Crow Texas, to a wrongful conviction for murder in Seattle at the age of 19 that landed him on death row, to his release from prison after 50 years and his continuing battle for justice.”
Dawud did not live to see his memoir published. He was moved into hospice and died on March 21, 2023 of complications from advanced diabetes and kidney failure.
Mud Flat Shorts (mostly fiction)
Included in the anthology in addition to Dawud’s story are three stories by New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer-Prize nominee Jack Butler; two by O. Henry Award and Big Muddy magazine’s Mighty River Short Story Prize winner Keith Eisner; one by National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” novelist Megan Kruse; one by National bestselling author of The Eagle Tree, Ned Hayes; and many more. The stories range from contemporary drama to science fiction to the macabre, and each carries a strong sense of place—wherever that place happens to be, and sometimes a sense of place is a state of mind.
“In this rich treasure of weird stories you can smell the swampy dirt and feel the mystical humidity of broken, disturbed feelings in these tiny, very human characters.” ~ Steve Schalchlin, songwriter/composer of The Last Session, The Big Voice: God or Merman? and New World Waking.
To learn more, visit https://mudflatpress.com/mud-flat-shorts-mostly-fiction/
Dawud died at home while on hospice.
Dawud died March 22, 2023