Walid Daqqah died in Israeli prison as a revolutionary and literary icon. But when he and his wife Sana’ gave life to their daughter through his smuggled sperm, Walid was given a second life.
Walid Daqqah saw the “little prison” where he spent most of his life mirrored in the “big prison” that housed the rest of his people. His challenge to us and to himself was to free ourselves from the prison inside of us.
"For a long time whenever Milad asked me on the phone, 'Daddy, where are you?' I avoided using the word 'prison.' I feared that it might be too much for her at her tender age to begin to live with this word and its weighty implications,” writes Walid Daqqah in his essay, “A Pace without a Door.” The 61-year-old Palestinian political prisoner and writer was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to a 37 years in Israeli prison. His sentence should have come to an end in 2023 but was extended by Israeli authorities for two years over the smuggling of mobile phones.
Walid Daqqah broke free during his nearly four-decade imprisonment through his writings, his resistance, and the birth of his daughter, Milad. His lifetime of refusing the prison’s walls has brought us all closer to freedom.
Israel punitively added two years to Walid Daqqah’s sentence of 37 years, and he has now been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. Having completed serving his original sentence, Walid’s family is demanding his release before it is too late.