Guantanamo Boy (37 page)

“Don’t get soppy again. You promised you wouldn’t.”

“Soppy? Me? Not me, son. Never.”

Khalid grins as his attention turns to the swirl of orange smoke Gul’s adding to her picture.

“Gul, don’t wreck it with that horrible orange color.”

“Why not?” A silly grin is plastered across her face.

“I don’t like the color, that’s all.” Khalid frowns at Gul. Concerned because Mum’s hiding her tears by looking for something in the highest cupboard and he doesn’t want Gul to see her crying.

There’s not much more I can tell you, cuz
, Khalid writes quickly.
I don’t think that feeling of total misery will ever really go away. Soon, I promise, you’ll get home. But whenever I start to think of that prison, I stop and remind myself how kind most people are in the world. Did I tell you Mac, my nice neighbor, is going to teach me to drive his car? For free. How cool is that?

The front door clicks. Khalid listens for his dad to pause in the hall to hang up his brown zip jacket. He comes in, his face full of warmth and happiness when he sees Khalid.

“Hi, Dad, did you see that poster for the oriental rug sale on Saturday up the road?” Khalid asks.

Before answering, Dad smiles and quietly slips off his brown shoes to reveal ribbed gray socks, then empties his pocket of nutmeg cake wrapped in wrinkly tin foil on to the kitchen table.

“Yes, it starts at ten in the morning and goes on the whole day.” He scrapes the chair back and sits down.

“Well, we’re going. Don’t look so surprised. Just think of it as a little act of kindness on my part.”

“Oh, I will, I will.” Dad laughs.

Mum, Aadab and Gul join in too.

There’s nowhere in the world Khalid would rather be than right here . . .

Spying his dad’s new shoes on the floor reminds him of something. “Dad, give us your shoes. You’ve got dirt all over them. A right mess they are.” He darts to the cupboard under the sink to take out the cardboard box.

His dad stares at him, amused, as Khalid unfolds a sheet of newspaper on the floor and sits cross-legged. He lays the cloth and brushes neatly side by side on the paper, just as he’s seen his dad do so many times. Carefully, he opens the tin of dark-brown Kiwi polish and pats at it with the brush. Then, fist in the shoe, he spreads the polish evenly, working it into the leather one section at a time. Focusing hard on polishing the rims of the sole, before starting on the toe to patiently bring up the shine. In the middle of all this hard work he breathes in the lovely smell of sizzling chicken cooked with toasted almonds and couscous, and a small fire lights up not only in Khalid’s eyes and stomach, but also in his heart.

Dad looks on with approval and Khalid knows this small act
of kindness means more to him than he could ever imagine.

Then, for that moment, as he sits on the kitchen floor cleaning Dad’s shoes, some of the sadness in Khalid’s heart lifts and the past collapses into a little burst of happiness. The kind of happiness that a loving family brings.

The fact that has struck me hardest about Guantanamo Bay is the number of juveniles who were brought there, as many as sixty in a total population of some 780. And not just “juveniles”—but kids.

These kids include Mohammed el Gharani from Chad, one of Reprieve’s clients, who had never even been to Afghanistan until the US paid a bounty to his captors and took him there. US Intelligence thought Mohammed was in his mid-twenties: despite years of interrogation, it had not been discovered that he was only fourteen years old and had gone to Pakistan simply to learn about computers. US District Judge Richard Leon later determined that he was innocent of any wrongdoing, and he was released after more than seven years in captivity.

Mohammed was innocent and should have been in school. Yet he learned the lessons of adolescence in a maximum security prison, in cells with those reputed to be the most dangerous of terrorists.

Sadly, it’s happening elsewhere. Now a similar situation is occurring in the US detention center in Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, where a kid called Hamidullah was himself just 14 when he was first detained. At Reprieve, we’re working to defend his rights and the rights of other prisoners. As a nation, we cannot expect the world to embrace democracy and the rule of law unless we respect it ourselves.

—Clive Stafford Smith

Founder and Director, Reprieve

March 7, 2011

For more about Reprieve’s work regarding

Guantanamo Bay, please visit
www.reprieve.org.uk
.

2001

September 11, 2001

Operatives of Al-Qaeda, an international terrorist group, attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

October 7, 2001

The war in Afghanistan begins. The US military targets the Taliban, the ruling militia in Afghanistan, which refuses to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

December 2001

Osama bin Laden escapes from Afghanistan.

2002

January 11, 2002

Twenty suspected terrorists are detained at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. They are the first detainees to arrive.

January 17, 2002

The US military allows the Red Cross to establish permanent residence at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

January 18, 2002

President George W. Bush declares that Guantanamo Bay detainees are not protected under the Geneva Conventions, which require that certain rights are given to prisoners of war.

February 27, 2002

Detainees go on a hunger strike to protest a rule against wearing turbans, which are a common part of Muslim religious life and are often used during prayer.

April 25, 2002

Camp Delta is built to house 410 prisoners.

2003

April 23, 2003

The US military admits that children sixteen and younger, many of whom have been held for a year, are among the detainees. Three boys from Afghanistan, ages thirteen to fifteen, are among the inmates and are held in a dedicated juvenile facility; they are released in 2004.

May 9, 2003

Guantanamo Bay prison reaches 680 detainees, the most it has held at one time.

October 9, 2003

The Red Cross says there is “deterioration in the psychological health of a large number of detainees.”

2004

October 16, 2004

According to the
New York Times
, detainee abuse is more pervasive than the Pentagon has let on.

2006

February 15, 2006

A report from the United Nations recommends the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison.

May 28, 2006

According to London lawyers, dozens of children as young as fourteen years old have been sent to Guantanamo Bay prison, and they estimate that more than sixty detainees were under eighteen when they were captured.

June 29, 2006

The US Supreme Court rules Guantanamo Bay detainees are protected under the Geneva Conventions.