Guantánamo Diary (13 page)

A
Mauritanian folktale tells us about a rooster-phobe who would almost lose his mind whenever he encountered a rooster.

“Why are you so afraid of the rooster?” the psychiatrist asks him.

“The rooster thinks I’m corn.”

“You’re not corn. You are a very big man. Nobody can mistake you for a tiny ear of corn,” the psychiatrist said.

“I know that, Doctor. But the rooster doesn’t. Your job is to go to him and convince him that I am not corn.”

The man was never healed, since talking with a rooster is impossible. End of story.

For years I’ve been trying to convince the U.S. government that I am not corn.

It started in January 2000, when I was returning to Mauritania after living twelve years overseas. At 8 p.m. on
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, my friends
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dropped me off at Dorval Airport in Montreal. I took the night Sabena flight to Brussels and was continuing to Dakar the next afternoon.
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I arrived in Brussels in the morning, sleepy and worn out. After collecting my luggage, I collapsed on one of the benches in the International area, using my bag as a pillow. One thing was sure: anybody could have stolen my bag, I was so tired. I slept for one or two hours, and when I woke up, I looked for a toilet where I could wash and a place to pray.

The airport was small, neat, and clean, with restaurants, duty-free shops, phone booths, Internet PCs, a mosque, a church, a synagogue, and a psych consulting bureau for atheists. I checked out all the God’s houses, and was impressed. I thought, This country could be a place I’d want to live. Why don’t I just go and ask for asylum? I’d have no problem; I speak the language and have adequate qualifications to get a job in the heart of Europe. I had actually been in Brussels, and I liked the multicultural life and the multiple faces of the city.

I left Canada mainly because the U.S. had pitted their security services on me, but they didn’t arrest me, they just started to watch me. Being watched is better than being put in jail, I realize now; ultimately, they would have figured out that I am not a criminal. “I never learn,” as my mom always put it. I never believed that the U.S. was evilly trying to get me in a place where the law has nothing to say.

The border was inches away. Had I crossed that border, I would never have written this book.

Instead, in the small mosque, I performed the ritual wash and
prayed. It was very quiet; the peacefulness was dominating. I felt so tired that I lay down in the mosque and read the Koran for some time and fell asleep.

I woke up to the movements of another guy who came to pray. He seemed to know the place and to have transited through this airport many times.
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. We greeted each other after he finished his prayer.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me.

“I’m transiting. I came from Canada, and am heading for Dakar.”

“Where are you from?”

“Mauritania. What about you?’

“I’m from Senegal. I’m a merchant between my country and the Emirates. I’m waiting on the same flight as you.”

“Good!” I said.

“Let’s go rest. I’m a member of Club Such-and-Such,” he suggested, I don’t recall the name. We went to the club, and it was just amazing: TV, coffee, tea, cookies, a comfortable couch, newspapers. I was overwhelmed, and I spent most of the time sleeping on a couch. At some point, my new
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friend wanted to have lunch, and woke me up to do the same. I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to come back because I had no club card and they had just let me in because my
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friend flashed his membership card. However, my stomach’s call was louder, and I decided to go outside and have some food. I went to the Sabena Airlines counter and asked for a free meal card, and found a restaurant. Most of the food was mixed with pork, so I decided on a vegetarian meal.

I went back to the club and waited until my friend and I were called to our flight, Sabena #502 to Dakar. I had chosen Dakar because it was by far cheaper than flying directly to
Nouakchott, Mauritania. Dakar is only about 300 miles from Nouakchott, and I arranged with my family to pick me up there. So far so good; people do it all the time.

During the flight, I was full of energy because I had had some quality sleep in Brussels airport. Next to me was a young French girl who lived in Dakar but was studying medicine in Brussels. I was thinking that my brothers might not make it to the airport on time, so I would have to spend some time in a hotel. The French girl benevolently enlightened me about the prices in Dakar, and how the Senegalese people try to overcharge strangers, especially the taxi drivers.

The flight took about five hours. We arrived around 11 p.m., and the whole formalities thing took about thirty minutes. When I took my bag from the baggage claim, I bumped into my
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friend, and we bid each other farewell.
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As soon as I turned away carrying my bag, I saw my brother
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smiling; he obviously had seen me before I saw him.
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was accompanied by my other brother
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and two friends of theirs I didn’t know.

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grabbed my bag and we headed toward the parking lot. I liked the warm night weather that embraced me as soon as I left the gate. We were talking, asking each other excitedly how things were going. As we crossed the road, I honestly cannot describe what happened to me. All I know is that in less than a second my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. At first I thought it was an armed robbery, but as it turned out it was a robbery of another kind.

“We arrest you in the Name of the Law,” said the special agent while locking the chains around my hands.

“I’m arrested!” I called to the brothers I couldn’t see anymore. I figured if they missed me all of a sudden it would be painful for them. I didn’t know whether they heard me or not, but as it turned out, they had heard me indeed because my brother
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kept mocking me later and claiming that I am not courageous since I called for help. Maybe I’m not, but that’s what happened. What I didn’t know was that my two brothers and their two friends were arrested at the same time. Yes, their two friends, one who came with my brothers all the way from Nouakchott, and the other, his brother who lives in Dakar and just happened to ride with them to the airport, just in time to be arrested as a part of a “gang”: What luck!

I honestly was not prepared for this injustice. Had I known the U.S. investigators were really so full of it, I wouldn’t have left Canada, or even Belgium when I was transiting through. Why didn’t the U.S. have me arrested in Germany? Germany is one of the closest allies of the U.S. Why didn’t the U.S. have me arrested in Canada? Canada and the U.S. are almost the same country. The U.S. interrogators and investigators claimed that I fled Canada out of fear that I was going to be arrested, but that doesn’t really make any sense. First of all, I left using my passport with my real name, after going through all formalities including all kinds of registrations. Secondly, is it better to be arrested in Canada or Mauritania? Of course in Canada! Or why didn’t the U.S. have me arrested in Belgium, where I spent almost twelve hours?

I understand the anger and frustration of the U.S. about terrorist attacks. But jumping on innocent individuals and making them suffer, looking for fake confessions, doesn’t help anybody. It rather complicates the problem. I would always tell the U.S.
agents, “Guys! Cool down! Think before you act! Just put a small percentage on the possibility that you might be wrong before you irreparably injure somebody!” But when something bad happens, people start to freak out and lose their composure. I’ve been interrogated throughout the last six years by over a hundred interrogators from different countries, and they have one thing in common: confusion. Maybe the government wants them to be that way, who knows?

Anyhow, the local police at the airport intervened when they saw the mêlée—the Special Forces were dressed in civilian suits, so there really was no differentiating them from a bunch of bandits trying to rob somebody—but the guy behind me flashed a magic badge, which immediately made the policemen retreat. All five of us were thrown in a cattle truck, and soon we got another friend, the guy I had met in Brussels, just because we bid each other farewell at the luggage carousel.

The guards got in with us. The leader of the group sat up front in the passenger seat, but he could see and hear us because the glass that usually separates the driver from the cattle wasn’t there anymore. The truck took off like in a Hollywood chase scene. “You’re killing us,” one of the guards must have said, because the driver slowed down a little bit. The local guy who came to the airport with my brothers was losing his mind; every once in a while he spat some indistinct words conveying his worries and unhappiness. As it turned out the guy thought that I was a drug dealer and he was relieved when the suspicion turned out to be terrorism! Since I was the starring actor, I felt bad for causing so much trouble for so many people. My only solace was that I didn’t mean to—and also, at that moment, the fear in my heart overwhelmed the rest of my emotions.

When I sat down on the rough floor, I felt better surrounded
by the warmth of the company, including the Special Forces agents. I started to recite the Koran.

“Shut up!” said the boss in the front. I didn’t shut up; I lowered my voice, but not enough for the boss. “Shut up!” he said, this time raising his baton to hit me. “You’re trying to bewitch us out!” I knew he was serious, and so I prayed in my heart. I hadn’t tried to bewitch anybody out, nor do I know how to do it, but Africans are some of the most gullible folks I ever knew.

The trip took between fifteen and twenty minutes, so it was shortly after midnight when we arrived at the Commissariat de Police. The masterminds of the operation stood behind the truck and got involved in a discussion with my Brussels friend. I didn’t understand anything; they were speaking in the local language
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.
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After a short discussion, the guy took his heavy bags, and off he went. When I later asked my brothers what he told the police, they told me that he said he had seen me in Brussels and never before, and that he didn’t know that I was a terrorist.

Now we were five persons jailed in the truck. It was very dark outside, but I could tell that people were coming and going. We waited between forty minutes and an hour in the truck. I grew more nervous and afraid, especially when the guy in the passenger seat said, “I hate working with the Whites,” or rather he used the word ‘Moors,’ which made me believe that they were waiting on a Mauritanian team. I started to have nausea, my heart was a feather, and I shrank so small to hold myself together. I thought about all the kinds of torture I had heard of, and how much I could take tonight. I grew blind, a thick cloud built in front of my eyes, I couldn’t see anything. I
grew deaf; after that statement all I could hear was indistinct whispers. I lost the feeling of my brothers being with me in the same truck. I figured only God can help my situation. God never fails.

“Get out,” shouted the guy impatiently. I fought my way through and one of the guards helped me jump down the step. We were led into a small room that was already occupied by mosquitoes, just in time for them to start their feast. They didn’t even wait until we slept; they went right away about their business, tearing us apart. The funny thing about mosquitoes is that they’re shy in small groups and rude in big ones. In small groups, they wait until you fall asleep, unlike in big groups, where they start to tease you right away, as if to say: “What can you do about it?” And in fact, nothing. The toilet was filthy as it could be, which made it an ideal environment for breeding mosquitoes.

I was the only chained person. “Did I beat you?” asked the guy while taking off the handcuffs.

“No, you didn’t.” When I looked I noticed I already had scars around my wrists. The interrogators started to pull us one by one for interrogation, starting with the strangers. It was a very long, scary, dark and bleak night.

My turn came shortly before the first daylight.

In the interrogation room there were two men
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, a male interrogator and his recorder.
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The
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Police Chief was in charge of the police station, but
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was not part of the interrogation;
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looked so tired that
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fell asleep several times out of boredom. The American
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was taking notes, and sometimes
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passed notes to the interrogator. The interrogator was a quiet, skinny, smart, rather religious and deep thinking
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.

“We have very heavy allegations against you,” he said, pulling a thick stack of papers out of a bright yellow envelope. Before he had them halfway out, you could tell he had been reading the stuff many times. And I already knew what he was talking about, because the Canadians had already interviewed me.

“I have done nothing. The U.S. wants to dirty Islam by pinning such horrible things on Muslims.”

“Do you know
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?”
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“No, I don’t. I even think his whole story was a fake, to unlock the terrorism budget and hurt the Muslims.” I was really honest about what I said. Back then I didn’t know a whole lot of things that I do now. I believed excessively in Conspiracy Theories—though maybe not as much as the U.S. government does.