Guantánamo Diary (21 page)

“We’ve brought people here in bags,” his associate
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told me later in Jordan.

“But how did they survive the trip without suffocating?”

“We make an opening for the nose to facilitate a continuous oxygen supply,”
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said. I don’t know about the bags story, but I do know cases of kidnapping terrorist suspects to Jordan.

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was expecting his prey to be shackled, blindfolded,
earmuffed. But me, standing before him in civilian clothes with eyes wide open like any human being, that struck him. No, that is not the way a terrorist looks—especially a high-level terrorist who was supposedly the brain behind the Millennium plot.

“Hi,” he said; he obviously wasn’t used to the beautiful Muslim greeting, “Peace be with you!” He quickly exchanged words with the DSE, though they didn’t understand each other very well. The DSE wasn’t used to the Jordanian dialect, nor was the Jordanian guest used to the Mauritanian way of speaking. I had an advantage over both of them: there is hardly any Arabic dialect I don’t understand because I used to have many friends from different cultural backgrounds.

“He said he needs fuel,” I explained to the DSE. I was eager to let my predator know
I am, I am
. I took my bag and showed my readiness to board, and that’s when
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realized that I was the meager “terrorist” he was sent to pick up.

The DSE handed him my passport and a thin folder. At the top of the accommodation ladder there were two young men dressed in Ninja-like black suits who turned out to be the guards who were going to watch me during the longest eleven-hour trip of my life. I quickly spoke to the DSE in a manner I knew the
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wouldn’t understand.

“Tell him not to torture me.”

“This is a good guy; I would like you to treat him appropriately!” the DSE said vaguely.

“We’re going to take good care of him,” answered the
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in an ambiguous statement.

The DSE gave me some food to eat during the flight. “No need, we have enough food with us,” the
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said. I was happy, because I liked the Middle Eastern cuisine.

I took the seat that was reserved for me, and the leader of the
operation ordered a thorough search while the plane was rolling on the runway. All they found was my pocket Koran, which they gave back to me. I was blindfolded and earmuffed, but the blindfold was taken away to allow me to eat when the plane reached its regular altitude. As much as I knew about the basics of telecommunication tools, I was terrorized when they put on the earphone-like earmuffs: I thought it was a new U.S. method to suck intels out of your brain and send them directly to a main computer which analyzes the information. I wasn’t worried about what they would suck out of my brain, but I was worried about the pain I may suffer due to electrical shocks. It was silly, but if you get scared you are not you anymore. You very much become a child again.

The plane was very small, and very noisy. It could only fly for three to three-and-a-half hours, and then it had to take fuel. “They are in Cyprus,” the DSE told me several hours before their arrival in Nouakchott; I figured the return would be by the same route, because such crimes have to be perfectly coordinated with the conspiring parties.

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offered me a meal. It looked good, but my throat was stiff and I felt like I was trying to swallow rough stones. “Is that all?”
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wondered.

“I am alright,
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,” I said.
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literally means somebody who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, but in the Middle East you respectfully refer to anybody you don’t know as
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.
^*
In Jordan they call every detainee
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in order to keep the names secret.

“Eat, eat, enjoy your food!”
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said, trying to give me some comfort to eat and stay alive.

“Thanks,
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, I’ve eaten enough.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,
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,” I replied.
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looked at me, forcing the most dishonest, sardonic smile I ever saw, exactly like he did when he stepped down out of the plane back in Nouakchott airport.

The guards collected the garbage and placed the tray table in the upright position. I had two of them watching me, one right behind my neck, and the second sitting next to me. The guy behind me was staring at me the whole time; I doubt he ever blinked his eyes. He must have been through some rough training.

“In my training, I almost lost my composure,” one young recruit later told me in the Jordanian prison. “During the training, we took a terrorist and slew him in front of all the students. Some couldn’t take it and burst out crying,” he continued.

“Where did you guys train?” I asked him.

“An Arabic country, I cannot tell you which one.” I felt nauseous, but tried my best to act in front of the guy as if everything were normal and he were a hero. “They want us to have no mercy with terrorists. I can kill a terrorist who is running away without wasting more than one bullet,” he demonstratively claimed.

“Oh, that’s great! But how do you know he is a terrorist? He might be innocent,” I gauged.

“I don’t care: if my boss said he is a terrorist, he is. I am not allowed to follow my personal judgment. My job is to execute.” I felt so bad for my people and the level of cruelty and gruesomeness they have fallen into. Now I was standing for real before somebody who is trained to kill blindly whomever he is ordered to. I knew he wasn’t lying, because I met a former Algerian soldier once who was seeking asylum in Germany, and he told me how gruesomely they dealt with the Islamists, too.

“During an ambush, we captured a sixteen-year-old teenager, and on the way to the jail our boss stopped, took him off the truck, and shot him dead. He didn’t want him in jail, he wanted revenge,” he told me.

I wondered why there was so much vigilance, given that I was shackled and there were two guards, two interrogators, and two pilots. Satan asked the guard who was sitting beside me to empty his seat, and
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sat beside me and started to interrogate me.
^*

“What’s your name?”

“Mohamedou Ould Salahi.”

“What’s your nickname?”

“Abu Musab.”

“What other nicknames do you have?”

“None!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,
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!” I wasn’t used to an interrogator from the Sham region, and I had never heard that accent in such a scary way. I find the Sham accent one of the sweetest in the Arabic language, but
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accent was not sweet. He was just evil: the way he moved, spoke, looked, ate, everything. During our short conversation we were almost shouting, but we could hardly hear one another because of the extremely loud whining of the engines. I hate small planes. I always feel as if I’m on the wing of a demon when I travel in them.

“We should stop the interrogation and resume it later on,” he said. Thank you, old engines! I just wanted him out of my face. I knew there was no way around him, but just for the time being.

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around midnight GMT we landed in
Cyprus. Was it a commercial airport or the military airport? I don’t know. But Cyprus is one of the Mediterranean paradises on Earth.

The interrogators and the two pilots put their jackets on and left the plane, most likely for a break. It looked like it had been raining; the ground looked wet, and a light drizzle was caressing the ground. Every once in a while I stole a quick glimpse through the small, blurry window. The breeze outside gave away the presence of a cold winter on the island. I felt some noises that shook the small plane; it must have been the fuel cistern moving. I drowned in my daydreams.

I was thinking, Now the local police will suspect the plane, and hopefully search it. I am lucky because I’m breaking the law by transiting through a country without a transit visa, and I’ll be arrested and put in jail. In the prison, I’ll apply for asylum and stay in this paradise. The Jordanians can’t say anything because they are guilty of trying to smuggle me. The longer the plane waits, the better my chances are to be arrested.

How wrong I was! How comforting a daydream can be! It was my only solace to help me ignore and forget the evilness that surrounded me. The plane indeed waited long enough, about an hour, but there was no searching the plane. I was non-existent in the passengers’ list that the Jordanians gave to the local authorities. I even thought I saw police in thick black uniforms coming near the plane, but I was not to be spotted because I was sandwiched between two seats and had to keep my head down, so I looked like a small bag. I might be wrong though, and just saw them because I wanted the police to come and arrest me.

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, his associate, and the two pilots came back and we took off. The pilots switched places. I saw the fat pilot sitting
in front of
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; he was almost as broad as he was tall.
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started a conversation with him. Although I couldn’t hear the talk, I assumed it to be a friendly discussion between two mature men, which was good.
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grew tired like everybody else, except for the young guard who kept his never-blinking eyes pointed on me. Every once in a while he made a comment like, “Keep your head down!” and “Look down,” but I kept forgetting the rules. I had the feeling that this would be my last flight, because I was certain I wouldn’t make it through the torture. I thought about every member of my family, even my far nephews and nieces and my in-laws. How short is this life! In a blink of an eye, everything is gone.

I kept reading my Koran in the dim light. My heart was pounding as if it wanted to jump out of my mouth. I barely understood anything of what I was reading; I read at least 200 or 300 pages unconsciously. I was prepared to die, but I never imagined it would be this way. Lord have mercy on me! I think hardly anybody will meet death the way he or she imagined. We human beings take everything into consideration except for death; hardly anybody has death on his calendar. Did God really predestinate for me to die in Jordan at the hands of some of the most evil people in the world? But I didn’t really mind being killed by bad people; before God they will have no case, I was thinking.

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around 4 a.m. GMT. A fake peace dominated the trip between Cyprus and my unknown present destination. The bandits seemed to be exhausted from the previous day trip from Amman to Nouakchott, and that was a blessing for me. The plane started to lose altitude again, and finally landed in a place I didn’t know. I think it was an Arabic country somewhere in the Middle East, because I think I spotted
signs in Arabic through the small windows when I stole a quick glimpse off my guarding demon. It was still nighttime, and the weather seemed to be clear and dry; I didn’t see any signs of winter.
^*

This time I did not hope for the police to search the airplane, because Arabic countries are always conspiring with each other against their own citizens. What treason! Nonetheless, any leak of information wouldn’t hurt. But I didn’t give that daydream a second thought. We didn’t stay long, though we went through the same procedure,
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and his two pilots going for a short break, and the same noises of taking on fuel that I heard in Cyprus. The plane took off to its final destination, Amman, Jordan. I don’t think that we made any more stops, though I kept passing out and coming to until we arrived in Jordan.

Over ninety percent of Jordanians are Muslim. For them, as for all Muslims from the Middle East, fasting during Ramadan is the most important religious service. People who don’t fast are resented in the society, and so many people fast due to social pressure even though they don’t believe in religion. In Mauritania, people are much more relaxed about fasting, and less relaxed about prayer.

“Take your breakfast,” said the guard. I think I had fallen asleep for a moment.

“No, thanks.”

“It’s your last chance to eat before the fast begins.”

“No, I’m OK.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,
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.” They started to eat their breakfast, chewing like cows; I could even hear them through my earmuffs. I kept
stealing glimpses toward the small windows until I saw the first daylight prying the darkness open.

“
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, I’d like to perform my prayer,” I said to the guard. The guard had a little conversation with
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, who ordered him to take off one of my earmuffs.

“There is no opportunity to pray here. When we arrive, you and I are going to pray together,” said
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. I was sort of comforted, because if he prays that was a sign that he was a believer, and so he wouldn’t possibly hurt his “brother” in belief. And yet he didn’t seem to have knowledge about his religion. Prayer must be performed on time in the best manner you can, at least in your heart. You cannot postpone it except for the reasons explained in the Islamic scriptures. In any case, the promised prayer with Satan never took place.
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, around 7:00 a.m. local time.
^*

The small plane clumsily started to fight its way through the cloudy and cold sky of Amman. We finally hit the ground and came to a standstill. Everybody was eager to get the hell out of the plane, including me.

“Stand up,” said one the guards, taking off the metal handcuffs that had already built a ring around my wrists. I was relieved, and sat silently talking to myself. “Look, they’re friendly. They just wanted to make sure that you didn’t do anything stupid in the plane; now that we arrived, there is no need for cuffs or earmuffs.” How wrong I was! They just took the handcuffs off in order to handcuff me again behind my back and put on bigger earmuffs and a bag over my head, covering my neck. My
heart started to pound heavily, which raised my blood pressure and helped me to stand steadier on my feet. I started to mumble my prayers. This was the first time that I got treated this way. My pants started to slip down my legs because I was so skinny and had been virtually without food for at least a week.

Two new, energetic guards dragged me out of the plane. I twisted my feet when I reached the ladder; I couldn’t see anything, nor did the stupid guards tell me anything. I fell face down, but the guards caught me before I hit the ladder.

“Watch out!” said
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, my future interrogator, to the guards. I memorized his voice, and when he later started to interrogate me, I recognized it from that day. I now knew that I had to step down the ladder until my feet hit the ground, and an ice-cold winter breeze hit my whole body. My clothes were not designed for this weather. I was wearing the worthless, made-in-a-cheap-country clothes I got from the Mauritanian authorities.

One of the guards silently helped my feet get into the truck that was parked inches away from the last step of the ladder. The guards squeezed me between them in the back seat, and off took the truck. I felt comforted; it was warm inside the truck, and the motor was quiet. The chauffeur mistakenly turned the radio on. The female DJ voice struck me with her Sham accent and her sleepy voice. The city was awakening from a long, cold night, slowly but surely. The driver kept accelerating and hitting the brakes suddenly. What a bad driver! They must have hired him just because he was stupid. I was moving back and forth like a car crash dummy.

I heard a lot of horns. It was the peak time for people who were going to work. I pictured myself at this very same time back home, getting ready for work, enjoying the new day, the morning ocean breeze through my open window, dropping my
nephews off at their respective schools. Whenever you think life is going in your favor, it betrays you.

After about 40 or 45 minutes of painful driving, we took a turn, entered a gate, and stopped. The guards dragged me out of the truck. The cold breeze shook my whole body, though only for a very short time before we entered the building and I was left near a heater. I knew how the heater looked even with my eyes closed; I just sensed it was like the ones I had in Germany. Later on, I learned from the guards that the prison facility was built by a Swedish company.

“Do not move,” said one of the guards before they both emptied out of the place. I stood still, though my feet could hardly carry me and my back hurt so bad. I was left there for about 15 or 20 minutes before
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grabbed me by the back of my collar, almost choking me to death.
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pushed me roughly up the stairs. I must have been on the ground floor, and he pushed me to the first.

Legend has it that Arabs are among the most hospitable folks on the face of the earth; both friends and enemies are unanimous about that. But what I would be experiencing here was another kind of hospitality.
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pushed me inside a relatively small room with a desk, a couple of chairs, and another guy sitting behind the desk and facing me. I baptized
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as soon as I saw him. He was a
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. Like the rest of the guards, he was dressed in
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had a high-and-tight haircut.
^*
You could see that he had been doing this work for some time: there were no
signs of humanity in his face. He hated himself more than anybody could hate him.

The first thing I saw were two pictures on the wall, the present King Abdullah and his extinguished father Hussein. Such pictures are the proof of dictatorship in the uncivilized world. In Germany I never saw anybody hang the picture of the president; the only time I saw his picture was when I was watching news, or driving around during elections, when they hang a bunch of candidates’ pictures. Maybe I’m wrong, but I mistrust anybody who hangs the picture of his president, or any president who wins any elections with more than 80%. It’s just ridiculous. On the other wall I read the time on a big hanging clock. It was around 7:30 a.m.

“Take your clothes off!” said
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. I complied with his order except for my underwear. I was not going to take them off without a fight, no matter how weak it would be. But
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just handed me a clean, light blue uniform. Jordanians are materially much more advanced and organized than Mauritanians; everything in the prison was modest, but clean and neat. It was the first time I put on a prison uniform in my life. In Mauritania there is no specific uniform, not because Mauritania is a democratic country, but maybe because the authorities are too lazy and corrupt. A uniform is a sign of backwards and communist countries. The only so-called “democratic” country that has this technique of wrapping up detainees in uniforms is the U.S.; the Jordanians have adopted a 100% American system in organizing their prisons.

The young guy behind the table was rather fat. He was acting as a clerk, but he was a horrible one.

“What’s your name? What’s your address in Amman?”

“I am not from Amman.”

“Where the hell are you from?”

“I am from Mauritania,” I answered.

“No, I mean where do you live here in Jordan?”

“Nowhere!”

“Did they capture you while transiting through the airport?”

“No, Hajji took me from my country to question me for two days and bring me back.”
^*
I wanted to make it sound as harmless as possible. Besides, that’s what I was told, even though I had the feeling now that I was being lied to and betrayed.

“How do you spell your name?” I spelled out my complete name, but the guy didn’t seem to have gone to primary school. He wrote as if with Chinese chopsticks. He kept filling out one form after another and throwing the old ones in the garbage can.

“What have you done?”

“I’ve done nothing!”

Both burst out in laughter. “Oh, very convenient! You have done nothing but you are here!” I thought, What crime should I say in order to satisfy them?

I presented myself as a person who came all the way from Mauritania to provide intels about my friends. “
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told me he needed my help,” I said. But then I thought, What a silly answer. If I were going to provide information freely, I could do so in Mauritania. The guards didn’t believe me anyway; what criminal benevolently admits to his crime? I felt humiliated because my story sounded weird and untruthful.

In the bureaucratic chaos, the prison’s commanding officer took the process in hand. He took my wallet and copied my personal data from my ID. He was a serious looking officer in his late thirties, light blond, Caucasian looking, with a dry face. It was obvious he was married to the cause. During my sojourn in the Dar Al Tawqif wa Tahqiq House
^†
for Arrest and
Interrogation, I kept seeing him working day and night and sleeping in the prison. Most of the guards do. They work
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rarely left the facility. I would catch him sneakily trying to look through the bin hole without me noticing him.
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was an
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in what they call the al Jaish Al Arabi, the Arab Legion. I was thinking, What a masquerade! If this is the protector of us Arabs, we screwed up! As an Arabic saying has it, “Her protector is her assailant.”

“Why do they call you guys the Arab Legion?” I asked one of the guards later.

“Because we are supposed to protect the entire Arab world,” he responded.

“Oh, that’s really great,” I said, thinking that we’d be just fine if they protected us from themselves.

After they had finished processing me,
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handcuffed me behind my back, blindfolded me, and grabbed me as usual by the back of my collar. We got in the lift and I felt it going up. We must have landed on the third floor.
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led me through a corridor and took a couple turns before a heavy metal door opened.
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uncuffed me and took off the blindfold.

I looked as far as my eyes could reach. It was not far: about 8 or 9 feet to a window that was small and high so detainees could not look outside. I climbed up once, but I saw nothing but the round wall of the prison. The prison was in the shape of a circle. The idea was smart, because if you succeeded in jumping out of the window, you would land in a big arena with a 30 or 40 foot concrete wall. The room looked bleak and stark, though clean. There was a wooden bed and an old blanket, a small sheet, and that was about it. The door closed loudly behind
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and I was left on my own, tired and scared. What an amazing world! I enjoyed visiting other countries, but not this way.

I performed my ritual wash and tried to pray standing, but there was no way so I opted to pray sitting down. I crawled over to the bed and soon trailed off. Sleep was a torture: as soon as I closed my eyes, the friends I was potentially going to be asked about kept coming to me and talking to me. They scared the hell out of me; I woke up numerous times mumbling their
names. I was in a no-win situation: if I stayed awake, I was so dead tired, and if slept I got terrorized by nightmares to the point that I screamed out loud.

Around 4:30 p.m., the guard on watch woke me up for food. Meals were served from a chariot that goes through the corridor from cell to cell, with the cook passing by again later to collect the empty plates. Detainees were allowed to keep one cup for tea and juice. When the cook showed up for my plate, he saw that I hardly ate anything.

“Is that all?” As much as I liked the food, my throat conspired against me. The depression and fear were just too much.

“Yes, thanks.”

“Well, if you say so!” The cook quickly collected my plate and off he rolled. In jail it’s not like at home; in jail if you don’t eat, it’s OK. But at home your parents and your wife do their best to persuade you. “Honey, just eat a little bit more. Or should I prepare you something else? Please, just do it for my sake. Why don’t you tell me what you’d like to eat?” In both cases, though, you more than likely won’t eat more—in jail because they scare the hell out of you, and at home because you’re spoiled. It’s the same way when you feel sick. I remember a very funny case when I was really hurting; it was either a headache or stomach ache.

“I’m in so much pain! Can you please give me some medication?”

“Fuck you, crybaby,” the guard said. I burst into laughter because I remembered how my family would be overreacting if they knew I was sick.

After giving my trash back I went back to sleep. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw my family in a dream, rescuing me from the Jordanians. In the dream I kept telling my family that it was just a dream, but they would tell me, “No, it’s for real, you’re
home.” How devastating, when I woke up and found myself in the dimly lit cell! This dream terrorized me for days. “I told you it’s a dream, please hold me and don’t let me go,” I would say. But there was no holding me. My reality was that I was secretly detained in a Jordanian jail and my family could not even possibly know where I was. Thank God after a while that dream disappeared, though every once in a while I would still wake up crying intensely after hugging my beloved youngest sister.

The first night is the worst; if you make it through that you’re more than likely going to make it through the rest. It was Ramadan, and so we got two meals served, one at sunset and the second before the first light. The cook woke me up and served me my early meal. Suhoor is what we call this meal; it marks the beginning of our fasting, which lasts until sunset. At home, it’s more than just a meal. The atmosphere matters. My older sister wakes everybody and we sit together eating and sipping the warm tea and enjoying each other’s company. “I promise I will never complain about your food, Mom,” I was thinking to myself.

I still hadn’t adjusted to Jordanian time. I wasn’t allowed to know the time or date, but later when I made friends among the guards they used to tell me what time it was. This morning I had to guess. It was around 4:30 a.m., which meant around 1:30 a.m. back home. I wondered what my family was doing. Do they know where I am?
^*
Will God show them my place? Will I ever see them again? Only Allah knows! The chances looked very low. I didn’t eat a lot, and in fact the meal was not
that big; a pita bread, buttermilk, and small pieces of cucumber. But I ate more than I did the night before. I kept reading the Koran in the dim light; I wasn’t able to recite because my brain was not working properly. When I thought it must be dawn I prayed, and as soon as I finished the Muezzin started to sing the Azan, his heavenly, fainting, sleepy, hoarse voice awakening in me all kind of emotions. How could all those praying believers possibly accept that one of their own is buried in the Darkness of the
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House of Arrest and Interrogation?
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