Guantánamo Diary (41 page)

“We need you to help us lock up
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for the rest of his life,” he said.

“I am. I’ve been providing enough Intels to convict him.”

“But he keeps denying. He is dealing with other agencies that have different rules than we do. I wish I could get my hands on him: things would be different then!”

I was like, “I hope you never get your hands on anybody.”

“All he says is that he did the operation on his own, and that’s it,”
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said.

“Oh, that’s very convenient!” I said wryly. Lately I had started to copy
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, using the exact same phrases as
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. He used to tell me “All you can say is I don’t know, I don’t remember. That’s very convenient! You think you are going to impress an American jury with your charisma?” He always liked to quote the U.S. President, saying “We will not send you guys to court and let you use our justice system, since you’re planning to destroy it.”

“Is that part of the Big Conspiracy?” I wryly wondered.

“Al Qaeda is using our liberal justice system,” he continued.
I really don’t know what liberal justice system he was talking about: the U.S. broke the world record for the number of people it has in prison. Its prison population is over two million, more than any other country in the world, and its rehabilitation programs are a complete failure. The United States is the “democratic” country with the most draconian punishment system; in fact, it is a good example of how draconian punishments do not help in stopping crimes. Europe is by far more just and humane, and the rehab programs there work, so the crime rate in Europe is decisively lower than the U.S. But the American proverb has it, “When the going gets rough, the rough get going.” Violence naturally produces violence; the only loan you can make with a guarantee of payback is violence. It might take some time, but you will always get your loan back.

As things improved, I asked
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to transfer me to another place because I wanted to forget the bad memories I experienced where I was.
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tried to meet my request; he promised me the transfer many times, but he failed to keep his promises. I don’t doubt his seriousness, but I could tell there was some kind of power struggle in the small island of GTMO. Everybody wanted the biggest portion of the pie, and the most credit for the work of
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. He genuinely promised me many other things, but couldn’t hold those promises either.

One amazing thing about
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was that he never brought up the story of my torture. I always expected him to open the topic, but nothing like that happened: Taboo! Personally I was scared to talk about it; I didn’t feel secure enough. Even if he had brought the topic up, I would have dodged talking about it.

But at least he finally told me where I was.

“I have to inform you, against the will of many members in
our team, that you are in GTMO,” he said. “You’ve been honest with us and we owe you the same.” Although the rest of the world didn’t have a clue as to where the U.S. government was incarcerating me, I had known since day one thanks to God and the clumsiness of the
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. But I acted as if this was new information, and I was happy because it meant many things to me to be told where I am. As I write these lines, I am still sitting in that same cell, but at least now I don’t have to act ignorant about where I am, and that is a good thing.

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
the U.S. Army released the first letter from my family.
^*
It was sent through the International Committee of the Red Cross. My family wrote it months before, in July 2003. It had been 815 days since I was kidnapped from my house and had all contacts with my family forcibly broken. I had been sending many letters to my family since I arrived in Cuba, but to no avail. In Jordan I was forbidden even to send a letter.

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
was the one who handed me that historical piece of paper, which read:

I couldn’t believe that after all I had been through I was holding a letter from my mom. I smelled the odor of a letter that had touched the hand of my mom and other members of my beloved family. The emotions in my heart were mixed: I didn’t know what to do, laugh or cry. I ultimately ended up doing both. I kept reading the short message over and over. I knew it was for real, not like the fake one I got one year ago. But I couldn’t respond to the letter because I was still not allowed to see the ICRC.

Meanwhile, I kept getting books in English that I enjoyed reading, most of them Western literature. I still remember one book called
The Catcher in the Rye
that made me laugh until my stomach hurt. It was such a funny book. I tried to keep my laughter as low as possible, pushing it down, but the guards felt something.

“Are you crying?” one of them asked.

“No, I’m alright,” I responded. It was my first unofficial laughter in the ocean of tears. Since interrogators are not professional comedians, most of the humor they came up with was a bunch of lame jokes that really didn’t make me laugh, but I would always force an official smile.

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came one Sunday morning and waited outside the building.
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appeared before my cell
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. I didn’t recognize him, of
course; I thought he was a new interrogator.
^*
But when he spoke I knew it was him.

“Are
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
?”

“Don’t worry. Your interrogator is waiting on you outside.” I was overwhelmed and terrified at the same time; it was too much for me.
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led me outside the building; I saw
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looking away from me, shy that I see his face. If you deal with somebody for so long behind a face cover, that is how you know him
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. But now if he
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takes off the face cover you have to deal with his features, and that is a completely different story for both sides. I could tell the guards were uncomfortable to show me their faces.

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put it bluntly. “If I catch you looking at me, I’m gonna hurt you.”

“Don’t you worry, I’m not dying to see your face.” Through time I had built a perception about the way everybody looked, but imagination was far from the reality.

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prepared a small table with a modest breakfast. I was scared as hell; for one,
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never took me outside the building, and for two, I was not used to my guards’ “new” faces. I tried to act casually but my shaking gave me away.

“What’s wrong with you,”
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asked.

“I am very nervous. I am not used to this environment.”

“But I meant it for your good,”
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said.
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was a very official person; if
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interrogates you, she does it officially, and if
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eats with you,
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does it as part of
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job, and that was cool.
^†
I was just waiting for the breakfast
to be done so I could go back to my cell, because
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had brought me the movie
King Henry V
by Shakespeare.

“
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, may I watch the movie more than once?” I asked. “I am afraid I am not going to understand it right away.”

“Yes, you can watch it as many times as you wish.”

When
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brought the TV
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briefed the guards to let me watch a movie only once, and then the party is over. “You’re allowed to watch your movie only once, but as far as we’re concerned you can watch it as many times as you wish, as long as you don’t tell your interrogator about it. We really don’t care,”
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told me later.

“No, if
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said so, I am going to stick with it. I am not gonna cheat,” I told him. I really didn’t want to mess with a comfort item I had just gotten, so I chose to treat everything carefully. But I did ask for one thing.

“
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, can I keep my water bottle in my cell, and drink whenever I choose?” I was just tired of the lack of sleep; as soon as I closed my eyes, the heavy metal door opened and I had to drink another bottle of water. I knew
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was not the right person to ask to take the initiative;
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had literally been following the orders of
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. But to my surprise,
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came the next day and briefed the guards that the water bottle now belonged in my cell. You cannot imagine how happy I was to be able to decide the time and the amount of water I could drink. People who never have been in such a situation cannot really appreciate the freedom of drinking water whenever they want, however much they want.

Then, in July 2004, I found a copy of The Holy Koran in my box of laundry. When I saw the Holy Koran beneath the clothes I felt bad, thinking I had to steal it in order to save it. But I took the Koran to my cell, and nobody ever asked me why I did so. Nor did I bring it up on my own. I had been forbidden
all kinds of religious rituals, so I figured a copy of the Koran in my cell would not have made my interrogators too happy. More than that, lately the religious issue had become very delicate. The Muslim chaplain of GTMO was arrested and another Muslim soldier was charged with treason—oh, yes,
treason
.
^*
Many Arabic and religious books were banned, and books teaching the English language were also banned. I sort of understood religious books being banned. “But why English learning books?” I asked
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.

“Because Detainees pick up the language quickly and understand the guards.”

“That’s so communist,
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” I said. To this date I have never received any Islamic books, though I keep asking for them; all I can get are novels and animal books.
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my prayers started to be tolerated. I had been gauging the tolerance toward the practice of my religion; every once in a while I put the tolerance of the
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to the test, and they kept stopping me from praying. So I would pray secretly. But on this day at the very end of July 2004, I performed my prayer under the surveillance of some new guards
and nobody made a comment. A new era in my detention had emerged.

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turned the leadership of the team over to a
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, I don’t know his real name. Many people in the
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tried to make me think
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was still in charge, in order to maintain the fear factor; in fact,
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was sent to Iraq
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.
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came back from there once in
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and paid me a visit, assuring me he was still in charge.
^*

“You see, I have a lot of work to do in D.C. and overseas. You might not see me as often as you used to. But you know what makes me happy, and what makes me mad,” he said.

“I sure do!”
■■■■■■■■■■■■■
fixed some differences I had with the new team in my favor, and he gave me a desert camouflage hat as a souvenir. I still have the hat. I never saw him again after that session.

Finally, in September 2004, the ICRC was allowed to visit after a long fight with the government. It was very odd to the ICRC that I had all of sudden disappeared from the camp, as if the earth had swallowed me. All attempts by ICRC representatives to see me or just to know where I was were thoroughly flushed down the tube.

The ICRC had been very worried about my situation, but they couldn’t come to me when I needed them the most. I cannot blame them; they certainly tried. In GTMO, the
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is integrally responsible for both detainees’ happiness and their agony, in order to have total control
over the detainees.
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and his colleague
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categorically refused to give the ICRC access to me. Only after
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left was it possible for the ICRC to visit me.

“You are the last detainee we had to fight to see. We have been able to see all other detainees,” said
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.
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tried to get me talking about what happened to me during the time they couldn’t have access to me. “We have an idea because we have talked to other detainees who were subject to abuse, but we need you to talk so we can help in stopping further acts of abuse.” But I always hid the ill-treatment when the ICRC asked me about it because I was afraid of retaliation. That and the fact that the ICRC has no real pressure on the U.S. government: the ICRC tried, but the U.S. government didn’t change its path, even an inch. If they let the Red Cross see a detainee, it meant that the operation against that detainee was over.

“We cannot act if you don’t tell us what happened to you,” they would urge me.