The Mauritanian

by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

  Big Boss didn’t have any bad feelings about his job; on the contrary, he was rather proud of what he was doing, and he was mad at the fact that he was taking care of the dirty part of the job and he wanted to be rewarded adequately. “Fuck the interrogators: we do the work and they take the credit,” Big Boss told me once.

  He also didn’t get along with Master Yoda, the only guy that outranked him. “Yoda is a pussy!” he described him once. But Big Boss was not a social person anyway. He could not lead a normal conversation like everybody else. He rarely spoke, and when he did, it was about his wild sex experiences. One common thing among the guards is that most of them never understood the fact that some people don’t have sex outside marriage.

  “You’re gay,” was the usual response.

  “That is OK with me, but I cannot have sex outside marriage. You may consider me an idiot, but that’s OK!”

  “How can you buy a car without test-driving it?”

  “First of all, a woman is not a car. And I am doing it because of my religion.” Even my female interrogator Mary shocked me once when she said, “I wouldn’t marry anybody before test-driving him.” But I still do believe that some Americans don’t believe in premarital sex.

  The one who came up with the idea of the guards taking Star Wars characters’ names was a specialist who called himself Master Jedi. He saw everything he was doing to me as just part of his job; no hard feelings, really. But he also would bring me cookies and even the newspaper. Every once in a while he made me clean the guards’ area, but I really enjoyed that; I would get to see what the guards had there, and also got a soda as a reward.

  When we interacted, Master Jedi liked to talk about himself. He told me he had been tasked to gather Intels about me before my kidnapping from Gold Building, and gave evidence of this by accurately recounting details of my special situation. I had never noticed him in the blocks at Camp Delta, nor was I supposed to. Master Jedi was mostly partnered with Master Luke; at the beginning, and in the decisive period, Jedi was in charge. Jedi was in good physical shape, unlike his friend Luke.

  Master Jedi moderately and dutifully followed the rules he was given by Captain Collins and the rest of the interrogators, and he and his associate delivered my water diet, gave me PTs, forbade me to pray or fast, and kept giving me a “Party-shower.” Master Jedi was even the one who came up with that annoying, never-ending, basic-training-like drill, where I had to have every piece in a defined place, toilet and sink always dry, so I ended up having to use my uniform because I had no towel. He hardly ever gave me a break except when he and Luke started to play Call of Duty and forgot about me. Nonetheless, I can tell you truthfully that Master Jedi didn’t enjoy bothering me or torturing me.

  “Why did you forbid me to pray when you knew it’s an illegal order?” I asked him when we became friends.

  “I could have but they would have given me some shitty job.” He also told me that Captain Collins gave him the order preventing me from practicing any religious activities. Jedi said, “I’m going to hell because I forbade you to pray.”

  Master Jedi was so happy when he was ordered to treat me nicely. “I really enjoyed being here with you more than being at home,” he genuinely said. He was a very generous guy; he used to give me muffins, movies, and PS2 games. Before he left he asked me to choose between two games, Madden 2004 and Nascar 2004. I chose Nascar 2004, which I still have. Above all, Jedi was a hell of an entertainer. He tended to stretch the truth, and he would tell me all kinds of stuff. Sometimes he gave me too much information, things I didn’t want to know, nor was I supposed to know.

  He was a big gamer. He used to play video games all the time. I’m terrible when it comes to video games; it’s just not for me. I always told the guards, “Americans are just big babies. In my country it’s not appropriate for somebody my age to sit in front of a console and waste his time playing games.” Indeed, one of the punishments of their civilization is that Americans are addicted to video games.

  And Americans worship their bodies. They eat well. When I was delivered to Bagram Air Base, I was like, What the heck is going on, these soldiers never stop chewing on something. And yet, though God blessed Americans with a huge amount of healthy food, they are the biggest food wasters I ever knew: if every country lived as Americans do, our planet could not absorb the amount of waste we produce.

  They also work out. I have a big variety of friends who come from all backgrounds, and I really had never heard any other group of mortals speaking about the next workout plan.

  “Is that a homosexual magazine?” I asked one of the guards who was holding a man fitness magazine with those oversized guys. You know, those guys who keep working until their necks disappear, and their heads barely fit between their overgrown shoulders.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? This is a workout magazine,” he responded. American men are more intolerant toward male homosexuals compared to German men, and they work out as if they’re preparing for a fight.

  “When I hug my wife, she feels secure,” Master Yoda told me once.

  “My wife always feels secure; she doesn’t need a hug to be calmed,” I answered.

  Master Jedi was like anybody else: he bought more food than he needed, worked out even during duty, planned to enlarge his member, played video and computer games, and was very confused when it comes to his religion.

  “Pillow, I am telling you, I really don’t know. But I am Christian and my parents celebrate Christmas every year,” he told me, adding, “My girlfriend wants to convert to Islam but I said no.”

  “Come on, Jedi, you should let her choose. Don’t you guys believe in freedom of religion?” I replied. The Specialist had all the qualities of a human being; I liked conversing with him because he always had something to say. He liked to impress the females on the island. And he especially resented the one guard who wouldn’t take a Star Wars name; I really can’t blame him!

  Everyone resented him. He was lazy and on the slower side. Nobody wanted to work with him, and they talked ill about him all the time. This skinny white guy didn’t have any initiative or personality of his own, and he used to copy every other guard. When he started working on the team he was quiet; he just served me my food and dutifully made me drink water ever hour. And that was cool. But he quickly learned that I could be yelled at, have food taken from, and made to do harsh PTs I didn’t want to do. He couldn’t believe that he was entitled to so much power. He almost went wild making me stand up for hours during the night, even though he knew I suffered from sciatic nerve. He made me clean my cell over and over. He made me clean the shower over and over.

  “I wish you’d make a mistake, any mistake, so I can strike,” he used to say while performing some corny fake martial arts he must have learned for purposes of his mission. Even after Captain Collins ordered the guards to be nice to me, he became worse, as if trying to catch up on something he missed.

  “You call me Master, OK?” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” I answered, thinking, Who the heck does he think he is? He has no qualification besides his luck of having been born a white guy in the U.S. His partner was the only black guard on the team, but even though his partner outranked him, he was in charge all the time. When he saw the other guards playing chess with me, he wanted to play, too, but I soon discovered how weak a person can be in chess. Moreover, he had his own rules, which he always enforced, him being the Master, and me the detainee. In his chess world the king belonged to his own color, breaking the basic rule in chess that states that the king sits on the opposite color when the game begins. I knew he was wrong, but there was no correcting him, so with him I had to play his version of chess.

  * * *

  Around March 15, 2004, the JTF interrogation team gave me a TV with an integrated VCR to watch the movies they would give me. Captain Collins himself gave me the movie Gladiator from his personal collection. I like that movie because it vividly depicts how the forces of evil get defeated at
the end, no matter how strong they seem. On advice and approval, the sergeant and her colleague got me many interesting movies.

  In my real life I was not a big fan of movies; I don’t remember watching a single movie all the way through since I turned eighteen. I do like documentaries and movies based on true stories, but I have a problem giving up my mind and going with the flow of the acting when I know that everything that happens in the movie is fake. But in prison, I’m different: I appreciate everything that shows regular human beings wearing casual clothes and talking about something besides terrorism and interrogation. I just want to see some mammals I can relate to.

  The Americans I met watch movies a lot. In America it’s like, “Tell me how many movies you’ve seen, and I’ll tell you who you are.” But if Americans can be proud of something, they have the right to be proud of their motion picture industry.

  Of course, the TV had no receiver, because I was not allowed to watch TV or know anything that happened outside my cell; all I was allowed to watch were the movies that had been approved by Captain Collins. It is so evidently unjust to cut off a person from the rest of the world and forbid him to know what’s going on in the outside world, regardless of whether or not he is involved in criminal activities. I noticed that the TV/ VCR combo had an FM radio receiver that could receive local broadcasts, but I never touched it: although it is my basic right to listen to whatever radio I wish, I find it so dishonest to stab the hand that reaches out to help you. And regardless of what Captain Collins and his interrogators have done to me, I found it positive that they offered me this entertainment tool, and I would not use it against them. Moreover, Captain Collins got me a laptop, which I mightily enjoyed. Of course one of the main reasons for the laptop was to make me type my answers during interrogations to save both time and manpower for the JTF team, kind of like forced labor. But I had no problem with that idea; after all, I wanted to deliver my words and not their interpretation thereof.

  “Look, I got some Arabic music,” said the sergeant, handing me an audio CD.

  “Oh, fine!” But the CD was not even close to the Arabic language: it was Bosnian. I laughed wholeheartedly. “Close enough. It’s Bosnian music,” I said when the CD started to play.

  “Is it not the same, Bosnian and Arabic?” asked the sergeant. That is just one example of how little Americans know about Arabs and Islam. The sergeant is a member of JTF and not just anybody; she is supposedly armed with basic knowledge about Arabs and Islam. But she and the other interrogators always addressed me, “You guys from the middle east . . .,” which is so completely wrong. For many Americans, the world comprises three places: The U.S., Europe, and the rest of the world, the Middle East. Unfortunately, the world, geographically speaking, is a little bit more than that. In my job in my country, I had to make some calls to the U.S. for professional purposes. I remember the following conversation:

  “Hello, we are dealing with office materials. We are interested in representing your company.”

  “Where are you calling from?” asked the lady at the other end.

  “Mauritania.”

  “What state?” asked the lady, seeking more precise information. I was negatively surprised at how small her world was.

  The confusion of Captain Collins was as obvious as his ignorance about the whole terrorism issue. The man was completely terrified, as if he were drowning and looking for any straw to grasp. I guess I was one of the straws he bumped into in his flailing, and he grasped me really hard.

  “I don’t understand why people hate us. We help everybody in the world!” he stated once, seeking my opinion.

  “Neither do I,” I replied. I knew it was futile to enlighten him about the historical and objective reasons that led to where we’re at, and so I opted to ignore his comment; besides, it was not exactly easy to change the opinion of a man as old as he was.

  Many young men and women join the U.S. forces under the misleading propaganda of the U.S. government, which makes people believe that the Armed Forces are nothing but a big Battle of Honor: if you join the Army, you are a living martyr; you’re defending not only your family, your country, and American democracy but also freedom and oppressed people all around the world. Great, there is nothing wrong with that; it may even be the dream of every young man or woman. But the reality of the U.S. forces is a little tiny bit different. To go directly to the bottom line: the rest of the world thinks of Americans as a bunch of revengeful barbarians. That may be harsh, and I don’t believe the dead average American is a revengeful barbarian. But the U.S. government bets its last penny on violence as the magic solution for every problem, and so the country is losing friends every day and doesn’t seem to give a damn about it.

  “Look, Staff Sergeant, everybody hates you guys, even your traditional friends. The Germans hate you, the French hate you,” I said once to SSG Mary.

  “Fuck all of them. We would rather have them hate us, and we’ll whup their asses,” Mary replied. I just smiled at how easy a solution can be made.

  “That’s one way to look at it,” I answered.

  “Fuck them Terrorists.”

  “OK,” I would say. “But you should find the terrorists first. You can’t just go wild and hurt everybody in the name of terrorism.” She believed that every Arab is a terrorist until proven innocent.

  Weird exchanges like this happened often with her colleague, too.

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

  “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.”

  Another time, speaking of Ahmed Ressam, SFC Shally told me, “All he says is that he did the operation on his own, and that’s it.”

  “Oh, that’s very convenient!” I said wryly. Lately I had started to copy SFC Shally, using the exact same phrases as he did. 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 Captain Collins to transfer me to another place because I wanted to forget the bad memories I experienced where I was. He 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 intelligence gathering. He genuinely promised me many other things, but couldn’t hold those promises either.

  One amazing thing about Captain Collins 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 JTF special team. 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.

  In early 2004, the U.S. Army released the first letter from my family.4 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.

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

  Nouakchott, July 2003

  In the Name of God the most Merciful.

  Peace be with you and God’s mercy.

  From your mom Maryem Mint El Wadia

  After my greeting I inform you of my wellbeing and that of the rest of your family. We hope you are the same way. My health situation is OK. I still keep up with my schedule with the Doctors. I feel I am getting better. And the family is OK.

  As I mentioned everybody sends his greeting to you. Beloved son! As of now we have received three letters from you. And this is our second reply. The neighbors are well and they send their greetings. At the end of this letter I renew my greeting. Peace be with you.

  Your Mom, Maryem

  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.