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.
During this period, after months in the Echo Special hut, the JTF geniuses decided I should be allowed to see both my guards and the out of doors. The female sergeant came one Sunday morning and waited outside the building. Master Luke appeared before my cell and announced the plan. I didn’t recognize him, of course; I thought he was a new interrogator. But when he spoke I knew it was him.
“Are you Master Luke?”
“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. Master Jedi led me outside the building; I saw him 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 or her. But now if he or she 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.
Big Boss 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.
The sergeant prepared a small table with a modest breakfast. I was scared as hell; for one, she 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,” she asked.
“I am very nervous. I am not used to this environment.”
“But I meant it for your good,” she said. The sergeant was a very official person; if she interrogates you, she does it officially, and if she eats with you, she does it as part of her job, and that was cool. I was just waiting for the breakfast to be done so I could go back to my cell, because the sergeant had brought me the movie King Henry V by Shakespeare.
“Sergeant, may I watch the movie more than once?” I asked. “I am afraid I am not going to understand it right away.”
When the sergeant first brought the TV she 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,” Yoda told me later.
“No, if the sergeant 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. This time, though, the sergeant answered positively. “Yes, you can watch it as many times as you wish,” she said.
I asked for one more thing.
“Sergeant, 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 the sergeant was not the right person to ask to take the initiative; she had literally been following the orders of Captain Collins. But to my surprise, she 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 have never 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.5 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 the female sergeant.
“Because detainees pick up the language quickly and understand the guards.”
“That’s so communist, Sergeant!” 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. After the removal of the guards’ face masks, 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 guards and interrogators 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.
Around April of 2004, the JTF commander turned the leadership of the team over to a U.S. Marine Colonel named Forest, and later on to an Army Major who went by Anderson, I don’t know his real name. Many people in the special team tried to make me think that Richard Zuley was still in charge, in order to maintain the fear factor; in fact, Zuley was sent to Iraq with General Miller. Richard Zuley came back from there once and paid me a visit in Echo Special, assuring me he was still in charge.6
“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!” I told him. Zuley 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 interrogator is integrally responsible for both detainees’ happiness and their agony, in order to have total control over the detainees. General Miller and his colleague Richard Zuley categorically refused to give the ICRC access to me. Only after General Miller 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 Beatrice, the ICRC delegate. Beatrice was a petite white lady in her late forties who had curly hair and a very serious expression, as if she was honestly upset about something. She and her colleagues 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.
“I am sorry! I am only interested in
sending and receiving mail, and I am grateful that you’re helping me to do so.” Beatrice was a very high level ICRC delegate from Switzerland who had been working on my case. Her colleagues in Washington sent her to me to convince me to report what had happened to me; she, too, tried to get me talking, but to no avail. I was simply too afraid. Beatrice was visibly upset with me when she left, but she also tried to reassure me.
“We understand your worries,” she told me. “ All we’re worried about is your well-being, and we respect your decision.”
Although sessions with the ICRC are supposedly private, I was interrogated about the conversations I had during that first session, and I truthfully told the interrogators what we had said. Later on I told the ICRC about this practice, and after that nobody asked me what happened in our sessions. We detainees knew that the meetings with ICRC were monitored; some detainees had been confronted with statements they made to the ICRC and there was no way for the JFT interrogators to know them unless the meeting was monitored. Many detainees refused to talk to the ICRC, and suspected them to be interrogators disguised in ICRC clothes. I even know some interrogators who presented themselves as private journalists. But to me that was very naïve: for a detainee to mistake an interrogator for a journalist he would have to be an idiot, and there are better methods to get an idiot talking. Such mischievous practices led to tensions between detainees and the ICRC. Some ICRC people were even cursed and spit on.
Around this same time, I was asked to talk to real journalist. General Miller’s time had been a hard time for everybody; he was a very violent person, and he decidedly hurt the already damaged image of the U.S. government. Now many people in the government were trying to polish the reputation it had earned from its mischief toward detainees. “You know many people are lying about this place and claiming that detainees get tortured. We’d like you to talk to a moderate journalist from the Wall Street Journal and refute the wrong things we’re suspected of.”
“Well, I got tortured, and I am going to tell the journalist the truth, the naked truth, without exaggeration or understatement. I’m not polishing anybody’s reputation,” I said. After that the interview was completely canceled, which was good because I didn’t want to talk to anybody anyway.
Gradually I was introduced to the “secret” new boss. I don’t exactly know why the team kept him secret from me and tried to make me believe that Richard Zuley was still in charge, but most likely they thought that I would be less cooperative when somebody other than Zuley took over. But they were wrong: I was interested more than anybody in the Intel community in bringing my case into the light. Colonel Forest had been counseled to work on my case from behind the scenes, which he did for a certain time, and then he came and introduced himself. I don’t know his real name, but he introduced himself as a Marine. He was a white gentleman in his early forties, around six feet tall, with dark blondish hair. He was rather intellectual and thoughtful, and seemed to place value on his military job as an intelligence gatherer, not a torturer. In our conversations I found him rather humble. He tried everything in the realm of his power to make my life in custody as easy as possible.
I asked him to end my segregation and let me see other detainees, and he successfully organized several meetings between me and an Egyptian detainee by the name of Tariq al-Sawah, mainly to eat together and play chess. Tariq was not my first choice, but it was not up to me who I could meet, and in any case, I was just dying to see some other detainee I could relate to.
In early summer of 2005 they moved Tariq next to my hut, and we were allowed to see each other during recreation.7 Mr. al-Sawah was on the older side, about forty-eight years old. He did not seem to have passed detention’s shock sanely; He suffered from paranoia, amnesia, depression, and other mental problems. Some interrogators claimed that he was playing a game, but to me he was completely out of his mind. I really didn’t know what to believe, but I didn’t care too much; I was dying to have company, and he was sort of company.
There is a drawback to detainees being together, though, especially if you know the detainee only from the camp: We detainees tend to be skeptical about each other. But I was very relaxed in that regard because I really didn’t have anything to hide.
“Did they tell you to gather Intels from me?” he asked me once. I wasn’t shocked, because I assumed the same about him. “Tariq, relax and just assume that I am only here to spy on you. Just keep your mouth shut and don’t speak about anything you’re not comfortable speaking about,” I told him.
“You have no secrets?” he wondered.
“No, I don’t, and I allow you to provide anything you may learn about me,” I said.
I do remember the first day in August when an Army Specialist who called herself Amy surged through the door smiling and greeted me, “Salamu Alaikum.”
“Waalaikum As-Salam! Tetkallami Arabi?” I answered her greeting, asking if she spoke Arabic.
“I don’t.” In fact Amy had already used all the Arabic she knew, namely the greeting, Peace upon you. Amy and I started to talk as if we had known each other for years. She studied biology and joined the U.S. Army recently as an enlisted person, most likely to pay her college tuition. Many Americans do; college education in the U.S. is sinfully high.
“I am going to help you start your garden,” Amy said. A long time before, I had asked the interrogators to get me some seeds in order to experiment around, and maybe succeed in growing something in the aggressive soil of GTMO. “I have experience in gardening,” she continued. And indeed Amy seemed to have experience: she helped me to grow sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, cilantro, and things of that nature. But as helpful as she was, I kept giving her a hard time about one single bad experience she made me do.
“I have a problem with crickets that keep destroying my garden,” I complained.
“Take some soap and put it in water and keep spraying it lightly on the plants every day,” Amy suggested. And I blindly followed her advice. However, I noticed that my plants were growing unhappy and sort of sick. So I decided to spray only half of the plants with the diluted soap and watch the results. It didn’t take long to see the soap was responsible for the bad effects, and so I completely stopped the story of soap.
After that I kept telling Amy, “I know what you studied: You studied how to kill plants with diluted soap!”
“Shut up! You just didn’t do it right.”
“Whatever.”
Colonel Forest had introduced Amy to me, and from then on she took my case in hand entirely. For some reason the special team thought that I would disrespect her, and were skeptical as to whether Specialist Amy was the right choice. But they had no reason to worry: Amy treated me as if I were her brother, and I as if she were my sister. Of course some might say that all that interrogators’ stuff is a trick to lure detainees to provide them information; they can be friendly, sociable, humane, generous, and sensitive but still they are evil and ungenuine about everything. I mean, there is a good reason to doubt the integrity of interrogators, if only due to the nature of the interrogators’ job. The ultimate goal of an interrogator is to get intel from his target, the nastier the better. But interrogators are human beings, with feelings and emotions; I have been uninterruptedly interrogated since January 2000, and I have seen all kinds of interrogators, good, bad, and in between. Besides, here in GTMO Bay everything is different. In GTMO, the U.S. government assigns a team of interrogators who stick with you almost on a daily basis for some time, after which they leave and get replaced with a new team, in a never ending routine. So whether you like it or not, you have to live with your interrogators and try to make the best out of your life. Furthermore, I deal with everybody according to what he shows me, and not what he could be hiding. With this motto I approach everybody, including my interrogators.
Since I have not had a formal education in the English language, I needed and still do a lot of help honing my language skills. SPC Amy worked hard on that, especially on my pronunc
iation and spelling. When it comes to spelling, English is a terrible language: I don’t know any other language that writes Colonel
and pronounces it Kernel. Even natives of the language have a tremendous problem with the inconsistency of the sounds and the corresponding letter combinations.
On top of that, prepositions in English don’t make any sense; you just have to memorize them. I remember I kept saying “I am afraid from . . .,” and Amy jumping and correcting me: “afraid of.” I am sure I was driving her crazy. My problem is that I had been picking the language from the “wrong” people—namely, U.S. Forces recruits who speak grammatically incorrectly. So I needed somebody to take away the incorrect language from me and replace it with the correct one. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks, and that is exactly what SPC Amy duly tried to do with me. I think she was successful, even though I gave her a hard time sometimes. Amy once forgot that she was around me and said something like, “Amana use the bathroom,” and I went, “Oh, is ‘Amana’ one of the words I missed?”
“Don’t even go there!” she would say.
Amy taught me the way Americans speak English. “But British people say so and so,” I would say.
“You’re not British,” she would say.
“I am just saying that there are different ways to pronounce it,” I would answer. But she failed to give me the Grammar Rules to follow, which is the only way I can really learn. Being a native speaker, SPC Amy has a feel for the language, which I don’t. Besides her mother-tongue, she also spoke Russian and proposed to teach me; I was eager but she didn’t have enough time, and with time I lost the passion. A person as lazy as me won’t learn a new language unless he has to. Amy was dying to learn Arabic but she didn’t have time for that either. Her job kept her busy day and night
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