by Mahvish Khan
Paul worded his answer carefully, explaining what kind of law he practiced, who his regular clients were, and, above all, that he was in no way influenced by the U.S. government.
Taj Mohammad’s letter to Paul.
“I work for you,” he said to Taj with a smile.
“What benefit is it for you to help me?” Taj asked suspiciously. “What do you get out of it?”
Paul explained that not all Americans agreed with the actions of their government and said that he wanted to help Taj receive a fair hearing and get him released one day.
Taj was having none of it. “You’re really here because you want people to see you as a big lawyer who represented the famous Guantánamo detainees, right?” he said.
This back-and-forth continued for a while. It was difficult for Taj to conceive of why an American whose government had declared Guantánamo detainees a threat to U.S. national security would want to get involved.
“Is this going to help your business when you tell people you freed a man from Guantánamo?” he challenged Paul again.
Taj’s quick wit and efforts to shock amused me. He didn’t bother trying to be polite, like the other Afghans, and he didn’t sugarcoat anything.
“I don’t think a lawyer can get me out of here,” he declared. “A lot of detainees have been released without the help of any attorney.”
But he listened as Paul explained why it was beneficial to have an attorney. Without one, he would be hidden from the world, subject only to the U.S. military. “An attorney is like chicken soup,” Paul said, looking for a metaphor. “It can help you to have one, and it’s definitely not going to hurt you.”
Finally, Taj relented and began to ask questions about his habeas petition.
“Is the judge on my case a man or a woman?”
“Your judge is a man.”
Taj held two thumbs up and broke into a smile.
“What do you have against women?” I blurted. In spite of myself, I felt annoyed at his display of glee over not having a female judge.
“Nothing,” he said. “I like women, but no one listens to a woman.” And he gave me a grin.
Taj had been arrested in late 2002. Although he hadn’t been formally charged, the U.S. military accused him of associating with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and of taking money to attack a U.S. base. Taj maintained that it was all nonsense. He was a goatherd on a mountain, and watching his goats took up all his time, he said.
Taj didn’t believe that he’d been sold to the U.S. military by bounty hunters or political opponents. The real reason he was arrested and brought to Guantánamo, he said, was simple: he had a temper.
He told us his story. The houses in his village didn’t have access to running water, and the U.S. military was trying to help out. His cousin, Ismael, was employed by the Americans and was responsible for setting up the waterlines.
“He gave every house in the village a water pipe, except mine,” Taj said.
It was Ramadan, the month of fasting, and he had just returned from a short trip out of town. When his mother told him what had happened, Taj went to confront his cousin, whom he found smoking a cigarette. When he inquired about the water, Ismael curtly told him to ask the Americans about it.
The two started arguing and soon began fighting.
“I got a stick, and I beat him over head,” Taj said. “His head started bleeding.” Villagers pulled the two men apart. Ismael shouted at his cousin, saying that he would have him reported to the Americans.
“He said he was going to make sure I was sent to Guantánamo,” Taj told us. “Everyone heard him.”
After the brawl, Taj walked home, not thinking much about Ismael’s threats. But four days later, a group of Americans with Afghan interpreters came to his house late at night and woke him up. They questioned him about attacking his cousin. Then, they searched his house, tied his hands, and took him to the nearby military base, where he was put in a room for the night.
“I slipped my hands out of the cuffs and went to sleep,” Taj said, smiling.
He figured Ismael would get over his anger and tell the U.S. soldiers to let him go the next day. When he woke up in the morning, he heard his cousin speaking with the Americans. He quickly slipped the cuffs back on and waited, expecting to be released.
Instead, he was taken to Bagram Air Force Base. From there, he was flown to Guantánamo. It was his first flight in an airplane.
“It was so bumpy, I felt more like I was riding on a donkey,” he said jokingly.
Over the years, Taj told us, even Ismael had come to feel badly about Taj’s ending up at Guantánamo. His cousin wrote to tell him that he regretted what had happened and that he wished Taj were home. Taj looked sad for a moment, telling us that.
We asked about his interrogations. He said that he was asked the same questions over and over. He described not being allowed to sleep for long periods. “You have no idea what it feels like not to sleep for over a week,” he said, shaking his head. One soldier, though, felt badly about his sleep deprivation. “When it was her shift, she let me sleep the whole time,” Taj said.
There was one interrogator at Guantánamo whom he particularly liked. Her name was Susie, he said, but he hadn’t seen her in a while. “She left, I think. Now it’s a girl named Mi-shal,” he said.
“Michelle?” I asked.
“Yes, Mi-shal. She dances well.”
I looked at him in confusion. “The guards had some music playing, and I saw her dance,” he said. I never quite understood what that was all about.
Personally, I never bought into the goatherd story. Taj always came across as much more sophisticated than I’d imagined a goatherd to be. That said, I didn’t think it mattered whether Taj was or wasn’t a simple goatherd. The more important fact was that there was no evidence suggesting that he was al-Qaeda.
At a military hearing in 2003, he was accused of firing rocket-propelled grenades at the U.S. military base in Kunar in exchange for a pair of tennis shoes. Taj admitted that he owned a pair of tennis shoes, but he said he’d purchased them himself. In a separate charge, he stood accused of attacking the military base in exchange for twenty thousand kaldars, about $400.
The military also accused him of working with Afghan warlord Hekymatyar Gulbadin, of associating with the Taliban and alQaeda, and of being a member of Lashkar-i-Tayy-iba, an organization reportedly based in Pakistan that trains insurgents to fight against the Indian army in the disputed Kashmir territory.
And he was further accused of being connected to the smuggling of explosives from Pakistan into Afghanistan and to attacks using improvised explosive devices on a U.S. air base.
But Taj insisted that he was only a goatherd.
“I am a nomad taking care of animals. That is all I do,” he told the military panel. “I come from generations of animal caretakers. My father and grandfather did the same.”
When the accusations were exhausted, the presiding officer turned to the subject of Taj’s small skull cap—these are given to many of the detainees.
“Most detainees wear white hats,” the officer said. “Is there some significance to your black hat? Does it mean that you are higher up in the organization?”
“No. I look nice in it. I have darker skin, and it matches the hat,” Taj replied.
Finally, the panel asked him what he planned to do if he were released. He replied that he had initially planned on working for the Americans as an interpreter, but over the years in detention, he had changed his mind because the Americans had caused him too much grief.
“I will go back to my own way of living and keep my goats,” he said.
“And stay away from your cousin,” the presiding officer admonished.
Paul left the room briefly during our first meeting, and Taj immediately confronted me. “Why are you working with the Americans?” he asked.
I was shocked. I had thought the meeting was going well and that we had established a decent level of trust and rapport.
At the same time, the detainees often confronted me about something whenever the lawyers I was with left the room. I suppose that because I spoke Pashto, they thought of me as an Afghan just like them, one of the tribe, so to speak. So, they wanted to talk to me about things they didn’t always bring up with lawyers sitting in front of them. But I was struck by Taj’s “us versus them” attitude and his inability to place me on either side. Or perhaps he had placed me on both.
“What are you talking about?” I replied. “He doesn’t work for the military, and he’s not an interrogator.”
Taj looked at me with suspicion.
“There are people in America who think all of this is very wrong,” I informed him. “He’s a lawyer. Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you.”
He thought for a minute. “Well, is he a good lawyer, or are there better lawyers I could have?” he asked finally.
“He’s a good lawyer.”
Taj was satisfied. Then, he asked me the question that I’d come to expect from all the detainees: “Are you married?”
Afghans are far more inquisitive about personal matters than Americans are. And the Afghans at Gitmo, or a few of them anyway, are shamelessly so. They’ll ask lawyers their salaries, how much they have in savings, why they don’t accept Islam, or whether they slept with their wives before marriage. Usually, when they directed personal questions at me, they asked me for permission to do so first, afraid that I might be offended. It’s not proper to ask a girl in Afghanistan anything personal without her consent. Most of the detainees immediately asked about my family, where I was brought up, whether my parents were alive, and what they did for a living. They also often had an opinion about all of it.
When I said I wasn’t married, Taj had the typical reaction. “Well, why not?” he asked. “I know someone just right for you in Kunar.”
I rolled my eyes.
His wife, he told me, was fourteen when they got married.
“That’s an eighth grader!” I exclaimed. “How old were you at the time?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s very young,” I said. He asked me how old I was.
“Twenty-seven.”
“You’d better get married while you’re young,” he said. “If you wait till you’re old, what good is that?”
At least he thought I was still young.
At 4:25 PM, a short young woman in tan fatigues and desert boots knocked on the door and stuck her head in. Her hair was pulled tight under her hat.
“You have five minutes remaining,” she said in a high-pitched voice.
As soon as she closed the door, Taj started mimicking her in English.
“You have five minutes re-maii-ning,” he said. “What has the world come to? In Afghanistan, I didn’t listen to anyone. No one could tell me what to do. Now I have to take orders from a woman.” He shook his head.
By our third meeting, however, he had softened his views a bit.
“I’ve decided that I want to marry an American woman,” he said. “I want you to find me the right one.”
“I have some cute friends,” I said, going along.
“No, I’m serious, and I don’t care about cute. Good looks are not as important as intelligence. I want a smart woman.”
“One of my good friends is a lawyer and cute,” I said, smiling.
“That’s the type of woman I need,” he said.
“What is she going to do while you’re on the mountain looking after goats?”
“I’m serious. When I get out, you find me an American woman I can marry.”
I wondered what he would say to his wife if I did.
When I saw Taj two months later, he was wearing tan, the color indicating noncompliance. After some prodding, he sheepishly said that a female medic had accused him of trying to touch her lips. He denied it, of course.
A few weeks before, on June 10, 2006, the Department of Defense had reported that three detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their Camp 1 cells using clothing and bedsheets. Each had also reportedly left a suicide note in Arabic.
These were the first suicides at Guantánamo since detainees had been brought to the camp in 2002, and the drama raised questions among the detainees. Taj wanted to know where the men were buried and whether they had really committed suicide.
Not knowing the details of the autopsies at that time, we told him that the government was calling it suicide. Taj was glad to know that all three men had been flown home to their countries for burial.
Then, he told us that it would be impossible for one person, let alone three, to commit suicide by hanging given the strict rules and continuous surveillance at Gitmo. There was simply nothing to hang yourself from, he said. Many people had attempted suicide over the years, and it couldn’t be done. “I tried to hang myself several times, and I’m alive,” he told us. “I think the Americans killed those men.”
“I don’t know,” Paul replied. “But why did you try to kill yourself ? What happened?”
It was when he was being held among Arab detainees, Taj said. He couldn’t communicate with anyone for months. The others didn’t speak Pashto, and he didn’t speak Arabic. It was a difficult time. Then, one day he got a letter from his mother. He hadn’t learned to read or write yet, and there was no one in the adjacent cells who knew Pashto. So, he just stared at the letter and grew depressed. That’s when he tried to hang himself. But the guards saw him on the security camera and came running immediately.
Taj was questioned about the suicide attempt the next day. The interrogator told him that if he began to feel suicidal again, he should contact him through the guards.
“But the next day, I called the bastard and said I was suicidal, but he never came.” Taj burst into laughter.
Taj remembered the book he’d asked for. Paul told him that he had in fact found one, but it had to stay in his bag.
“If you can’t give me the book, what good is it to me?” Taj demanded.
“I just wanted to show you that I brought this book for you, but I can’t give it to you.”
Taj was not amused. “How can you possibly help me get out of Guantánamo if you can’t even give me a book?”
“You can read the book in Afghanistan,” Paul said calmly. “I’ll send it to you when you go home.”
“I don’t need your book when I go home. When I go home, I can buy my own book.”
Taj seemed resentful, so to appease him, we spent the afternoon helping him with his English vocabulary. We asked him about the Gitmo “library” we’d heard rumors of.
“The library is a goddamn woman with a cardboard box of books on her head,” he said dismissively. He said he’d looked the books over a long time ago, but recently he’d gotten into an argument with the book lady, so his privileges had been suspended.
“Who needs her books anyway,” he said. “They are filled with pictures of dumb dogs.”
Taj surprised me with a question out of nowhere. He wanted to know whether I was Muslim.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you eat pork?”
“No.”
“Do you pray?”
“Yes.”
“Five times daily?” he asked.
“No, but I pray sometimes,” I said.
Taj wasn’t convinced that I could be Muslim, having grown up in the United States, so he demanded that I recite a sura from the Qu’ran.
I started reciting Sura Fatiha, an easy one. It’s the first sura they teach you in Sunday school at the mosque, and you can’t pray without knowing it. I started zipping through it in Arabic.
“Al-Hamdu lillahi Rabbil-Allah amin—Praise be to God, lord of the worlds. The beneficent, the merciful.”
“No, stop. Even a child knows that one,” Taj interrupted. “Pick one that’s not in the daily prayers at all.”
That was hard. I’d had to memorize a lot in Sunday school, but that was more than ten years ago. I tried a short one and surprised myself by making it through a few vers
es. Taj nodded and corrected me as I went.
Then, he asked about my relationship with Paul.
“You’re here with this man. Where do you sleep at night? In the same room, right?”
“No, no. I have my own room,” I said.
He seemed mollified.
Paul brought along another attorney to our third meeting, and it seemed to unsettle Taj. He sized the newcomer up and summed up his feelings to me in Pashto under his breath.
Da yo harami dhey,” he said. “
The new lawyer asked what he’d said.
“He said, ‘This one is a bastard,’” I translated, smiling.
The new attorney decided to see whether the goatherd story held water. He began to cross-examine Taj, who didn’t like it one bit. How many goats did he have? What colors were they? What did they eat? Who watched them at night?
Taj responded but protested that he was being interrogated. The lawyer ignored him and continued. Did he have any other animals?
“Yes, two dogs. And chickens.”
“Chickens? Well, who watched the chickens while you were watching the goats?” the lawyer demanded.
“Who do you think watched the chickens?” Taj retorted, annoyed. “The women! Men don’t watch chickens. What kind of questions are these?”
Paul and I just watched in astonishment as Taj turned the questioning on the lawyer.
“Are you married?” he demanded.
“Yes,” the lawyer replied.
“How many children do you have?”
“We don’t have any.”
“Why not?”
The lawyer shifted in his seat. “Well, we tried, but we don’t have any,” he finally said.
“What do you do every night, just go straight to sleep? Your poor wife.”