My Guantanamo Diary

by Mahvish Khan

  This land was invaded in 330 BC by Alexander the Great. Later, the Mongols took a stab at ruling the Afghans, and then in the nineteenth century, the British invaded, twice, and were defeated both times. In 1979, the Soviet Red Army marched in to Afghanistan hoping for an easy takeover. Instead, the invasion kicked off the mujahideen resistance, a U.S.-backed and -financed movement made up of Islamic freedom fighters. When the Russians finally retreated in 1989, 1 million Afghans were dead, 5.5 million had been displaced, and Afghanistan was littered with an estimated 10 million land mines. From this sprung another deadly wave of civil war between various tribes and warlords. And then came the oppressive Taliban movement. Finally, in 2001, Afghanistan cycled around and was again at odds with the West, America.

  The summer after my first year in law school, Afghanistan, cleansed of the Taliban, was preparing for its 2004 presidential elections, the first democratic vote in decades. I wanted to be a part of it, so I got a job with Human Rights Watch in New York to research election security and voter intimidation by warlords. The data was to be presented at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Istanbul Summit to push for more election peacekeepers and for basic things, such as money for ballot boxes and guards.

  It was hard to get a real grasp of the situation from an office in New York City, so after some discussion, I made plans to go to Afghanistan to investigate what the rural warlords were really up to. On my itinerary were Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Ghazni, places where locals had reportedly been killed for possessing voter registration cards.

  When I told my family about the trip, they thought I’d lost my mind. My aunts and grandmother were up in arms.

  “Sama laywanai yeh—You’re insane,” my maternal grandmother, Amiji, said to me angrily. “What is this going-to-Afghanistan business? Does your life mean nothing to you?”

  She told me that I had an obligation to obey her. “If you go to Afghanistan, you’re not my granddaughter anymore,” she threatened.

  It was impossible to argue with Amiji. She wouldn’t listen to my reasoning, and anytime I mentioned Afghanistan, she’d start to pray. She and my aunt pressed my parents to forbid me to go. But my parents knew my stubborn side. Their dissuasion technique was to frighten me into changing my plans by e-mailing me statistics about violence against international workers.

  Those stats did make me uneasy, but I tried to ignore them. Then, a few weeks before my scheduled trip, five Doctors without Borders aid workers were ambushed and shot in northwestern Afghanistan. The incident gave me cold feet, and I wondered how to tell the people I worked with at Human Rights Watch that I was scared. Fortunately, when I brought it up, it turned out that my coworkers felt the same way. The trip was canceled. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time.

  I didn’t think much about Afghanistan again until I went to Guantánamo Bay. Having met some detainees, I knew they’d be helped if evidence in their cases could be gathered in Afghanistan. I urged some of the attorneys to plan a trip. Most wanted to go, but their firms considered travel to Afghanistan still too dangerous.

  I decided to go alone and collect evidence for the clients of two lawyers in Dechert’s Washington, D.C., office. I made arrangements to meet with the prisoners’ families, to locate employment records showing where they had worked, to collect affidavits and photographs of their former places of employment—anything to corroborate their stories.

  I planned a winter trip to Kabul, trying to ignore my family’s vehement pleas. Even some of the habeas lawyers were concerned because of a spike in suicide bombings. I tried to calm my nerves by asking some of the prisoners what they thought about my solo trip.

  Abdullah Wazir Zadran, a young Afghan from Khost, told me that I’d be kidnapped if I ventured outside Kabul.

  “Do you think I could be killed?” I asked.

  “No. Kidnappers just want money; they’ll make you call your family for ransom,” he said.

  I began to have second thoughts and called my friend Rahman, a journalist in Kabul. He dismissed my fears and said that the media had a tendency to exaggerate everything.

  “It’s peaceful here. There’s nothing to worry about,” he told me. “You’ll have a great time.” Some foreigners based in Kabul whom I knew echoed Rahman’s sentiment.

  So, I called my travel agent and booked flights, scheduling a stopover in Peshawar to see my relatives and have some traditional clothes made before flying into Kabul. Once I’d ordered my tickets, my grandmother began to pray nonstop, and Baba-jaan started giving me tips. He even told me what to do if I were taken hostage.

  “Say your prayers out loud,” he advised. “Maybe they’ll feel badly about killing a Muslim girl.”

  He told me to call every older man kaka or kaka-jaan, a term that translates roughly as “uncle,” as a way of showing respect and indicating that I viewed the individual I was addressing as family. My family insisted that I leave my jeans and other Western garb behind. They instructed me to wear traditional clothes, to cover myself properly, and never to leave Kabul. My father told me not to wear big sunglasses—or any sunglasses, for that matter.

  “Sunglasses are very Western,” he said. “You want to blend in as much as you can.”

  When Mumma suggested that I wear a burka, I cringed at the thought. At a minimum, I should veil my face, she told me. I decided to take my cues from the local women and dress accordingly.

  As the day of my trip approached, my father’s torrent of tips continued: Don’t go out after dark. Never spend the night at anyone’s house. Trust no one. If they can sell each other to the U.S. military for bounty money, what makes you any different? Don’t travel alone. Don’t take a taxi anywhere by yourself. Get a cell phone immediately. Give me the numbers for everyone you’re meeting and call me every day from every location.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, wishing they had a little more faith in my judgment. But the only one who did was my younger brother Hassan. When he heard about my family’s concerns that I might get killed, he called me, laughing.

  “Take out a big life insurance policy and put it in my name,” he quipped. He reassured me that I’d be fine.

  On my way to the airport in mid-November 2006, I stopped at a Best Buy to pick up a Sony camcorder. I wanted to make video affidavits and home videos of the prisoners’ families and bring them back to Gitmo.

  I tore the camera out of the box and shoved it into my carry-on along with my laptop and my Dictaphone. A few hours later, I was on a long British Airways flight, excitedly watching the LCD display as we got closer to Peshawar, an ethnically Pashtun city teeming with Afghan refugees, exiled warlords, and smugglers.

  After twenty-two hours of flying, I was excited to be there at last, but my relatives still weren’t happy about my impending trip into Afghanistan. I spent three days with them, and each day I got an earful about what not to wear in Kabul.

  One afternoon, I came home from Peshawar’s Saddar bazaar and changed into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. My grandmother took one wide-eyed look at me and started cursing at my clothing.

  “Ya Allah—towba!” she said, eyeing me. There’s no direct equivalent in English, but it roughly means, “Oh God—repentance!” The pants were too low-rise for her liking.

  “I’m just sitting around the house, Amiji,” I said, defending myself.

  “Jamai dhey rookshee—May your clothes get lost,” she retorted. She’s deeply conservative; it even irks her when I walk out of the bathroom wearing a towel.

  “Bay-sharamay—without shame!” she muttered as she sat down to read the Qu’ran, as she did every afternoon. I started unloading my shopping bags. I’d spent the morning buying handembroidered pashminas and mirrored throw pillows. I showed them to my grandmother while she recited the Arabic verses out loud. I’ve always liked the sound of the Qu’ran; it’s like rhythmic singing. She glanced over the top of her reading glasses briefly to see what I’d bought and then went back to the Arabic.

  I never bother to r
ead the Qu’ran in Arabic because I don’t understand Arabic—and neither does my grandmother. I’ve read portions of interest in English, but I’ve always been skeptical because many translations are written by Arab men. I have a Lebanese friend who, like me, has a very feminist spin on Islam, and I like hearing her translate the Arabic for me. All the nonsense about women covering their heads isn’t in the Qu’ran. Neither is the notion that women mustn’t work or drive a car—as is the law in Saudi Arabia—but somehow men have transposed their culture onto the religion. At least that’s her take on it.

  I tried to tell my grandmother that there was nothing to repent for about my clothing.

  “All the Qu’ran stresses is modesty, for both men and women,” I said. “And modesty is interpreted differently in different times and places.”

  “There is nothing modest about your clothing,” she insisted. “You should cover yourself properly.”

  And she started reciting verses again. I just smiled to myself. I was used to the clashing cultures by now.

  When I’d arrived in Peshawar, I’d called Wali Mohammad’s son Ismail and went to his house the following afternoon. Unlike many of the mud houses described by Gitmo prisoners, Mohammad owned a spacious two-story house with sprawling wraparound balconies, a gated driveway, and marble inlay. The yard was surrounded by a six-foot wall.

  I rang the door bell and was greeted by Mohammad’s nephew, a tall man in his late twenties with strong features. Next to him stood Mohammad’s twenty-year-old son, Mohammad Ismail, who had just arrived from Kabul minutes before.

  Ismail was soft-spoken, thin, and much older than his years. He invited me in. I noticed that he was careful not to maintain eye contact with me for too long since I’m a woman and local etiquette dictates that he shouldn’t stare at or ogle women to whom he is not related. He was somewhat reserved in my presence, but he slowly relaxed, and his father’s playful nature crept out, as did his quick wit and intelligence.

  As I walked into the gated complex toward the house, my attention was drawn to two irresistible little girls who ran out into the grass barefoot. They had short brown hair and were wearing matching outfits. I knew at once that these were Mohammad’s daughters. They were gorgeous children, with their father’s big brown eyes and magnetism. I forgot about Ismail and went over to them.

  “So, which one of you is Sara and which one is Amina?” I asked.

  “I’m Amina,” one of the little girls said shyly.

  “I’m Sara,” said the other. Just as Mohammad had said, I couldn’t tell them apart. I pulled out my camera, and the girls started to giggle but ran over to stand by a plant for the camera. Their brown eyes followed the camera lens.

  The girls followed me into the house where I met Mohammad’s first wife, Hidaya, a good-looking lady wearing a green chiffon outfit. The daughters looked a lot like her. She kissed me on both cheeks and motioned for me to sit down with her on the cushions and colorful pillows that lined the wall. Then, I met the other daughters: Pahlwahsha, Farishta, Asiya, and Kubra. Their eyes were all on me, but I felt oddly comfortable in their home.

  I liked the girls’ names. Pahlwahsha was one of Mohammad’s teenage daughters. She looked like a young Sandra Bullock and sat on her knees next to me. Like the other daughters, she was shy and didn’t speak a lot. She wore yellow and had stack of silver bangles on her right wrist. I told her they were pretty.

  She immediately took the bangles off her wrist and extended them to me. “No, no, they look good on you,” I said.

  She insisted that I take them, but I felt badly about it, so we compromised: I took three, and she kept three. I slid them on my wrist. It seemed like a simple exchange of the moment, but I didn’t know how it would grow in meaning once I returned to Guantánamo Bay.

  The family gathered around me with questions.

  “Did you see my father?” Ismail asked.

  “Yes, a few times,” I said. “I’ll be going again in January to show him the video.”

  Dechert had hired a local aid worker to make a home video of Wali Mohammad’s family. The video would be cleared by the Department of Defense so that we could show it to Mohammad on our next trip. Lawyers were often granted permission to show their clients home videos because they are essential tools in establishing trust.

  “How was he doing? What did he look like?” Ismail asked. I told them about his sense of humor, his good health, the way he laughed, and his overall positive demeanor. “And he told me to tell you that he ate all of the ice cream I brought him,” I said. Ismail, his sisters, and his mom looked on intently as I spoke.

  “We heard from a few of the prisoners that were released that he had some white in his beard,” he quipped. “My mom’s not happy about that!”

  “He told me not to mention the gray hairs,” I said, smiling. I also told them that Mohammad missed them all and talked a lot about Sara and Amina, who were sitting by their mother, playing around and stealing shy glances at the adults. Hidaya explained that the twins had no memory of their father. They knew him only through photographs and discussions.

  I had imagined that Mohammad was wealthy and that he had a nice family, but the reality of his life far exceeded my expectations, and my perspective on him changed profoundly. I realized that his daughters, sons, wives, and neighbors missed him deeply. They recalled his little pranks and his love of cricket. Meeting his family in his home allowed me to see the life he had been a part of.

  A few days later, my aunt, Aunty-gul, drove me to the airport. She’d packed me a lunch: kebabs wrapped in naan.

  My friend Rahman would be waiting for me at Kabul International Airport. But when I went to check in for my flight, I learned that it had been cancelled for “operational reasons.” There wouldn’t be another flight for a week. I wanted to scream. It seemed as though something was always holding me back from getting to Afghanistan.

  As we left the airport, I told Aunty-gul that I couldn’t wait for another week. I would drive to Kabul the next day. Aunty-gul looked as though her eyes would pop out of her head. The drive from Peshawar to Kabul takes about five hours and goes through the Khyber Pass into Torkham and through Jalalabad. It’s a mountainous road frequently traveled by coalition convoys and armored vehicles, making it a target for bandits and bombs.

  “I am responsible for you now, and if something should happen, what would your parents say to me?” Aunty-gul asked. “You cannot go without informing your parents first.”

  There was no way I was going to tell my parents that I would be driving through the tribal areas and rural Afghanistan to Kabul. They would have had a panic attack. I began to reason with my aunt.

  “They can’t possibly gauge the situation in Afghanistan from Michigan,” I said. “Telling them will accomplish nothing except to worry them. Please trust my decision. I’ve spoken to people who take that road.”

  “Bas—enough!” she said, raising her voice. She looked panicked by the decision she knew I’d already made. “I am not letting you drive to Kabul. There is no way. Do you hear?”

  That evening I strategized with Rahman. He called my aunt and reassured her that I would be safe. To put everyone at ease, he arranged for his friend Munir to accompany me on the drive to Kabul. Munir was a journalist who worked parttime for USAID in Kabul. He had been visiting his family in Peshawar and was heading back to Afghanistan. After several long talks with Rahman, Aunty-gul finally gave in.

  Munir arrived at 8:20 the next morning. Wearing a leather jacket over his Afghan clothes and carrying a backpack, he looked like a green-eyed version of my older brother. My aunt asked him whether I should be dressed more conservatively.

  I was wearing traditional clothes like all the locals, but I’d given the tailor very specific instructions. There has been a resurgence of 1970s fashion in Peshawar, so I wanted my clothes tailored to look the way my mom’s did in photos from that decade. My shirt was a brown floral print, very formfitting, with cap sleeves. But I planned to wear a big
shawl to cover it all.

  Munir smiled.

  “It might be okay,” he said diplomatically, “but something longer and looser might be better.”

  My aunt gave me an abaya, a big, black, robelike garment to wear over my clothes. It fell to my ankles and had long, loose, flowing sleeves. On top of this, I had to wear another big piece of fabric to cover my hair. My aunt instructed me to practice veiling my face with it too. The fabric kept falling, but when I got it right, you could only see my eyes.

  I worked on veiling my face in front of the mirror while my aunt spoke to Munir about the drive. I’d never veiled before, but I thought the look was intriguing, and it didn’t stifle my individuality as definitively as a burka would have. I think veils have an element of mystery. I’d seen a veiled woman in the bazaar a few days before—only her arched eyebrows and dark eyes were visible. You could tell she had high cheek bones and delicate features underneath, but it left me wondering what her face looked like. Instead of deflecting attention, I think veils hypersexualize women.

  I pulled out my dark eye shadow, pencil, and mascara and gave myself dark, smoky eyes. Perfect.

  My aunt took one look at me and shook her head.

  “Bilkul laywanay yeh—You’re absolutely crazy,” she said. “You’re not driving around Miami with your American friends; you’re going through the tribal areas and driving to Afghanistan. What is this makeup business?”

  “You’re just jealous because I look hot in a veil,” I told her, laughing.

  “Jealous your head!” she said, trying not to smile.

  She did have a point. I softened the smoky eyes a bit.

  Aunty-gul drove us to the taxi stand, where Munir got out to make arrangements with a cab driver. She grabbed a pen from her purse and scribbled down the license plate number of the white Toyota Corolla taxi that would take me across the border.

  “Just in case something happens, and I don’t hear from you,” she said. “I’ll know how to track you down.”