My Guantanamo Diary
Page 24
I assured him I wouldn’t do that.
Before I left, I took some pictures to take back to Izatullah at Gitmo.
“Make sure you tell him you saw me with your own eyes. Tell him there is no difficulty and by the grace of the Almighty, he will be among us very soon,” Nusrat said.
As I collected my things, he added, “Allah has made you a great woman. You should marry a great Afghan man.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do. Marry a man of your wathan.”
I didn’t want to tell Haji that my fiancé was a white-bread American from California. I knew he wouldn’t understand. Somewhere along the way, I’d reached a level of equilibrium in my cultural balancing act. I no longer struggled with the classic East versus West identity crisis; I wanted to be accepted as a viable product of both worlds. I handpicked the characteristics that suited me from both cultures and left out the ones I didn’t care for. But I knew that others wouldn’t always understand, and if I’d told Nusrat about my fiancé, I think I would have eroded my own sense of peace with where I now found myself.
At the same time, I felt, at some level, as though I was deceiving him. It was the same way I felt at Guantánamo. I’d never told any of the prisoners that I was engaged to an American man, someone with no roots in Afghanistan, or any Middle Eastern country for that matter. I knew that they all expected me to be a good Pashtun girl who played by their centuries-old rules. I’d tried to tell the truth once, when my client Hamidullah al-Razak kept plying me with personal questions. I tried to dodge them initially, but part of building a relationship and trust with your clients is engaging them not just on a legal level but on a personal one as well. So, I finally relented and told him about my fiancé. I was happily surprised when he accepted it easily, and I felt better about not having lied to him. But on the following trip, I was met by a cross-armed, stern-faced Mohammad Zahir, a fifty-four-year-old Ghazni schoolteacher, who wasn’t thrilled by the rumor he’d heard, and I had to backtrack on my story. I felt badly about lying, but Gitmo is such a delicate and intense environment that I felt it was wisest.
Haji and I. Photo by Abdul Wahid.
But I really cared about Haji Nusrat. I knew that he had been tortured, humiliated, beaten, and imprisoned without charge for many years, that he’d been through so much at the hands of Americans. And yet, I didn’t have it in me to try to reason with him and explain my position.
I knelt back down and told him he looked better than I’d imagined. I was happy to see him free, and I prayed that his son would join him in Afghanistan soon too. He took my hands in both of his and gave them a squeeze.
“You’re a good daughter. You kept your promise, bachai,” he said. “Today, you made me happy. God is great, and God is merciful.”
“Take good care of yourself, and I’ll see you and Izatullah next time I am here, inshallah” I replied.
On the night of October 9, 2006, guards informed four men in Camp 3, Block 1 that they would be sent home on the night of October 11. Goatherd Taj Mohammad was one of them. He was ecstatic. The night before his flight, he could hardly contain himself. He could barely speak and prayed nonstop, asking everyone in adjacent cells to pray as well that the news was true.
The next night, guards accompanied by Red Cross workers came to fetch the men. They were all given white uniforms and white shoes for the flight home and transfer of custody in Afghanistan. I suppose it would make for a bad photo op if the U.S. military released “noncompliant” detainees in tan and orange prison garb. Once the men were dressed and ready, the guards unlocked their cages one by one, as other prisoners looked wistfully on.
When I met with Abdullah Wazir Zadran on the morning after Taj’s departure, he said the place would be very quiet without him. Zadran was happy for his friend, but I sensed a twinge of envy too. The two had become close while imprisoned together.
Taj stays in touch with Abdul Salam Zaeef in Kabul and asked Zaeef to pass on his contact information to me. I tried calling him, but we ended up playing phone tag; he travels an awful lot for a goatherd and is often not in town. When he was, I had a friend of mine go to his village and take a picture of him nine months after his release. He also wrote me to say that he’d like a copy of this book—in Pashto and in English.
Taj Mohammad in Kunar after his release. Photo courtesy of Nimatullah Karyab.
When I do get hold of him, I plan to find out whether he’s still interested in taking a second wife, from America.
The families of Salah al-Aslami and the two Saudi prisoners who the U.S. military said committed suicide at Gitmo on June 10, 2006, continue to mourn their deaths. Al-Aslami’s young widow, Hayat Warshad Ali, still hasn’t recovered and remains bedridden in the family home.
The U.S. military has never conducted a conclusive investigation. To date, the Department of Defense (DOD) has also refused to release the suicide letters that were supposedly written before the men hanged themselves. The DOD has also continued to turn down requests for anatomical samples of the organs removed from the victims’ bodies.
Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj remains at Guantánamo. He will have been on hunger strike for one year as of January 7, 2008. Sami’s imprisonment and forcefeeding has continued to cause public outrage worldwide. U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota spoke out publicly in support of al-Haj, calling for a hearing to prove the basis for the journalist’s imprisonment and that of hundreds like him.
“If he’s a bad actor, prove it. If not, let him out,” Ellison said to the Associated Press in November 2007, declaring that it seemed al- Haj was being held only for being a journalist and a cameraman.2
In late June 2007, Bahraini prisoner Jumah al-Dossary sliced his abdomen with a metal shard, almost severing a major artery. It was the thirty-three-year-old’s twelfth suicide attempt. He was rushed to the hospital after guards found him unconscious. A few weeks later, al-Dossary was released from Gitmo and handed over to the Saudi government (he is a dual citizen of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia).
Today, he alternates between a Riyadh rehabilitation center with resortlike amenities and his family home, spending two weeks at a time in each, which he will continue to do until his health improves.
His attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, believes his transfer out of Gitmo indicates his innocence.
“If the U.S. administration believed that Jumah was a threat to our national security, he would still be at Guantánamo,” Colangelo- Bryan said. “The fact that he was voluntarily sent home shows clearly that there is no basis to believe that he poses any threat.”
Notes
Chapter 2
1. Brent Mickum, “Tortured, Humiliated and Crying Out for Some Justice,” The Guardian, January 12, 2005, and Associated Press images.
2. See www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm.
3. Ibid., and Associated Press images.
4. See www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm.
5. Ibid.
Chapter 3
1. See www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
Chapter 5
1. See “Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new02_001.htm.
Chapter 8
1. See www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm.
Chapter 10
1. United Nations World Population Prospects Report for 2006, www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf.
2. See www.savethechildren.org.
3. See www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/af.html.
Chapter 11
1. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3280439.stm.
2. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3051501.stm.
3. Mark Denbeaux, “A Profile of 517 Detainees through Ana
lysis of Department of Defense Data,” Seton Hall University, School of Law, http://law.shu.edu/aaafinal.pdf.
4. Autopsy details and interview quotets are based on European press reports.
5. All statements by pathologists are from European media reports.
Chapter 12
1. Information provided by counsel at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Chapter 15
1. Translation by Mahmood Khatib.
Chapter 18
1. A note on sources: All published statements made by Guantánamo detainees during attorney-client meetings were recorded and submitted to the Department of Justice for classification review.
2. Thomas Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm That Kept Guantánamo Prisoners from Going Mad: Former Inmates Say They Wrote Thousands of Lines,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2005.
3. N. C. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba Beat the Heart of a Poet: Afghan,” Washington Post Foreign Service, April 24, 2005, A19.
4. James Rupert, “Writers Jailed in 2002 for Political Satire,” Newsday, October 31, 2005.
5. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
6. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
7. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
8. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
9. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
10. Sadaqat Jan, “Ex-Guantánamo Detainee Held Again,” Associated Press, December 27, 2006.
11. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
12. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
13. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
14. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
15. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
16. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
17. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
18. Yusufzai Ashfaq, “Journalists Release Guantánamo Bay Report,” Oneworld.net, August 1, 2006.
19. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
20. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
21. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
22. Chicago Public Radio, “Habeas Shmabeas,” This American Life, March 10, 2006; Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
23. Harpoon Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share Guantánamo Ordeal,” BBC News, Peshawar, May 2, 2005.
24. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
25. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
26. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
27. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
28. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
29. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
30. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
31. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”
32. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
33. Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share.”
34. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
35. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
36. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
37. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”
38. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.
39. Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share.”
40. Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share.”
Chapter 19
1. Uighur names are changed to avoid harassment of their families by the Chinese government.
Epilogue
1. “Sixteen Afghans Return Home from Guantánamo Alleging Torture,” Agence France-Presse, October 12, 2006, http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/prisoner-testimonies/exhausted–16-afghans-freed-after-guantanamo.
2. Ben Fox, “Jailed Gitmo Journalist Gains Support,” Associated Press, November 1, 2007.
Mahvish Rukhsana Khan is a recent law school graduate and journalist. She has published in theWall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media. She lives in San Diego.
PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.
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