Dont forget us here, p.30
Don't Forget Us Here, page 30
AS I ASSISTED Moath and worked on my books, I learned that to be an artist you must harness your fear to take risks, question rules, and dare to cross boundaries. For years, our brothers in Camp 4 had all the privileges while we suffered, and they hadn’t created anything. No art. No furniture. Fear of losing their privileges had chained them. While there were some wonderful poets among the compliant brothers, few wrote anything down. The brothers like me who had resisted the camp admin with our bodies and had lived in isolation for years were now the ones most dedicated to creating art. At first, I just thought that we were hungry to claw back any part of ourselves we had lost during those nine years and art was our way of doing that. But I also wondered if maybe we had been artists all along, that self-expression was a part of us, and that our resistance was our way of expressing our humanity and showing the world a raw part of ourselves.
As we had spread resistance, now we helped spread art-making. Art eventually came to every block in Camp VI, even to those who didn’t want to go through body searches to get to art class. Adam gave supplies to anyone who wanted to create art in the block, and talented artists like Sabri, Rabbani, and Moath gave lessons. Most brothers wanted to create art that told the stories of their survival in this place. This defined us as artists: we found beauty where there was none and communicated our experiences to others.
The sea was prominent in a lot of artwork. Though we still couldn’t see the ocean, brothers had held on to those images from the hurricane. The ships sailing the open waters connected us to our freedom. But the vessels were always empty, ghost ships sailing an infinite sea. It wasn’t all about freedom though. Brothers created paintings with chains, tall fences, hooded men in orange jumpsuits, Statues of Liberty, and other symbols that told our painful collective story. For some reason the camp admin didn’t take them away.
We put beauty in everything, even in the communal hall where we hung signs drawn in ornate Arabic calligraphy. We had signs there with schedules for cleaning, TV time, sleep, soccer matches, and a big sign with prayer times in Arabic and in English to avoid any misunderstandings. The kitchen had signs with rules everywhere, some painted specifically for brothers who were messy or never followed the rules. One brother had a sweet tooth and always ate the desserts we saved from our meals. We had to put signs on our food, like DON’T EAT MY CAKE! We had a sign with rules written in Arabic and in English—agreed upon, of course, with the camp officer—that had a man dressed half in orange and half in a military uniform to represent how the rules were for both brothers and guards. Our monochrome world of gray exploded with color and life.
Our cells became outward reflections of ourselves. The best cells belonged to the artists—Moath, Sabri, and Rabbani—and looked like museums. Of course, we had to fight to get the privilege to keep artwork in the block instead of just in art class. In my cell I had a cardboard desk and chair, where I wrote early drafts of what would become this book. A curtain separated my toilet from the rest of the room, and I had shelves by the sink to hold my toiletries. Bookshelves held my books: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Above my desk was a flowered picture frame I had made and inside was the photograph a friend had given me of his daughter, the most important object I owned. It reminded me of the life I dreamed of having. On another wall was a sign a friend had made for me with the words TIME IS LIFE written in beautiful Arabic calligraphy. Those were my words, and they inspired me every day to make the most of my life by learning and being kind.
At night, I caught guards walking around the block taking in all we had created. They’d stop and examine a new book in our library or stare at a painting Sabri had just finished. They admired our trees, our signs, and maybe most of all Moath’s windows looking out to a better world.
WE WERE LEARNING, transforming our world, and there was still so much we didn’t know. We’d taught each other plenty of classes over the years, trying to keep our minds busy imagining what we would do when we were finally released. A journalist from Al Jazeera had taught a good course about journalism. A brother in the Mafia had taught a class on stealing cars—which we would never do, but it was good knowledge to have. A former chef had taught a cooking class. Of course, we couldn’t cook on our block, so we had to imagine everything. He walked us through the market in our minds, picking out chicken, picking up vegetables, feeling them, smelling them. Then we cooked. “Now, I will add the onion to the hot oil—shhhh shhhh.” He imitated the sound of onions frying because of course we had no onions or oil or stoves. He joked, asking us to please taste the dishes to test for salt, and even to imagine getting burned. I didn’t like that class.
One topic we were all starving to know more about was marriage. There were only about 160 of us left at Guantánamo, and many of us were young and single and had become men in this place. We were starved for any information about what life would be like when we got out and could start families of our own. Younger brothers were always showering the older married brothers with questions about love and marriage. When a brother told a story about a woman or love, we listened very carefully, taking in every word. Kareem, an older married brother, saw how hungry we were, and he decided to teach us about married life so that we would be prepared when we left this place. He called it “marriage class.” It was my favorite.
Until I was twelve, I thought I had been born from my mother’s knee. I learned in school where babies really came from, but my knowledge remained theoretical. The same was true for most of us.
Even so, women were one of our favorite topics of conversation. Not in a bad way; as Muslims, we’re forbidden to talk about women in a bad way. But we talked about women because it relaxed us. While we were surrounded by men, we imagined loving women.
On our first day of marriage class, Kareem began by asking us each to say what we thought about how men should treat women. We agreed that men should have absolute respect for women, but many of the students said men always were, and always would be, superior to women.
Then he asked, “If you were a woman, how would you answer my question? How would you want men to treat you?”
At first, we started laughing, imagining each other as women.
“Look at Mansoor with hair all over his body,” one brother shouted at me. “You would scare all the men.”
“If I were a woman,” another said, “I would make you all dream, cry, and spend all your money—but none of your ugly faces would touch a single hair of mine.”
Kareem let us joke for a while but then said, “Answer my question, ladies!”
I said that if I were going to choose someone to accompany me for the rest of my life, I would want a wife who was better than me.
One of the students tried to embarrass me by saying, “So will you let your wife be in charge? Should men just be like donkeys, serving women?”
“This is where the problem is,” I said. I argued that men have considered themselves superior throughout history but look where we are now. War follows war without end. Men never give birth to a single soul. They only harvest lives.
I said that all of us, guilty or innocent, were sitting around Guantánamo talking about marriage instead of experiencing it because of what men had done. I finished by pointing out that we all knew that when there was a female commander in charge of our guards, we lived more peaceful lives.
“Mansoor is biased toward women,” one brother said with a laugh.
“No!” I said. “It’s simple. Women give love and life. What do we as men give? I think every man should ask himself that question.”
“I can give some love!” the King said. “I just need a woman. I’m tired of looking at your hairy faces.” The King could always break the tension in class with a joke.
We passed many classes debating like that and took our debates about women with us to the rec yard. I think we all started to think differently. The moments I remember most were when we talked about love and what it felt like. Very few of us had felt the sweetness of love and we had a lot of questions. The idea of love that we talked about in class would help us overcome all the pain we felt. Love was the foundation for everything in marriage and family life—not just love, mutual love.
When I thought of my life after Guantánamo and imagined getting married and one day having kids, I was warmed by love and that gave me hope.
As we kept meeting for marriage class, Kareem taught us about loving and being loved. He described what it would feel like when we saw and talked to the woman we loved. He told us how we would act on our engagement day.
Our final class was dedicated to the biggest day in our lives, the marriage day. We pretended that Khalid was getting married and planned a traditional Yemeni wedding celebration. We wrapped a sheet around him and put another on his head like a Yemeni wedding outfit.
“Today we are going to have a wedding party!” Kareem announced like he was welcoming his guests.
“Who’s the bride?” Zakaria asked.
“The Wrestler!” Hamzah joked.
“Noooooooooo!” Khalid cried. “Not her!”
We sang and danced all night as if it were a real marriage. We began with Yemeni dancing, moved to Afghani, back to Pakistani, back to Saudi dancing… we learned the dances of all our brothers’ homes and then we ended with our own new dance that brought them all together. We called it the Guantánamo dance.
It was a lovely time that returned us to our homes and families, if only for one night. We lived in a golden age, but it was still a hell. Even in that hell, we created small, beautiful moments that made us feel alive again.
The next morning, we asked our brother how his first night was with his new bride, the Wrestler. But we didn’t talk about the first night of marriage in class. It was too embarrassing for all of us, so we talked about it in private with Kareem.
I had never been in love, but now I felt its sweetness and knew what I had missed out on. My twenties ended in this place, and even though I was preparing myself for the day I would get out, I didn’t know when that would be or how I would find a wife. Sometimes I would just sit by myself, away from everyone, and live in my own secret world where I had a wife and two daughters who loved me very much. I would escape to my cell and just lie on my bed and beam myself to that warm world where I loved my beautiful wife in a way that no one else could. We were best friends. We loved each other. We talked, fought, made up, laughed… just lived our lives together. My secret world brought peace and tranquility to my heart.
One day, I was lying on my bed in my cell, my eyes closed, a big smile on my face, when Moath came in.
“Mansoor!” he called. He had been trying to get my attention for some time. I finally opened my eyes. “Where were you?” he asked.
“I was with my wife and my daughter, Amal,” I said.
“Brother,” he said very seriously. “I think you’re turning crazy.”
Yes, I was going crazy, but in my own way. In my reality, I didn’t know what it meant to have a woman in my life, but in my dreams, I could live the life they took from me, the life I hoped might still be out there. If such sweetness could take me away from the hell I lived in, how much sweeter would it be in real life? I dreamed about the day I would find out.
Since living together in Camp VI, we had become like a big happy family, and we looked out for each other the way a family should. It was nice to have this break. Yes, we had fought with the guards for years, but the past was the past and we were in a new time at Guantánamo. I saw the guards as men and women with their own lives and problems, not just as soldiers. I liked those young guards. I spent a lot of time talking to them, advising them to leave the military. I stuck up for them sometimes when I thought the camp commander or colonel was treating them unfairly, like when I wrote letters to the camp admin to get tents for the rec yard so guards could have some shade. I think I connected with those guards because they were the same age I was when I was taken to Guantánamo. I was thirty years old now, and even though I was the age of a man who would be married with children, I felt like I had missed an important period of my life, one lost forever. I felt that void, and talking to the younger guards helped fill it. I think I was trying to recapture my youth, hoping it wasn’t too late.
The golden age allowed us all to look at who we could be if the camp let us be ourselves. Writing, painting, learning, building our little piece of cardboard heaven helped connect us all while maintaining a rare calm across the camp. The guards behaved and so did we. I looked around at the calmness and thought, What would the camp admin lose if they just left us alone until they started the Review Boards again and gave us our freedom?
- TWENTY-THREE -
Obama made life better at Guantánamo instead of closing it. We all knew this, but we didn’t know what that meant for our freedom. We were afraid to lose the little hope we had. So we kept our minds busy as the navy transitioned control of Camp VI to the army. Because Guantánamo was run by a joint task force, commanders and control of the camps rotated between the army and navy. We had been under control of the army before, and we had a very bad history with them. The army considered Guantánamo a war zone, and we were the front line. Making matters worse, fewer than two dozen brothers had been released in the past two years. The hearings had stopped and even our attorneys felt like nothing was happening.
Some army officers didn’t like the golden age we had created under the navy. They thought we had taken too much. To them, we weren’t artisans and students, we were terrorists, and they wanted to see us suffer the way we did before 2010. One of those men was the officer who’d written the Camp VI SOPs in 2006. He’d become a facilities inspector after leaving Guantánamo, and when he returned at the end of 2011 to inspect Camp VI, he was really pissed off at what he found.
“Smiley Troublemaker!” he laughed when we met again. “You’re not on hunger strike anymore—I see how it is now.”
“I don’t need to be on hunger strike anymore,” I said. “After you left, everything went just fine.” I spoke English very well by this time and that surprised him. “You’re a lieutenant colonel? How did that happen?”
I don’t know what he wrote in his inspection report or what he recommended for the incoming army colonel replacing Colonel Thomas, but in 2012 things started to change quickly. Colonel Bogdan had spent years in Iraq and saw us only as a threat to be contained. While Colonel Thomas ran the camp thinking that less interaction with guards and more freedom would make for less tension, the new colonel believed that tougher rules enforced strictly would eliminate the security conditions for tension. The first thing he did was tighten all the rules the navy had relaxed. The camp admin stopped bringing us recycled cardboard. Then Velcro, then markers, and then paint.
It wasn’t just the art supplies. They changed the SOPs and started to take away privileges. A new rotation of nasty army guards started harassing us again with cell searches and body searches. We were all on edge, waiting for the next hammer to fall. None of us wanted to go back to the way things were, and every day brought more fear and anxiety that things would change.
Then they took Adnan away to the BHU, and we felt like the message was clear. The army wanted to provoke us, harass us, punish us, and send the camp back to the way it was even before 2005.
“The camp rules must be followed,” Colonel Bogdan said to me the first time we met.
“I think you should review the camp’s history,” I said. “Most of us spent more than eight years in solitary confinement, always fighting with the camp admin. The life you see now is peaceful.”
“We have security and safety concerns,” he said. “And my job is to keep everyone safe.”
“Your government says we are ‘the worst of the worst,’ but tell me please, how many guards have been hurt? How many have died? How many have been threatened? How many times have block doors been accidentally left open? How many times have your guards lost their keys and we returned them?”
He looked at me, surprised.
“For two years we’ve lived in peace and calm, and you want to change that over cardboard you throw away? That trash kept us busy, so let us be busy. Let us escape the feeling of being in prison instead of trying to escape.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try to regulate what we give. Don’t take a lot of stuff. We’ll keep it for you in an empty block, and when you need it, you ask the guards to bring it.”
But just like always, he didn’t keep his word and the peace didn’t last long. Omar tried to secure another deal with camp admin and that didn’t work either. The army enforced the new SOPs. They stopped giving us supplies, and life went back to darkness. Then we heard that Adnan had been moved to an isolation cell in Camp V. I wrote letters about the conditions and about Adnan to Colonel Bogdan and to the admiral in charge of the entire base, but the admiral never came to the camp. No one seemed to care.
It wasn’t long after that that we heard Adnan had died. They said it was another suicide but we had our doubts. I wrote letters to the White House, to Congress, to the United Nations, to the Red Cross, and to aliens in space but nothing happened. Nothing. It’s like we had been forgotten again. We had only one choice—we would prepare to go on hunger strike. This was the only peaceful protest that could get their attention.
One day, I saw Colonel Bogdan escorting a group of high-ranking military personnel through Camp VI. One officer was taking notes and I could tell they were up to something. I got as close to them as I could.
