Guantánamo Diary (39 page)

“Yes sir,” I answered, without even understanding what he meant. I thought about the literal sense of the light I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I believed he wanted to get me cooperating so I could see the daylight. But
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meant the figurative sense.
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always yelled at me and scared me, but he never hit me. He illegally interrogated me several times, which is why I called him
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wanted me to confess to many wild theories he heard the interrogators talking about. Furthermore, he wanted to gather knowledge about terrorism and extremism. I think his dream in life was to become an interrogator. What a hell of a dream!

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is an admitted Republican, and hates the Democrats, especially Bill Clinton. He doesn’t believe that the U.S. should interfere in other countries’ business, and instead should focus more on internal issues—but if any country or group attacks the U.S., it should be destroyed ruthlessly.

“Fair enough,” I said. I just wanted him to stop talking. He is the kind of guy who never stops when he gets started. Gosh, he gave me an earache! When
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first started talking to me I refused to answer, because all I was allowed to say was, “Yes, sir, No Sir, Need Medics, Need Interrogators.” But he wanted a conversation with me.

“You are my enemy,”
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said.

“Yes, Sir.”

“So let’s talk as enemy to enemy,”
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said. He opened my cell and offered me a chair.
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did the talking for the most part. He was talking about how great the U.S. is, and how powerful; “America is this, American is that, We Americans are
so and so…” I was just wondering and nodding slightly. Every once in a while I confirmed that I was paying attention, “Yes, sir… Really?… Oh, I didn’t know… You’re right… I know…” During our conversations, he sneakily tried to make me admit to things I hadn’t really done.

“What was your role in September 11?”

“I didn’t participate in September 11.”

“Bullshit!” he screamed madly. I realized it would be no good for my life to look innocent, at least for the time being. So I said, “I was working for al Qaeda in Radio Telecom.”

He seemed to be happier with a lie. “What was your rank?” he kept digging.

“I would be a Lieutenant.”

“I know you’ve been in the U.S.,” he tricked me. This is a big one and I couldn’t possibly lie about it. I could vaguely swallow having done a lot of things in Afghanistan, because Americans cannot confirm or disconfirm it. But the Americans could check right away whether or not I had been in their own country.

“I really haven’t been in the U.S.,” I answered, though I was ready to change my answer when I had no options.

“You’ve been in Detroit,” he sardonically smiled.

I smiled back. “I really haven’t.” Though
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didn’t believe me, he didn’t push the matter further;
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was interested in a long-term dialogue with me. In return for my confessions
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gave me extra food and stopped yelling at me. Meanwhile, in order to maintain the terror, the other guards kept yelling at me and banging the metal door to my cell. Every time they did, my heart started to pound, though the more they did such things, the less effect it had.

“Why are you shaking?”
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asked me once when he took me out for conversation. I both hated and liked when he
was on duty: I hated him interrogating me, but I liked him giving me more food and new uniforms.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“I am not gonna hurt you.”

“OK.” It took some time until I accepted talking to
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. He started to give me lessons and made me practice them the hard way. The lessons were proverbs and made up of phrases he wanted me to memorize and practice in my life. I still do remember the following lessons: 1) Think before you act. 2) Do not mistake kindness for weakness. 3)
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questions always in mind when you are asked about somebody. Whenever
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judged me to have broken one of the lessons, he took me out of my cell and strew my belongings all over the place, and then
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asked me to put everything back in no time. I always failed to organize my stuff, but he would make me do it several times, after which I miraculously put all my stuff back in time.

My relationship with
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developed positively with every day that went by, and so with the rest of the guards, too, because they regarded him highly.

“Fuck it! If I look at Pillow I don’t think he is a terrorist, I think he’s an old friend of mine, and I enjoy playing games with him,” he said to the other guards. I relaxed somewhat and gained some self-confidence. Now the guards discovered the humorous guy in me, and used their time with me for entertainment. They started to make me repair their DVD players and PC’s, and in return I was allowed to watch a movie.
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didn’t exactly have the most recent PC model, and when
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asked me whether I had seen
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PC, I answered, “You mean that museum piece?”

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laughed hard. “Better hope he doesn’t hear what you said.”

“Don’t tell him!”

We slowly but surely became a society and started to gossip about the interrogators and call them names. In the mean time,
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taught me the Rules of chess. Before prison, I didn’t know the difference between a pawn and the rear end of a knight, nor was I really a big gamer. But I found in chess a very interesting game, especially the fact that a prisoner has total control over his pieces, which gives him some confidence back. When I started playing, I played very aggressively in order to let out my frustration, which was really not very good chess playing;
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was my first mentor and
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beat me in my first game ever. But the next game was mine, and so were all the other games that followed. Chess is a game of strategy, art, and mathematics. It takes deep thinking, and there is no luck involved. You get rewarded or punished for your actions.

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brought me a chessboard so I could play against myself. When the guards noticed my chessboard, they all wanted to play me, and when they started to play me, they always won. The strongest among the guards was
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. He taught me how to control the center. Moreover,
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brought me some literature, which helped decidedly in honing my skills. After that the guards had no chance to defeat me.

“That is not the way I taught you to play chess,”
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commented angrily when I won a game.

“What should I do?”

“You should build a strategy, and organize your attack! That’s why the fucking Arabs never succeed.”

“Why don’t you just play the board?” I wondered.

“Chess is not just a game,” he said.

“Just imagine you’re playing against a computer!”

“Do I look like a computer to you?”

“No.” The next game I tried to build a strategy in order to let
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win.

“Now you understand how chess must be played,” he commented. I knew
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had issues dealing with defeat, and so I didn’t enjoy playing him because I didn’t feel comfortable practicing my newly acquired knowledge.
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believes there are two kinds of people: white Americans and the rest of the world. White Americans are smart and better than anybody. I always tried to explain things to him by saying, for instance, “If I were you,” or “If you were me,” but he got angry and said, “Don’t you ever dare to compare me with you, or compare any American with you!” I was shocked, but I did as he said. After all, I didn’t have to compare myself with anybody.
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hated the rest of the world, especially the Arabs, Jews, French, Cubans, and others. The only other country he mentioned positively was England.

After one game of chess with him, he flipped the board. “Fuck your Nigger chess, this is Jewish chess,” he said.

“Do you have something against Black people?” I asked.

“Nigger is not black, Nigger means stupid,” he argued. We had many discussions like that. At the time we had only one Black guard who had no say, and when he worked with
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they never interacted.
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resented him.
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had a very strong personality, dominant, authoritarian, patriarchal, and arrogant.

“My wife calls me asshole,” he proudly told me.
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listened mostly to Rock-n-Roll music and some type of country. His favorite songs were “Die Terrorist Die,” “The Taliban Song,” and “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.”

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I never had the chance to see his face because he left
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. But that was OK with me; I really wasn’t interested in seeing anybody’s face at that point. In the beginning, he was rough with me: he used to pull me hard and make me run in the shackles, screaming loudly “Move!”
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“You know who you are?” he asked me.

“Yes, Sir!”

“You are a terrorist!”

“Yes, Sir!”

“So let’s do some math: if you killed five thousand people by your association with al Qaeda, we should kill you five thousand times. But no, because we are Americans we feed you and are ready to give you money if you give us information.”

“That’s right, Sir!” But after
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ordered the guards to be friendly with me,
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started to treat me like a human being. I enjoyed discussing things with him because his English was decent, although he was always “right” in his position.

“Our job is to accommodate you!” he used to tell me sarcastically. “You need a house maid.” Since guards copy each other,
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tended to copy
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.
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was the Inspector: he liked to inspect my room and make sure everything was put where it belongs, the sheet was wrapped around the edge of the mattress in a 45° angle, and things like that. He also constantly inspected the shower and if he found a tiny hair left in it, he and
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made me clean everything again. It didn’t matter how often I cleaned; everything had to be perfect.

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was especially interested in how I could keep a calendar in my head and know the days and nights in spite of the techniques the guards used to mess up my head. They once tried to make me believe Christmas was Thanksgiving, but I didn’t buy it.

“It doesn’t really matter, but I do believe it’s Christmas,” I told them.

“We want you to explain to us what mistakes we made so we can avoid them when we get our next detainee.” I explained as much as necessary, but I am sure they will make plenty of mistakes with the next detainee because nobody is perfect.

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explained to me how my recipe could get worse. “You haven’t seen nothing.”

“And I assure you I am not eager to see more,” I would say. He was probably right, though he missed the fact that none of the guards had witnessed everything that happened to me. The only guard who participated in the transport party was
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, and he used every opportunity to hit me in the new place. You could tell he found no problem in beating me, since he did it with the blessing of the highest authority in GTMO.

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was the only guard who didn’t sleep during his watch. He would drive me crazy pacing around all the time, and liked to surprise me in the middle of the night
by banging the metal door to my cell and making me take a shower and clean everything perfectly. I should not feel rested in my cell for more than an hour: that is one of the most important methods in breaking somebody in detention, because you must hate your life, your guards, your cell, your interrogators, and even yourself. And that is exactly what
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did until
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and
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ordered otherwise.

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was a white man in his twenties, very tall, lazy, non-athletic looking.
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“
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is my best friend,” he told me once.

“How do you know
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?” He didn’t answer me, he just smiled, but he kept mentioning
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and how he had abused me. I always changed the subject because I didn’t want the other guards to know that beating me was something normal. I was glad my guards didn’t know everything that happened to me; I didn’t need the gang to be encouraged to do crimes.

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was the most violent guard. In Building
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the guards performed regular assaults on me in order to maintain the terror. They came in a big masked team, screaming and giving contradictory orders so I wouldn’t know what to do. They would drag me out of my cell and throw my belongings all over the place.

“Get up… Face the wall… You’ve been resting lately too much… You have a Pillow… Ha Ha!… Look inside his cell… The piece of shit might be hiding something… We found two kernels of rice hidden beneath his mattress… You have twenty seconds to put everything where it belongs!” The game was over when they made me sweat. I knew the guards didn’t have
the order to beat me, but this guard used every opportunity to hit me and claw me deeply. I don’t think that he is the smartest guy, but he was well trained in how to beat somebody without leaving irreparable injuries. “Hitting in the ribs is painful and doesn’t leave permanent scars, especially when treated right away with ice-cubes,” one of the guards told me.
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was both violent and loud, but thank God, he was very lazy; he only barked at the beginning of the shift and after a short time he disappeared from the stage to watch a movie or go to sleep.