Guantánamo Diary - Mohamedou Ould Slahi Canons

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around my stomach: breathing was impossible. I kept saying, “MP, Sir, I cannot breathe! . . . MP, SIR, please.” But it seemed like my pleas for help got lost in a vast desert.

      After a couple minutes, Ibrahim was dropped beside me on my right. I wasn’t sure it was him, but he told me later he felt my presence beside him. Every once in a while, if one of the guards adjusted my goggles, I saw a little. I saw the cockpit, which was in front of me. I saw the green camo-uniforms of the escorting guards. I saw the ghosts of my fellow detainees on my left and my right. “Mister, please, my belt . . . hurt . . . ,” I called. When the shoutings of the guards faded away, I knew that the detainees were all on board. “Mister, please . . . belt. . . .”

      A guard responded, but he not only didn’t help me, he tightened the belt even more around my abdomen.

      Now I couldn’t endure the pain; I felt I was going to die. I couldn’t help asking for help louder. “Mister, I cannot breathe . . .” One of the soldiers came and untightened the belt, not very comfortably but better than nothing.

      “It’s still tight . . .” I had learned the word when he asked me, “Is it tight?”

      “That’s all you get.” I gave up asking for relief from the belt.

      “I cannot breathe!” I said, gesturing to my nose. A guard appeared and took the mask off my nose. I took a deep breath and felt really relieved. But to my dismay, the guard put the mask back on my nose and my mouth. “Sir, I cannot breathe . . . MP. . . . MP.” The same guy showed up once more, but instead of taking the mask off my nose, he took the plug out of my ear and said, “Forget about it!” and immediately put the ear plug back. It was harsh, but it was the only way not to smother. I was panicking, I had just enough air, but the only way to survive was to convince the brain to be satisfied with the tiny bit of air it got.

      The plane was in the air. A guard shouted in my ear, “Ima gonna give you some medication, you get sick.” He made me take a bunch of tablets and gave me an apple and a peanut butter sandwich, our only meal since the transfer procedure began. I’ve hated peanut butter since then. I had no appetite for anything, but I pretended I was eating the sandwich so the guards don’t hurt me. I always tried to avoid contact with those violent guards unless it was extremely necessary. I took a bite of the sandwich and kept the rest in my hand till the guards collected the trash. As to the apple, the eating was tricky, since my hands were tied to my waist and I wore mittens. I squeezed the apple between my hands and bent my head to my waist like an acrobat to bite at it. One slip and the apple is gone. I tried to sleep, but as tired as I was, every attempt to take a nap ended in failure. The seat was as straight as an arrow, and as hard as a stone.

      After about five hours, the plane landed and our ghosts were transferred to another, maybe bigger plane. It was stable in the air. I was happy with every change, any change, hoping for the betterment of my situation. But I was wrong, the new plane wasn’t better. I knew that Cuba was quite far, but I never thought it to be that far, given the U.S.’s high speed airplanes. At some point, I thought that the government wanted to blow up the plane over the Atlantic and declare it an accident, since all the detainees had been interrogated over and over and over. But this crazy plan was the least of my worries; was I really worried about a little death pain, after which I would hopefully enter paradise with God’s mercy? Living under God’s mercy would be better than living under the U.S.’s mercy.

      The plane seemed to be heading to the kingdom of far, far away. Feeling lessened with every minute going by; my body numbed. I remember asking for the bathroom once. The guards dragged me to the place, pushed inside a small room, and pulled down my pants. I couldn’t take care of my business because of the presence of others. But I think I managed with a lot of effort to squeeze some water. I just wanted to arrive, no matter where! Any place would be better than this plane.

      After I don’t know how many hours, the plane landed in Cuba. The guards started to pull us out of the plane. “Walk! . . . Stop!” I couldn’t walk, for my feet were unable to carry me. And now I noticed that at some point I had lost one of my shoes. After a thorough search outside the plane, the guards shouted, “Walk! Do not talk! Head down! Step!” I only understood “Do not talk,” but the guards were dragging me anyway. Inside the truck, the guards shouted “Sit down!” Cross your legs!” I didn’t understand the last part but they crossed my legs anyway. “Head down!” one shouted, pushing my head against the rear end of another detainee like a chicken. A female voice was shouting all the way to the camp, “No Talking,” and a male voice, “Do not talk,” and an Arabic translator who dutifully but clumsily tried to keep up with his angry American colleagues, struggling with their curses and dirty words. “Keep your head down.” I was completely annoyed by the American way of talking; I stayed that way for a long time, until I got cured by meeting other good Americans. At the same time, I was thinking about how they gave the same order two different ways: “Do not talk” and “No talking.” That was interesting.

      By now the chains on my ankles were cutting off the blood to my feet. My feet became numb. I heard only the moaning and crying of other detainees. Beating was the order of the trip. I was not spared: the guard kept hitting me on my head and squeezing my neck against the rear end of the other detainee. But I don’t blame him as much as I do that poor and painful detainee, who was crying and kept moving, and so kept raising my head. Other detainees told me that we took a ferry ride during the trip, but I didn’t notice.

      After about an hour we were finally at the promised land. As much pain as I suffered, I was very happy to have the trip behind me. A Prophet’s saying states, “Travel is a piece of torture.” This trip was certainly a piece of torture. Now I was only worried about how I was going to stand up if they asked me to. I was just paralyzed. Two guards grabbed me and shouted “Stan’ up.” I tried to jump but nothing happened; instead they dragged me and threw me outside the truck.

      The warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. It was such a good feeling. The trip started in Bagram on August 4, 2002 at 10 a.m., and we arrived in Cuba around 12:00 or 1:00 p.m. on August 5th, which meant we spent more than thirty hours in an ice-cold airplane.10 I was luckier than a Sudanese brother who froze totally. He happened to ask the guard to turn down the A/C on the plane. The guard not only refused to meet his wish, but he kept soaking him with water drops all the way to Cuba. The medics had to put him in a room and treat him with a blazing fire.

      “When they started the fire, I said to myself, here you go, now they start the torture!” he told us. I laughed when he recounted his story in Camp Delta’s Oscar Block the next morning.

      I could tell they had changed the guard team for a better one. The old team used to say “Wader”; the new team says “Water.” The old team used to say, “Stan’ up”; the new team, “Stand up.” The old team was simply too loud.

      I could also tell the detainees had reached their pain limit. All I heard was moaning. Next to me was an Afghani who was crying very loudly and pleading for help, but each time he rose up the MPs pounded him back down to the ground. He was speaking in Arabic, “Sir, how could you do this to me? Please, relieve my pain, Gentlemen!” But nobody even bothered to check on him. The fellow was sick back in Bagram. I saw him in the cell next to ours; he was vomiting all the time. I felt so bad for him. At the same time, I laughed. Can you believe it, I stupidly laughed! Not at him; I laughed at the situation. First, he addressed them in Arabic, which no guards understood. Second, he called them Gentlemen, which they were most certainly not.

      In the beginning I enjoyed the sunbath, but the sun grew hotter with every minute that went by. I started to sweat, and grew very tired of the kneeling position I had to remain in for about six hours. Every once in a while a guard shouted, “Need water!” I don’t remember asking for water, but it’s likely that I did. I was still stuck with the blindfold, but my excitement about being in a new correctional facility with other human beings I could socialize with, in a place where there would be no torture or even interrogation, overwhelmed my pain; that and the fact that I didn’t know how long the detention was going to last. And so I didn’t open my mouth with any complaints or moans, while many brothers around me were moaning and even crying. I think that my pain limit had been reached a long time before.

      I

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