My Guantanamo Diary (13 page)

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.”

I threw my arms around her and planted a kiss on her face. “Don’t worry so much. I’ll call you all along the way. I’ll be fine.”

She forced a pursed smile.

I got into the back seat of the taxi with Munir and waved to my aunt as she slowly drove away. There was another passenger in the front seat, chain-smoking out the window. We waited for a fourth guy to get in. Each person would pay 160 kaldars, about $2.60, to be driven across the border into Torkham.

I sat by the window, and Munir took the middle seat next to me. I didn’t sit in the middle because it would be improper for me to sit so close to a man unrelated to me. As far as everyone else was concerned, Munir was my brother or a cousin. The fourth passenger finally arrived, and the adventure began.

Whatever nervousness I had about the trip was suddenly replaced by excitement. Kristin Wilhelm, a partner at the Atlanta offices of Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan, had told me this would happen. She had gone to Yemen to meet the families of her clients and said she stopped worrying once she arrived in Sanaa.

There was so much to absorb that I didn’t have time to worry or to fear the unknown. But I did remain cautious and tried to stay as inconspicuous as possible while we drove along, even though I was itching to pull out my camera. The other passengers made some small talk, and the guy in the front just kept smoking out the window. Finally, I turned to Munir and asked him quietly whether I could take pictures. I wanted to be sure I was behaving in a culturally appropriate way. I was also hesitant to let anyone hear me speak Pashto because I have an obvious American accent and didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

“Sure, go ahead,” Munir said.

I snapped away. The driver was playing some loud Pashto music and wove in and out of traffic. We drove quickly through Peshawar’s bustling Hayatabad market into the Northwest Frontier Province tribal areas, a loosely administered territory straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, just minutes from my grandmother’s house. For the Pashtuns who live here, it’s a state of anarchy, a land of convoluted tribal loyalties and ferocious feuds, of gun-running, drug trafficking, and the occasional kidnapping. The only legal system in this modern-day Wild West is Pashtunwali, the unwritten
tribal statutes and their complicated fabric of revenge, hospitality, and honor. The tribal area is also the rumored home of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda training camps.