My Guantanamo Diary (9 page)

“It was so bumpy, I felt more like I was riding on a donkey,” he said jokingly.

Over the years, Taj told us, even Ismael had come to feel badly about Taj’s ending up at Guantánamo. His cousin wrote to tell him that he regretted what had happened and that he wished Taj were home. Taj looked sad for a moment, telling us that.

We asked about his interrogations. He said that he was asked the same questions over and over. He described not being allowed to sleep for long periods. “You have no idea what it feels like not to sleep for over a week,” he said, shaking his head. One soldier, though, felt badly about his sleep deprivation. “When it was her shift, she let me sleep the whole time,” Taj said.

There was one interrogator at Guantánamo whom he particularly liked. Her name was Susie, he said, but he hadn’t seen her in a while. “She left, I think. Now it’s a girl named Mi-shal,” he said.

“Michelle?” I asked.

“Yes, Mi-shal. She dances well.”

I looked at him in confusion. “The guards had some music playing, and I saw her dance,” he said. I never quite understood what that was all about.

Personally, I never bought into the goatherd story. Taj always came across as much more sophisticated than I’d imagined a goatherd to be. That said, I didn’t think it mattered whether Taj was or wasn’t a simple goatherd. The more important fact was that there was no evidence suggesting that he was al-Qaeda.

At a military hearing in 2003, he was accused of firing rocket-propelled grenades at the U.S. military base in Kunar in exchange for a pair of tennis shoes. Taj admitted that he owned a pair of tennis shoes, but he said he’d purchased them himself. In a separate charge, he stood accused of attacking
the military base in exchange for twenty thousand kaldars, about $400.

The military also accused him of working with Afghan warlord Hekymatyar Gulbadin, of associating with the Taliban and alQaeda, and of being a member of Lashkar-i-Tayy-iba, an organization reportedly based in Pakistan that trains insurgents to fight against the Indian army in the disputed Kashmir territory.

And he was further accused of being connected to the smuggling of explosives from Pakistan into Afghanistan and to attacks using improvised explosive devices on a U.S. air base.

But Taj insisted that he was only a goatherd.

“I am a nomad taking care of animals. That is all I do,” he told the military panel. “I come from generations of animal caretakers. My father and grandfather did the same.”

When the accusations were exhausted, the presiding officer turned to the subject of Taj’s small skull cap—these are given to many of the detainees.

“Most detainees wear white hats,” the officer said. “Is there some significance to your black hat? Does it mean that you are higher up in the organization?”

“No. I look nice in it. I have darker skin, and it matches the hat,” Taj replied.

Finally, the panel asked him what he planned to do if he were released. He replied that he had initially planned on working for the Americans as an interpreter, but over the years in detention, he had changed his mind because the Americans had caused him too much grief.

“I will go back to my own way of living and keep my goats,” he said.

“And stay away from your cousin,” the presiding officer admonished.

Paul left the room briefly during our first meeting, and Taj immediately confronted me. “Why are you working with the Americans?” he asked.

I was shocked. I had thought the meeting was going well and that we had established a decent level of trust and rapport. At the same time, the detainees often confronted me about something whenever the lawyers I was with left the room. I suppose that because I spoke Pashto, they thought of me as an Afghan just like them, one of the tribe, so to speak. So, they wanted to talk to me about things they didn’t always bring up with lawyers sitting in front of them. But I was struck by Taj’s “us versus them” attitude and his inability to place me on either side. Or perhaps he had placed me on both.

“What are you talking about?” I replied. “He doesn’t work for the military, and he’s not an interrogator.”

Taj looked at me with suspicion.

“There are people in America who think all of this is very wrong,” I informed him. “He’s a lawyer. Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

He thought for a minute. “Well, is he a good lawyer, or are there better lawyers I could have?” he asked finally.

“He’s a good lawyer.”

Taj was satisfied. Then, he asked me the question that I’d come to expect from all the detainees: “Are you married?”

Afghans are far more inquisitive about personal matters than Americans are. And the Afghans at Gitmo, or a few of them
anyway, are shamelessly so. They’ll ask lawyers their salaries, how much they have in savings, why they don’t accept Islam, or whether they slept with their wives before marriage. Usually, when they directed personal questions at me, they asked me for permission to do so first, afraid that I might be offended. It’s not proper to ask a girl in Afghanistan anything personal without her consent. Most of the detainees immediately asked about my family, where I was brought up, whether my parents were alive, and what they did for a living. They also often had an opinion about all of it.

When I said I wasn’t married, Taj had the typical reaction. “Well, why not?” he asked. “I know someone just right for you in Kunar.”

I rolled my eyes.

His wife, he told me, was fourteen when they got married.

“That’s an eighth grader!” I exclaimed. “How old were you at the time?”

“Eighteen.”

“That’s very young,” I said. He asked me how old I was.

“Twenty-seven.”

“You’d better get married while you’re young,” he said. “If you wait till you’re old, what good is that?”

At least he thought I was still young.

At 4:25 PM, a short young woman in tan fatigues and desert boots knocked on the door and stuck her head in. Her hair was pulled tight under her hat.

“You have five minutes remaining,” she said in a high-pitched voice.

As soon as she closed the door, Taj started mimicking her in English.

“You have five minutes re-maii-ning,” he said. “What has the world come to? In Afghanistan, I didn’t listen to anyone. No one could tell me what to do. Now I have to take orders from a woman.” He shook his head.

By our third meeting, however, he had softened his views a bit.

“I’ve decided that I want to marry an American woman,” he said. “I want you to find me the right one.”

“I have some cute friends,” I said, going along.

“No, I’m serious, and I don’t care about cute. Good looks are not as important as intelligence. I want a smart woman.”

“One of my good friends is a lawyer and cute,” I said, smiling.

“That’s the type of woman I need,” he said.

“What is she going to do while you’re on the mountain looking after goats?”

“I’m serious. When I get out, you find me an American woman I can marry.”

I wondered what he would say to his wife if I did.

When I saw Taj two months later, he was wearing tan, the color indicating noncompliance. After some prodding, he sheepishly said that a female medic had accused him of trying to touch her lips. He denied it, of course.

A few weeks before, on June 10, 2006, the Department of Defense had reported that three detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their Camp 1 cells using clothing and bedsheets. Each had also reportedly left a suicide note in Arabic.

These were the first suicides at Guantánamo since detainees had been brought to the camp in 2002, and the drama raised questions among the detainees. Taj wanted to know where the men were buried and whether they had really committed suicide.

Not knowing the details of the autopsies at that time, we told him that the government was calling it suicide. Taj was glad to know that all three men had been flown home to their countries for burial.

Then, he told us that it would be impossible for one person, let alone three, to commit suicide by hanging given the strict rules and continuous surveillance at Gitmo. There was simply nothing to hang yourself from, he said. Many people had attempted suicide over the years, and it couldn’t be done. “I tried to hang myself several times, and I’m alive,” he told us. “I think the Americans killed those men.”

“I don’t know,” Paul replied. “But why did you try to kill yourself ? What happened?”

It was when he was being held among Arab detainees, Taj said. He couldn’t communicate with anyone for months. The others didn’t speak Pashto, and he didn’t speak Arabic. It was a difficult time. Then, one day he got a letter from his mother. He hadn’t learned to read or write yet, and there was no one in the adjacent cells who knew Pashto. So, he just stared at the letter and grew depressed. That’s when he tried to hang himself. But the guards saw him on the security camera and came running immediately.

Taj was questioned about the suicide attempt the next day. The interrogator told him that if he began to feel suicidal again, he should contact him through the guards.

“But the next day, I called the bastard and said I was suicidal, but he never came.” Taj burst into laughter.