Free Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Larry Siems Page B

as ■■■■■■■■■■■■ himself spent 50 days in the same prison where I had been.
    When we spoke, we covered our heads so guards thought we were asleep, and talked until we got tired. My neighbors told me that we were in Bagram, in Afghanistan, and I informed them that we were going to be transferred to Cuba. But they didn’t believe me.
    Around 10 a.m. on August ■■ , 2002 a Military unit, some armed with guns, appeared from nowhere. * The armed MPswere pointing their guns at us from upstairs, and the others were shouting at the same time, “Stan’ up, Stan’ up…” I was so scared. Even though I expected to be transferred to Cuba some time that day, I had never seen this kind of show.
    We stood up. The guards kept giving other orders. “No talking… Do not move… Ima fucking kill yo’… I’m serious!” I hated it when ■■■■■■■■■■ from Palestine asked to use the bathroom and the guards refused. “Don’t move.” I was like, Can’t you just keep it till the situation is over? But the problem with ■■■■■■■■■■ was that he had dysentery, and he couldn’t hold it; ■■■■■■■■■■ had been subjected to torture and malnutrition in Kabul during his detention by the Northern Alliance tribal leader. ■■■■■■■■■■ told me that he was going to use the bathroom anyway, which he did, ignoring the shouting guards. I expected every second a bullet to be released toward him, but that didn’t happen. The bathroom inside our shared cells was also an open barrel, which detainees in punishment cleaned every day for every cell. It was very disgusting and smelled so bad. Being from a third world country, I have seen many unclean bathrooms, but none of them could hold a candle to Bagram’s.
    I started to shake from fear. One MP approached the gate of our cell and started to call the names, or rather the numbers, of those who were going to be transferred. All the numbers called in my cell were Arabs, which was a bad sign. The brothers didn’t believe me when I told them we were going to be transferred to Cuba. But now I felt myself confirmed, and we looked at each other and smiled. Several guards came to the gate with a bunch of chains, bags, and other materials. They started to call us one by one, asking each detainee to approach the gate, where he got chained.
    “ ■■■■■■■■■■ ,” one of the guards shouted. I proceeded to the gate like a sheep being led to her butcher. At the gate, a guard yelled, “Turn around!” which I did, and “Both hands behind!”
    When I slid my hands through the bin hole behind my back, one of the guards grabbed my thumb and bent my wrist. “When you fuckin’ move, I’m gonna break your hand.” Another guard chained my hands and my feet with two separate chains. Then a bag was put over my head to blindfold me. The gate was opened, and I was roughly pushed and thrown over the back of another detainee in a row. Although I was physically hurt, I was solaced when I felt the warmth of another human being in front of me suffering the same. The solace increased when ■■■■■■■■■■ was thrown over my back. Many detainees didn’t exactly understand what the guards wanted from them, and so got hurt worse. I felt lucky to have been blindfolded, for one, because I missed a lot bad things that were happening around me, and for two, because the blindfold helped me in my daydreaming about better circumstances. Thank ALLAH, I have the ability to ignore my surroundings and daydream about anything I want.
    We were supposed to be very close to each other. Breathing was very hard. We were 34 detainees, all of whom were Arab except for one Afghani and one from the Maldives. * When we were put in a row, we were tied together with a rope around our upper arms. The rope was so tight that the circulation stopped, numbing my whole arm.
    We were ordered to stand up, and were pulled to a place where