Free My Guantanamo Diary by Mahvish Khan Page B

months, he had compiled and memorized a list of almost one thousand English words. But during a routine search, the guards had found and confiscated his neatly written glossary.
    When Paul told him it was unlikely that he’d be given permission to bring him a book, Taj looked unhappy.
    “If you can’t bring me a book, how do you plan on getting me out of here?” he said. “Even the interrogators give us magazines.”
    I asked what kind of magazines.
    “ Playboy ,” he said.
    I’d heard the same from guards at the Clipper Club, who said that lots of detainees made associations between American women based on what they saw in the soft-core men’s magazine Maxim .
    Sometimes the guards helped that along, it seemed.
    At the beginning of my second meeting with Taj, he pulled out a small piece of creased white paper and handed it to me. “I told the guards that the girl who speaks Pashto is coming, and I asked them to make a list of words so you could translate them for me,” he said.
    My jaw dropped as I scanned the list. “What does it say?” Taj asked. “Tell me.”
    The first word on the list was “bestiality.” The second was “pedophile,” the third was “intercourse,” and the fourth was “horny.”
    “I think those soldiers have played a little trick on you and me,” I smirked.
    “Tell me,” he persisted. “What did they write?”
    “I don’t know how to say these words in Pashto,” I responded. “I learned Pashto from my parents.”
    Taj’s eyes widened. “Okay, just tell me one of the words,” he insisted.
    “I don’t know them,” I said.
    “Then, tell me what it means.”
    I scanned the words again.
    “Bestiality means showing meena —affection or love—to one of those goats you tend,” I said smiling. “But it’s not a good sort of meena .”
    Taj let out a laugh. He got the picture. He grabbed a pen from the table and scribbled something in Pashto next to “bestiality.” That’s when I realized that he had probably known the nature of his vocabulary lessons all along.
    Taj’s command of English was amazing. When I later saw a May 24, 2006, letter he’d written to Paul, I thought he had to be a goat-herding genius. Or at least a highly educated goatherd. He sounded very American. His grammar and punctuation were perfect. He indented properly and started each sentence with a capital letter. He even underlined for emphasis.
    Of course, I suppose it’s also possible that one of the government interpreters helped him write the letter. Taj said he’d learned a lot of English from Abdul Salam Zaeef, anambassador to the Taliban, when he was held in Camp 4. And he also practiced as much as he could with the guards.
    Taj sent me a letter at one point, with a drawing of flowers and a poem. I’d share it, but the DOD wouldn’t declassify any poetry or art for fear that it might contain coded messages for terrorists. The Pentagon did, however, allow one poem that Taj wrote in a letter to Paul to slip through.
The grass is green,
My love is clean.
The sky is blue,
My love is true.

    The first time Paul and I met with Taj, he was sitting behind a long table. One leg was extended, and he was dressed in white, which meant that he was being held in Camp 4. He had longer hair than the other detainees and pushed it behind his ears to keep it out of his face.
    He casually asked who paid Paul’s salary and whether he was employed by the U.S. government. This is a tricky subject for federal public defenders to address. They must truthfully convey that although they work for the government, their decisions remain independent. Naturally, many detainees have a hard time accepting that someone can act in their best interests when they’re being paid by the same government that’s imprisoning them.
    Paul worded his answer carefully, explaining what kind of law he practiced, who his regular clients were, and, above all, that he was in no way influenced by the U.S. government.
    Taj