Les carnets de Guantanamo

C’est toujours quand on pense que la vie vous sourit qu’elle vous trahit.

The story he tells is well corroborated by the declassified record; he proves again and again to be a reliable narrator. He certainly does not exaggerate: the record contains tornments and humiliations not included in the book, and he renders several of those he does include with considerable discretion. Even when the events he recounts are at their most extreme, his narration is tempered and direct. The horrors of those events speak for themselves.
[...]
He has the qualities I value most in a writer: a moving sense of beauty and a sharp sense of irony. He has a fantastic sense of humor.

But believe it or not, I have seen guards crying because they had to leave their duties in GTMO.
"I am your friend, I don't care what anybody says," said one guard to me before he left.
"I was thought bad things about you, but my judgment tells me something else. I like you very much, and I like speaking with you. "You are a great person," said another.
"I hope you get released," said SSG Mary genuinely.
"You guys are my brothers, all of you," another whispered to me.

I personally can never help breaking into tears when I read a sad story or watch a sad movie. I have no problem admitting this. Some people may say that I am a weak person; well, then, let me be!

This was a milestone in my interrogation history. You can tell I was hurt like never before; it wasn't me anymore, and I would never be the same as before. A thick line was drawn between my past and my future with the first hit Mr. X delivered to me.

I have never felt as violated in myself as I had since the DOD Team started to torture me to get me to admit to things I haven't done. You, dear reader, could never understand the extent of the physical, and much more the psychological pain people in my situation suffered, no matter how hard you try to put yourself in another's shoes.

"They want us to have no mercy with terrorists. I can kill a terrorist who is running away without wasting more than one bullet," he demonstratively claimed.
"Oh, that's great! But how do you know he is a terrorist? He might be innocent," I gauged.
"I don't care: if my boss said he is a terrorist, he is. I am not allowed to follow my personal judgment. My job is to execute."

Then I erased my whole phone book. [...] The funniest record I deleted read "PC Laden", which means computer store; the word for "store" in German just happens to be "Laden". I knew no matter how hard I woud have tried to explain that, the U.S. interrogators would not have believed me.

Premarital sex is not tolerated in Mauritania, and not only for religious reasons: many guys mistrust any girl who accepts having sex with them. They assume, if she accepts having sex with me, she would accept another man, and another man, in an endless sexual adventure. Although the Islamic religion treats males and females the same way in this regard, the society tends to accept premarital sex from men much more than women.

I heard tons of such stories and every story made me forget the last one. I couldn't tell whose story was more saddening. It even started to undermine my story, but the detainees were unanimous that my story was the saddest. I personally don't know. The German proverb says: "When the Military sets itself in motion, the truth is too slow to keep up, so it stays behind."