Heartbreaking, devastating. Slahi comes across as reasonable, personable and charming. That he maintains such a calm and engaging tone while recounting his own torture somehow amplifies the emotional gravity of the material. Considering what he describes, it is also remarkable that he demonstrates compassion, and even love, for his captors and tormentors as human beings.

It's hard to imagine reading this without it casting a gloom over your day and making one want to cry. It deeply personalizes the sometimes abstract or remote injustices committed as part of the ongoing 'war on terror'.

In addition to all that, it's well written and often difficult to put down (though you sometimes must to take a break from the traumatic content).

3.5/5

[T]he fact that the Americans didn't provide the Jordanians with any substantial evidence tied the hands of the Jordanians mightily. Yes, Jordanians practice torture on a daily basis, but they need a reasonable suspicion to do so. They don't just jump on anybody and start to torture him.

How do you rate a work that is primarily concerned with fulfilling the burden of proof that your home country is actively committing at least a handful of war crimes. Had I read this when I first added it back in 2015, I may have had a more concrete answer with regards to justice, progress, the whole shebang of learning from the past in hopes of sanctifying the future. These days, after Trump and perhaps before Trump, after Roe and no idea whether before Roe, during and during and forever during Covid, the fact that this country still hasn't collapsed under the gargantuan weight of its own auto-erotic self-cannibalization serves as sufficient evidence that the time of the turning point, if ever there were one, will not be catalyzed by a single testimony or crying out in the dark. In light of that, what Slahi has achieved is the sustaining of an analysis that first came into being upon the arrival of the first Anglo Saxon on the shores of the continental portion of Turtle Island: an analysis of fear, violence, and opportunity, given permission by the distant patriarch, executed by the scrabbling peon, and sustained by the equivocating middle ground, so desperate for grace, so fearful of the fall. A solution, you ask? Let me know when this country is more willing to feed starving children than it is to let slip the dogs of war, then it won't be pointless to contrive one.

I've read a great deal about the United States and its habit of shooting first and threatening to invade the Hague later. And the way reading works, especially on a site like this, is that you are not likely to read this if you didn't already set yourself on the path of taking Slahi and other detainees in far flung US detention centers at their word: the bullying internationalism, the clowning pontification, the cultish insistence that we are number one, we are the best, and there are no just deserts we will not flatten the cities of hundreds of thousands and upend the lives of millions to hide away from the truth of. If you don't agree with this and insist that Christianity is just, disaster capitalism as participated in by white folks is worth any number of ruined non-Euro countries, and that the terrorists are hiding around the corner just waiting for the next bleeding heart president to open the borders and lay down the arms, nothing Slahi writes is going to get through to you. Hell, you don't even have the guts to trust your next door neighbor enough to ask them to watch your place for you, or your coworker enough to unionize with them, or your local houseless person enough to actually ask them what happened, rather than studiously avoiding the specter of there but for the grace of fickle luck goes you. For that's who Slahi is for so many folks in this country: the child of Omelas that is locked up enough out of sight so as the rest of us never have to really face the question of whether to walk away or not. The fact that I don't give five stars for such signals less towards objectivity than to fatigue.

In terms of the text itself, it is no masterwork of English, and what can be read in between the censored lines is likely of more technical value than it is artistic. Indeed, the worth is likely entirely encompassed by the fact that Slahi was released a year after its publication. And so, eight years after this work's publication, Slahi is free, while the US-run, US funded, US staffed and supported and ultimately sustained Guantánamo Bay detention camp remains open. When will it be closed, you ask? Perhaps when the people regain a voice in their government, when the strong aid the weak in proportion to need rather than to subservience, when the numbers of the stock market are scoffed at like the shadow play for children that they are and the earth is given back its membership in the community by every one of the human species. Until then, we're all just living on borrowed time, and most of us can't even use being imprisoned in a high security detention center as an excuse for our complacency.

Chilling, necessary read.

Ένα είναι σίγουρο. Ότι δεν έχω ξαναδιαβάσει τέτοιο βιβλίο. Και τι εννοώ; Πρόκειται για το ημερολόγιο του συγγραφέα ο οποίος βρίσκεται ακόμη φυλακισμένος στο Γκουανταναμό, τις φυλακές των Η.Π.Α. μέσα στην στρατιωτική τους βάση, που βρίσκεται στην Κούβα. Ο Σλάχι βρίσκεται εκεί από το 2002 και πολλά πράγματα που έχει γράψει στο ημερολόγιο του, έχουν λογοκριθεί και εμφανίζονται στο βιβλίο ως μαύρα κενά ή μαύρες γραμμές. Απαλοιφές ονομάτων και αντωνυμιών που καθορίζουν το φύλο των ατόμων και άλλων πληροφοριών που η Αμερικανική κυβέρνηση θεωρεί απόρρητες. Σε ένα σημείο του βιβλίου φτάνει σε 6,5 σελίδες γεμάτες με μαύρες γραμμές.

Παρόλα αυτά το βιβλίο είναι ευάγνωστο και υπάρχουν αρκετές υποσημειώσεις από τον επιμελητή για να καταλάβεις τα πάντα. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που σίγουρα σε προβληματίζει για το που μπορεί να φτάσει ο άνθρωπος σε ακρότητες, κακοποίηση και απανθρωπιά. Για το ποιος φταίει για την τρομοκρατία τελικά; Αν οι καλοί είναι τελικά οι κακοί και αντίστροφα; Η εξουσία μπορεί να μετατρέψει τον άνθρωπο σε τέρας;

Θέλω τελειώνοντας να αντιγράψω δύο μικρά αποσπάσματα που θεωρώ ότι είναι γροθιές στο στομάχι και καλό είναι να προβληματίσουν όλους μας.

"Εγώ απλώς αναρωτιόμουν πόσο στενόμυαλοι μπορούν να είναι οι άνθρωποι. Όταν βλέπουν ένα πράγμα από μια συγκεκριμένη οπτική γωνιά, σίγουρα δεν καταφέρνουν να σχηματίσουν ολοκληρωμένη εικόνα κι αυτός είναι ο βασικός λόγος για τις περισσότερες παρεξηγήσεις που καμιά φορά οδηγούν σε αιματηρές συγκρούσεις."

"Η βία είναι φυσικό να προκαλεί βία, το μοναδικό δάνειο που μπορείς να δώσει με εγγυημένη αποπληρωμή, είναι αυτό της βίας. Μπορεί να πάρει λίγο καιρό, αλλά είναι σίγουρο πως το δάνειο θα σου επιστραφεί"

Εύχομαι ολόψυχα να επικρατήσει η αγάπη και η ειρήνη σε όλο τον κόσμο αλλά αυτό πρέπει πρώτα να ξεκινήσει από την ψυχή του καθενός μας.

Slahi is a Muslim originally from Mauritius, but lived for stints in Germany in Canada. While in Canada, the police followed him around at the US' request. The Americans were convinced he was part of the Millenium plot to bomb LAX. Slahi decides Canada is not the place for him and returns home where he is asked to turn himself in. Since he believed he had nothing to hide, Slahi dutifully turned himself in and the start of his horrific 14-year journey began. Again, acting on behalf of the Americans, his own country questions him and his involvement with Al Qaeda. Slahi doesn't give them much because there's not much to give them. His government believes him, but the American pull is bigger and he gets transferred to Jordan. Jordan is where torture begins for Slahi, but those officers also find that there isn't much Slahi is giving them and that's when he gets transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

This is where the real torture starts. In this redacted version of Slahi's journal, it's surprising that the American government allows the stories of Slahi's torture to reach the public. Slahi was beat, forced to stay away, forced to stand for hours, made to listen to heavy metal music on repeat, put in very cold conditions and then doused with water, etc. Eventually and not surprisingly Slahi breaks and tells his captors what they want to hear. His life gets easier but he isn't allowed to leave.

At the end of the book, Slahi is still in prison and he remains there until 2016. All for knowing the wrong people. If this book came out before the Abu Ghraid scandal, it would have been shocking. That scandal desensitized us to what American imprisonment of terrorists involves. It's still surprising, and pretty depressing to me, that the world superpower would resort to this. I feel bad for Slahi and his family and while I'm glad he's out now, it's far too late. It also begs the question, who else is in that jail that is innocent and just rotting there?

Ikke nødvendigvis den stilistisk bedste bog, men et af de vigtigste værker, jeg har læst.