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FIVE YEARS OF MY LIFE -- AN INNOCENT MAN IN GUANTANAMO |
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Chapter 11: RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, GERMANY T HEY LED ME DOWN A RAMP, AND THEN THE AMERICANS finally took off the goggles, the soundproof headphones and the gas mask. I was blinded by a harsh light. A large black vehicle was sitting on the runway, but the glare didn't come from the headlights because they weren't on. I saw three men in dark suits. They looked German. The glare came from a watchtower-even though it was still day time. One of the men pressed a note into my hand. They exchanged nervous glances. "Mr. Kurnaz," they said, "we've come to pick you up. You can trust us. Here's a letter from your mother." Squinting, I tried to read the note. It was my mother's handwriting. My dear son, Murat, these men are German officials. They're going to bring you to us. Your father, Ali, Alper and I are waiting outside together with your German and American lawyers. Love, Mother. The letter was dated August 24, 2006. I had no idea it was August. *** We got into a car, it was a Japanese brand, and one of the officials took the seat beside me. We were on an American army base-I could see military aircraft and hangars. The man next to me took out a small device, flipped it open, and typed something into it. Then he closed it and used it to make a telephone call. "What is that?" I asked. "A cell phone that also works as a miniature computer with a word processor." My wrists and ankles still ached from the cuffs on the plane, which had been far too tight. The other man, who was sitting up front, was talking into a radio. It crackled with static. "Suspicious vehicle ahead, change direction. Drive ..." The driver braked, swerving to take a different route. I looked at the man next to me. "It's the media," he said. "We're trying to avoid the media. We sent another car on ahead to distract them, but we're playing it safe." I first truly realized then that I was in Germany, and perhaps, I thought, I'm really free now. At least they hadn't put me in handcuffs. The thing I most wanted to do was go to sleep-as soon as possible. But I also wanted to see my family. I didn't know what to say to the officials, so I said nothing. The radio kept crackling, and each time it did we changed course. We drove into a city. I didn't recognize the license plates and was overwhelmed by the Sight of so many people and such bright colors. I hadn't seen anything like it for a long time. Where are we going? I asked. "We're taking you to the Red Cross." The car pulled into a parking lot in front of a large building that looked like a hotel. My first steps back on German soil, I thought. The building was an old people's home-at least that's what it said on the sign. A porter opened the door. "Welcome, Mr. Kurnaz," a woman said, smiling at me. ''I'm from the Red Cross." Those were the first pleasant words I had heard in five years. In the foyer, I saw signs, a dining room, a ballroom, and a toilet. The porter, the woman from the Red Cross, and the German officials led me into an elevator. When the elevator doors opened, my family was standing in front of me. The first one I saw was my mother. She had lost a lot of weight. My brother Ali and my uncle were also there, but I didn't see Alper. And where is my father, I asked myself. My mother took me in her arms and refused to let me go. She was crying. I was happy, but I didn't feel quite right with my mother crying like that. Afterward, the others hugged me too. There was a whole table full of food in the adjoining room, but strangely enough I wasn't hungry. I should at least try a bit of food, I thought. The nice lady from the Red Cross had probably arranged all of it especially for me. Everything was so pleasant, and my family took out their cell phones to show me pictures of my aunts, nieces, and nephews. We took some pictures of ourselves and admired them on the screen. Everything seemed so unreal. Why didn't my uncle say anything? I wondered. Quietly, I asked my mother where my father was. Then I realized I hadn't recognized my own father. Before I was captured, he was a powerful man who weighed more than two hundred pounds. Now he was as thin and gray as his older brother. I had also mistaken Alper for Ali. At the time I was captured, Alper had been only five-now he was ten. Ali had meanwhile grown up into a strapping young adult of eighteen years. It was as if I no longer knew him. Alper sat on my lap. Everyone else crowded around me: Baher, my German lawyer, Bernhard Docke, the women from the Red Cross, the officials, and the doctor. My mother needed medical attention more than I did. The doctor gave her some pills to calm her nerves. The lawyers wanted to know about my trip to Germany, about whether I had been shackled on board the plane and whether I'd been given something to eat and drink. The police then conferred with my attorneys. My mother was still crying softly, so I put my arm around her and pressed her close to me. As I did so, I became aware of the plastic band around my wrist, the green armband with my photo, the number 061 and the name "KUNN, MURAT." Using two fingers, I tore it off before my family's eyes. They had interrogated, tormented, and tortured me nearly every day for five years, but they never learned how to spell my name correctly. Once, when I pointed this out, they beat me and accused me of giving them false information. They had repeatedly asked me what my name was over the years, and I'd even spelled it out for them. I threw the arm band on the ground. Ali picked it up and pocketed it. *** That evening we drove away in my father's Mercedes. It was more than 300 miles to Bremen. We traveled through the unfamiliar city where I'd landed, with Baher and my German attorney leading the way in another car. It was like traveling through time. Five years may not seem like such a long time. But if you spend five years in caged isolation, without television, newspapers, and radio, and cages and people in uniform are all you ever see, then it's as though you've returned from the Stone Age. My mother, Ali, and Alper were sitting in the back seat. I thought about my wife and my uncle Ekram, who was like a friend and a brother to me. My uncle had told me about being sent to prison after getting in a knife fight, and I had thought about him a lot in Guantanamo. He was the only one who could have understood what it was like there. We drove up an on-ramp to get on the highway, and I asked my father about my grandmother. She died, he said, adding, "And there's someone else you loved who's dead." I knew immediately who he was talking about, but I asked anyway. "Is it Uncle Ekram?" "Yes." My heart sank. I couldn't even bring myself to ask how he had died, but I knew then that the life I had left behind in Germany was no longer going to be as I had imagined it all those years in Guantanamo. My uncle Ekram would have been in his mid- thirties. We drove for a while and Alper fell asleep. It had gotten dark. No one spoke. My father was smoking cigarettes. "As soon as I can," I said, "I'm going to bring Fatima to Germany." My father looked at me. "She won't come." I was flabbergasted. We hadn't seen each other in five years, and we were man and wife. Of course she'd come! "No, she won't be coming." "Why not? I'll call her. She must know I've been released." "She divorced you." I didn't ask any more questions. My father drove on. May Allah grant us whatever is good for us, I kept saying to myself. *** What could I do? Fatima had waited for years without any sign that I was even alive. She had a right to get divorced. She was still young and didn't know whether I was ever coming back. She was a good woman, my father said later. She waited three years and hadn't heard a single word from me. If she had known you would be released, my father said, she would have waited-even if it had been ten years. Today I'm happy for Fatima. I hope she has remarried and has a good life. I wish her happiness. But I have no contact with her. I don't want to remind her of the past. *** The car in front of us signaled, and we turned into a rest stop. I got out of my father's Mercedes. "I have coffee in the trunk," my mother said. "Do you want some?" I love coffee. My mother poured me a cup, and I looked up at the stars. It was the first time I'd seen a starry sky in five years. The nighttime sky was more beautiful than ever, and I realized at that moment precisely what they had taken from me in Guantanamo. It was dark, and I was looking at the stars, a free man. I forgot to drink the coffee. *** When we arrived in Bremen, dozens of vehicles were parked in our tiny street. There were floodlights, catering vans, and buses with satellite dishes on their roofs. Photographers and cameramen were crowded in front of our house. I couldn't look. I didn't want to speak to any of them or let them take my picture. The lawyers stopped their car, and Baher got out. I saw the journalists immediately surround him. Flashbulbs blazed like lightning. Baher and Bernhard walked a short distance past our house, and the pack of reporters followed them. My mother and I got out. Quickly, she put a blanket over my head. The next thing I knew I was in our front hall. *** Photos of Baher were published in a number of newspapers. Some of the captions read: "The Taliban from Bremen returns home with a short beard and glasses." That was how Baher also got to be a Taliban. Well, at least he was born in Egypt.
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