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FIVE YEARS OF MY LIFE -- AN INNOCENT MAN IN GUANTANAMO

Chapter 8:  GUANTANAMO BAY, CAMP DELTA

CAMP X-RAY WAS CLOSED IN LATE APRIL 2002.

I was there for three months. During this time, the Americans built Camps 1 and 2 and the isolation ward "India." In April 2002, Camp I was opened, and we were transferred there. While we were in Camp 1, they built Camps 3 and 4 and the isolation wards "Romeo," "Quebec," and "Tango." We were then moved to Camp 3, during which time they built Camp 5 and, in 2006, Camp 6. Sometimes we could see the construction sites but we could always hear them since construction work went on around the clock. They had approximately twenty new diesel generators that, when they were on, which was most of the time, made so much noise that we could never sleep for more than a few moments.

The entire facility was called Camp Delta.

***

One day, buses-they looked like American school buses-stopped in front of the chain-link fences. Soldiers inspected our mouths and ears, bound us and put goggles, soundproof headphones, and gas masks on our heads. We were led to the buses and chained to the floor. There were no seats, and they beat us. After two or three hours, we drove off. It wasn't a long ride. When we arrived in Camp Delta, they removed our goggles.

What a surprise.

The blocks looked as through they were made of metal walls welded together to form a giant container. Inside the containers were the cages, but this time their sides were made of metal grille instead of chain-link fence. The prisoners could see through the lattice, and the guards could keep us under observation at all times. The grille was razor sharp.

I was put in Camp 1, Block Alpha, Cell Alpha-2. At first glance, the cage looked more modern than the one I had occupied in Camp X-Ray. The mattress was no longer on the ground but rested on a bunk bed welded to the wall. Although the cage was no smaller than the one in Camp X-Ray, the bunk reduced the amount of free space to around three-and-a-half feet by three-and-a-half feet. At the far end of the cage, an aluminum toilet and a sink took up even more room. How was I going to stand this?

This was no dog pound. It was a maximum-security cage. Even Isa wouldn't have been able to break anything in it-the cell could have withstood a charging elephant. There were forty-eight of these cages, in two rows of twenty-four, in every block. They were closely surrounded by the walls of the container. The only windows were along the short walls at both ends of the container so that the first and last cells were the only ones to get any real direct sunlight. In Alpha-2, I hardly saw the sun at all.

They had perfected their prison.

At some point during my time in X-Ray, I had stopped noticing the chain-link fence. I could see the sky, the hills and the cacti. Now I saw nothing but metal lattice and the roof. It felt like being sealed alive in a ship container. The only fresh air came though the windows. It was unbearably sticky and hot.

Compared to the provisional facilities in X-Ray, the toilet and the sink looked like the ones in a proper prison. I knew about jails from American movies and Uncle Ekram's anecdotes. I was going to have a tough time, but I told myself I would survive. In a proper prison, there are rules that the guards have follow, an everyday routine, and a prison yard.

I noticed immediately that the new cage was smaller than the old one, and it was clear they couldn't possibly keep us locked up in there twenty-four hours a day, I was convinced that we would sleep there, and then during the day we'd be let out into the yard. It took a few days for me to realize that there was no prison yard, I'd been kidding myself again.

***

After I was released I read in a newspaper that, according to official sources, the cells in Camp Delta measure six-and-a- half by eight feet. That's not accurate. I measured my cage with my hand and arrived at six-and- a-half by seven feet. The difference may not seem that significant, but it is an example of the constant deception. Nothing in the camp is what it seems, nothing is the way the U.S. Army says it is and as it has been reported, filmed, and photographed by journalists, There are cages and interrogation rooms specially constructed for the media. In media reports, you often see things on the bunks that I never once had in Guantanamo: a backgammon board, for example, or books or a bar of chocolate. In all the photos taken of the inside of Camp Delta, there's a Koran hanging on the wall, covered in white cloth and bound by a ribbon. Sometimes we had Korans in the cages, but that was an exception, not the rule, and there certainly weren't any white cloths with ribbons. The fake cells were their attempt to convince people that they respected our faith.

My neighbor was light-skinned like me and spoke very good English. He was a Muslim from a country that borders Germany-I don't want to say which one. He has since been freed, and he has never spoken to the media. He wants to be left alone, and I want his wishes to be respected. I'm going to call him Mani. His native tongue was French, and he could also speak a few words of German.

Mani was maybe two or three years older than me, He was very helpful and taught me the Koran, Both of us now had a Koran, a bilingual edition in Arabic and English. I had asked for one repeatedly, and one day, to my surprise, a guard brought me one. We sat on the floor of our cells, and through the metal lattice Mani taught me how to read the Koran without making mistakes. It was a lot of fun. But whenever Johnson was in the block, he'd kick the door and tell us we weren't allowed to talk.

Mani and I were neighbors for three months. One day he was taken away, and when he returned from what I figured was an interrogation, I asked, "Well, how was it?"

"Great," he said. "I went for a walk." To my astonishment, he told me there was a prison yard in Camp Delta.

"Don't talk nonsense," I said.

But Mani wasn't talking nonsense. Twice a week, the guards had told him, prisoners were allowed out into the yard for fifteen minutes, as long as they weren't serving out a punishment.

A couple of days later, I saw the yard. It was a caged-in area behind the container block. The Americans called it the "rec area," and I estimated it to be twenty-two by thirty-eight feet. I was allowed to pace back and forth there, alone. Prisoners weren't allowed to touch the chain-link fence, and the ground was made of concrete. I couldn't believe my eyes and looked at the guard. Someone told me I had fifteen minutes.

But what did that mean: fifteen minutes? I didn't have a watch, and after a couple of minutes, as was always the case in the showers, my time was up. And what did twice a week mean? I was only let out into the yard once or twice a month at most. The rest of the time they said there was a danger of lightning or hurricanes. But usually the sun was shining-that much I could see through the windows.

One day I took a small, pointed stone from the yard back into my cage. I used it, as surreptitiously and as far away from the door and the guards as I could, to draw a Nine Men's Morris board on my bunk. I made the pieces from toilet paper, tiny balls and tubes. We played the game, and when the guards came we started talking about the Koran. Mani didn't know Nine Men's Morris, so I won the first few games in a row. Then Mani got better.

Though I could now play games and talk about the Koran with Mani, interrogations into the wee hours of the night and the beatings continued.  The interrogation rooms in Camp Delta all had mirrors behind which other interrogators sat and cameras recorded the questioning. They kept trying to trick me. Once, one of the interrogators said:

"You know that there were people who were Taliban and are now at home?"

That was true. Word had gotten around that some of the Taliban fighters had already been freed.

"Do you know why?" asked the interrogator. "They're soldiers who fought for their country. We know who they are, and we let them go. But the problem with you is that we don't know who you are. We don't know whether you're Taliban or Al Qaeda. That makes you dangerous. Tell us that you're part of Al Qaeda, and we'll let you go."

Of course it was a trick. Maybe it would have helped if I had confessed to being a Taliban, even if they knew that wasn't true. Then they could have said I was guilty and maybe let me go. But I wasn't giving in to that.

The permanent exhaustion weighed me down like lead in my shoes. It was an iron rule in Camp Delta that all cages were to be searched at least once a day and once at night. They'd kick the door and yell. Stand up and prepare to be shackled.

Although there was nothing to search but the mattress, the ceiling and our flip-flops, they always took their time, shining their flashlights in every corner. They would whistle cheerfully all the while, waking up the other prisoners, and kicking the cage walls and the sink to see if everything was still solid. Searches often lasted a half an hour.

When the guards visited the cages, the fans on the corridor ceiling would be turned on so they wouldn't break a sweat. The fans were as loud as airplane generators. The guards brought chairs along so they could sit down and rest. They talked demonstratively loudly, played cards, and sang songs. When I wasn't being interrogated, I tried to get some sleep, but you can't get any real rest by catnapping. Occasionally they'd return after an hour, wake me up again, and search my cell a second time.

The welded metal plates in the corridor floor were warped from the heat. The guards loved to stomp on the spots where the floor had arched because it made a loud noise. When they lead a prisoner through the corridor, you could hear them from a long way off, and when they came to pick someone up, they'd drop the chains loudly to the floor. With forty-eight prisoners per block, there was always someone coming or going. The fans and diesel generators hummed, and the guards took their keys and scraped them along the metal lattice. In the beginning, I hoped things would change. But after a few months, I knew it would always be like this.

***

I thought about the birds I had kept as a boy. Sometimes, I felt sorry for them in their cages. In Camp X-Ray, there were always birds. I had fed them with breadcrumbs I concealed from the guards under my clothing and my mattress. At first the birds were shy, but gradually they came to trust me. Some of them-especially the zunzuns, a kind of blue, white, and red hummingbird hardly bigger than a locust-could fly through the chain link fence. Some were even small enough to get into our pens in Camp Delta. I was overjoyed when the first zunzun flew through the lattice of my cage, followed by other zunzuns. I used to talk to the birds about how strange the world was. They used to be in a cage, and I would visit them, and now the situation was reversed.

***

For the first few months at Camp Delta I wasn't allowed to shower because I was being punished for something. Finally, I was taken to the shower cells. The water came on; I got under it and started to lather up. The soldier turned the water off.

I had had enough.

"Why didn't you give me my two minutes?" I yelled at the guards.

"Your time is up," he said. "Get dressed."

"You didn't give me two minutes!" I insisted.

"I decide how long you get to shower."

"You have to give me two minutes. If there are rules, why don't you follow them?"

"You don't have any say here."

"Rules are rules, and you have to follow them!"

"Back in your cage. Get going!"

I took the small piece of soap to the lattice and squeezed my hand so that it popped out and hit him in the forehead. He was startled. He disappeared and came back with an officer. I complained about my shower.

"When your time is up, it's up," said the officer, "You'll have to be punished."

"I know your IRF team. Let them come."

They sprayed me with pepper spray, we fought, and they chained me up. They brought me to solitary confinement. I'd heard of it before, the cell was in Block Oscar.

***

I looked around. This was truly nothing more than a ship's container with a door. The walls were reinforced by corrugated metal sheeting like the one in fairground stalls. Every surface-the walls, the floor, the ceiling-was covered with it. There was no mattress or wool blanket. A toilet and a sink were sunk into the floor. If I stared for too long at any one point of the metal sheeting, I got dizzy. This cage was even smaller than the one in Block 1.

The light went off. It was cold. The metal on the floor felt like ice. I stood up. Fortunately, I was still wearing my flip- flops, and I hoped the guards wouldn't notice them. I heard a rumbling. It was an air-conditioning  unit mounted above the door. Icy air streamed in. I thought back to how I had worked at a bakery when I was young. There was a cooler there, too. I thought, this isn't all that different. They've put me in a giant refrigerator.

After a while, I couldn't feel my hands or legs. I sat down on the floor in a corner of the cell, pulled my pants above my T-shirt and my arms under it all. That was just about bearable. There was a draft. The motor of the air-conditioner was so strong I could feel cold air being sucked in. But I still had no idea what solitary confinement really meant.

There were two slots in the door, one at knee-height for food, and another for the guards to look in. A red light on the ceiling went on when a guard came to bring food or wanted to see me. I think they used it to check whether I was sitting or standing when they pushed through my food. As soon as I took my food, the light went back off, and I ate in the dark. When the guards opened the peephole, I could tell whether it was night or day from whether the light was white or yellow.

Once I succeeded in breaking something in the cell. I kicked the peephole so hard the metal bent a bit and I could see through the crack into the corridor. I shouldn't have done this. When the guards came with my food, I saw them spit on it before they opened the food slot and pushed the plate in. They spat on all the plates before delivering the food. What bastards, I thought. I always looked forward to meals, no matter how scant they were. Now I wasn't able to eat for days. I cleaned every last crumb before I put it in my mouth, and I still felt nauseous.

Sometimes I had to move to fight the cold, but I tried not to. I needed to save my energy since all I was given to eat was a piece of toast and a bit of apple, three times a day. But I had to move around sometimes, when it got colder. I sat in the corner underneath the bare bunk bed. There was no draft there. After a few days, I heard someone speaking Turkish in the corridor. Someone was speaking to one of the guards. I recognized the voice and waited until the guard has gone away.

"Erhan?"

"Murat?"

Erhan was two or three cells down the line from me, but the food slot was open so we could talk to each other when the guards weren't around.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I don't know. And you?"

''I'm vacationing in Siberia."

***

I got out after a month. For a while, I couldn't see anything. I kept getting terrible headaches. But the sun and the heat were better than the cooler. They brought me to Block Mike in Camp 2. This block, it was said, was completely bugged. Several prisoners had discovered microphones, and we surmised that people were put there so that the soldiers could listen in on their conversations. My neighbor was a man from Saudi Arabia who was married to an American woman. His name was Ebu Ammar.

He was in his mid-thirties and was a taekwondo coach, so I figured I could learn some useful things from him. We talked at night, and he promised to show me a few tricks. From a standing position, he could leap up and touch the ceiling with his foot. We had to be careful because of the guards. Soon I noticed that I was getting increasingly hungry from our secret workouts and the small rations were becoming a problem. But I didn't want to miss the opportunity of having a personal trainer.

***

I was interrogated in various rooms, and in many of them I noticed cameras in the ventilation shafts. The interrogators varied, too. Every once in a while they were women. Some of them said they could speak German, but most of them couldn't. Over time, I could speak English much better than they could speak German. Through countless interrogations, they always asked the same questions. Hour after hour. When I started to fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, they hit me on the head or in the face. They couldn't think of any better way to keep me awake.

One day, I was taken to an interrogation room in which three women were waiting. The guards chained me to a ring in the floor and left. One of the women was in uniform, but the other two had next to nothing on-just scanty tops and shorts. I looked at the ground. I didn't want to see them, half-naked as they were. One of the women walked around me, put her hand under my shirt from behind and began to stroke me. I like you, she said. I'd like us to do something together.

She said she'd noticed me a while ago and had watched me taking showers. She made some indecent remarks, but I knew she was lying. She couldn't have seen me naked because I always showered in boxer shorts. She pressed her body against mine, stroked my chest and began to moan. It was unbearable. They knew I was religious, and she only wanted to humiliate me. I said: Stop! Stop that! But she kept on. I jerked my head back and caught her on the nose. The door burst open, and the IRF team pounced on me. I was put in the cooler, where I was forced to lie in chains for a whole day and didn't get anything to eat for several more.

Some time later, I was taken to a room with carpeted walls covered with Koranic verses. There was even a prayer rug on the floor. There was a sofa, cushions, a television, and a table on which sat a bowl full of fruit, nuts, and sweets. They had constructed a fantasy paradise. Or I  was dreaming. I was starved. But I didn't trust the situation. A man in civilian clothing was sitting on the sofa. He stood up and shook my hand.

''I've heard what happened to you," the man said. "I came immediately from Washington to help you. I'm sorry it took me so long, but the military authorities are slow. They're not allowed to treat you this way. I brought you something to eat. Go ahead and take some."

I remained standing there and said nothing.

''I'm going to help you. But before I can help you, I have to ask you some questions ..."

"I don't like your food," I said, "or your face."

"You can take it with you to your cell ..."

"I don't want your food."

"Okay, I can leave you alone. I'll go out, and you can eat. Help yourself ..."

I didn't touch it.

They had starved me for days. Did they really think they could trick me like this? That I would eat it all up and then tell them what they wanted to hear?

***

When the escort team brought me back to the cooler, I didn't eat anything for fifteen days in protest. Then my neighbor said, "Murat, that's crazy. You can't go on a hunger strike alone."

He was a Bosnian named Musa. He was right. I started eating again. I was very weak and freezing cold.

They tried every trick in the book. Other prisoners said that they, too, had been humiliated by women. But not all of the female soldiers were like that. Once a female interrogator wanted to shake my hand. I excused myself, looked down, and said I was sorry, explaining that my faith did not allow me to make physical contact with any woman but my wife.

"If you shake hands with a woman, you can get very close to her, and you might begin to feel something for her. It's the first step."

"Why won't you look at me?" asked the woman.

"For the same reason. We aren't allowed to look women in the eye for very long."

"Do you think I'm ugly?"

"It's not that. All women have something beautiful. Probably you're quite lovely."

"What do you do when you meet women on the street? You can't always lower your eyes ..."

"I'm not responsible for things I can't change," I said. "Only for what I do on purpose."

"If that's the case," she said, "it's okay."

***

At some point, the interrogations had become so absurd that they were asking me what color shoes I had worn in Bremen or which brand of shirt I preferred. They never stopped interrogating me, so one day I decided not to answer any more questions. For weeks I didn't say a thing, not even "hello." Then an interrogator said:

"Okay, I know you're not answering any questions, but tell me why you've stopped talking."

"I've told you many hundred times what I've done and who I am," I said and pointed to one of the cameras in the room. "If you want to hear my story one more time, you only need to rewind the tapes and play them back."

Of course, they put me in solitary confinement for that. They took away my blanket, my flip-flops, and my T-shirt so that I sat in the cooler in my boxer shorts. But I was always being punished and humiliated, regardless of what I did. The interrogations were especially frequent that autumn. But I said nothing. I only spoke again when the Turks came to Guantanamo.

"Get ready," said the soldier from the escort team, when he came to get me in the morning.

"Where are we going?"

We went to a container I hadn't seen before, located off to the side of the camp. I knew that was where the interrogation rooms for foreign visitors were located. I had heard that other prisoners had been questioned by policemen from their home countries there. What I didn't know was whether I was getting a visit from Germany or Turkey.

***

There were three men in the interrogation room, and I noticed immediately that they were Turks.

"What's this?" said one of them. "I can't bear to see a Turk bound like this in front of me. That's not right. Call the guard."

No one is more theatrical than the Turks. I couldn't help but smile at the man with the dark hair, who was holding his hand in front of his eyes.

"He's a Turkish citizen, a brother," the man continued. "No, I can't bear to see this. Take his chains off immediately."

The only thing missing were his tears.

The guard came and removed my handcuffs, but he left the foot restraints chained to the ring in the floor. What nonsense! Great show, I thought, but this is still just one big set-up. The Turk came up to me, shook my hand, and then kissed me on the cheeks.

"How do you feel? How are you doing? I can't believe my eyes."

The man then collected himself and sat down. He didn't introduce himself. He told the other two men to be quiet, although they hadn't said anything, and then said he would have to ask me a few questions. He wanted to know where I had been arrested.

"In Pakistan," I said. "I wasn't exactly arrested. I was asked to get out of the bus and answer some questions, so I got out."

The Turk's tone of voice changed instantaneously.

"What sort of lies are you telling?" he yelled. "We spare no expense and effort to come here, and you start lying? If you don't want us to help you, that's your decision. Why did you decide to become a terrorist?"

''I'm not a terrorist."

"Oh no? Then what are you? If you weren't a terrorist, you wouldn't have ended up here. You're all terrorists in here."

The man stood up and threatened me with his fist. But I wasn't afraid. On the contrary. I was enraged.

"Have you come here to help or shower me with stupid insults?" I asked.

"We don't give a shit if you spend the rest of your life in Guantanamo. We want to ask our questions and leave. America will decide the rest. We don't have any influence on that."

The other two men still hadn't said a word.

From the way the man talked, I got the impression that he didn't know exactly where he was. I told him about the cells and torture in Guantanamo and Kandahar. The three men listened to me for a while, before their leader hastily interrupted.

"What are you thinking? Do you believe you'd be treated any better in a Turkish prison?" I knew then that he truly didn't care.

They asked me a few meaningless questions, which I answered, although I found them a waste of time.

The next morning I was brought into a room where the Americans usually interrogated me. It was one of the spaces with a one-way mirror behind the lectern. The three Turks were there again. This time they didn't say hello, and there wasn't any show. They asked me some questions about my German friends in Bremen. They seemed especially interested in two of my friends who worked for the Bremen police department.

"How come you had friends who worked for the police?"

"I don't understand the question," I said. "They're my friends. They just happen to work for the police. One of them is Turkish, the other German ... I don't know. That's just the way it turned out ..."

"You're lying. We're convinced that you're a spy. That's the evidence. You're a German spy."

That was absurd. What sort of a spy was I supposed to be? One who spied on Guantanamo? Who would voluntarily let himself be imprisoned here to spy for Germany? Or a spy in Bremen who kept the Turks in Hemelingen under surveillance? What was the point of this? I was fed up.

"Okay, if you think I'm a spy, then that's it. I don't know what you're talking about, but if you want to think I'm a spy, go ahead."

"We have some more questions ..."

"I'm not answering any more questions."

For a while they kept trying to get answers, but I was fed up. I knew these kind of people, and the Turkish government wasn't going to help me. Not in a million years.

"Well, that's all." said the leader of the three men. "You deserve to be here."

The Turk and his two subordinates left.

I'd already regretted talking to them during the first interrogation, and I had given up hope they would believe me. Even the Americans didn't think I was a spy. They probably had a good laugh behind the mirror when they heard that.

A little while later, the Germans came. It was September 23, 2002.

Strangely enough, the night before, I got a new neighbor in Block Mike, the one that was bugged. He was a large man. They put him in the cage opposite mine. I talked to him. His name was Abid-I can't remember his last name, although I could see the band around his wrist.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Germany," he said.

"Germany?"

I was amazed. I thought I was the only prisoner from Germany. Abid was over 40. He was originally Algerian, and he said that he had lived in Hamburg for a number of years and was married to a German woman. He'd worked there as a bouncer in a club. Abid had been in prison a number of times before. He told me about jails in Algeria, France, and Italy, and he said that when he was bouncer he had done some time in a Hamburg prison after a fight. But he'd never experienced anything like Guantanamo, he said. His German was very good, and when he stood up, I saw that he had a limp.

The next day when I entered the room where the three Turks had interrogated me, there was a man sitting at the table. They chained my foot restraints to the ring on the floor. Then three other men came in. They must be Germans, I thought. They didn't look like Turks. Two of them were wearing suits, while the other two wore casual shirts and pants. One of them was blond and had a moustache and a goatee. He was big and strong. One of them was thin and also had a moustache, while the third had a receding hairline. The fourth left the room after a while without having said anything. I couldn't tell whether he was German or American.

One of the men put a cassette recorder on the table. It was pleasantly cool-there had to be an air conditioner on somewhere. The big guy, who had already been sitting in the room when I entered, seemed younger than the other two.

"We're from Germany, and we want to ask you some questions."

There was no greeting and none of the men introduced himself, but I said that I was glad to finally speak to someone from the German government. They asked me how I was doing. I said that I was always hungry, that it was very hot, that the cells were too small, and that we were hardly ever let out in the yard. They didn't seem too interested.

"If you answer the questions truthfully, you'll help yourself. Start with your life story."

"Have you brought me anything from Germany?" I asked. "A letter or a message from my family?"

They looked at one another and shrugged.

"We've come here to ask questions, not to deliver letters."

I notice that the blond one stayed in the background. The other two seemed to be in charge.

"Why don't you begin ..."

I told them about everything. About the discos, my body-building, my friends in Hemelingen, and my visits to the mosques. They seemed especially interested in how and why I had become religious. They kept interrupting my answers with other questions.

"How important is that to you?"

"Do feel superior to other people?"

"Do you hate non-religious Muslims?"

"Do you hate Germans because they're not religious?"

"Which people, if any, mean anything to you?"

They took turns. After a while they called to a guard who took off my handcuffs. The fourth man entered the room every once in a while and whispered to the others.

I told them about my family, my friends, and Selcuk. They wanted to know what plans Selcuk had, whether I thought he was dangerous, and whether I could imagine him as a criminal. No, I said, I couldn't. I told them about the tablighis, and they named some people from the group in Bremen. They asked if these were common names. They showed me some photos that I hadn't seen before in the interrogations with the Americans. Pictures of friends and colleagues from work, from my apprenticeship, and the trade school. They also showed me photos of girls, but I didn't know any of them. They showed me pictures of men in mosques and on the street, but I didn't know most of them either. Then they showed me pictures of Selcuk. One of them showed him laughing.

"Why is he laughing?" I asked.

"Yes, he's doing well," said the blond man. "Unlike you."

The other two left the room. As they shut the door, the clock fell off the wall and revealed a camera pepping out a hole. The big blonde guy picked up the clock and hung it back up. I could see the camera lens above the number 3. The other two men returned.

"If you answer our questions truthfully, it may speed up your release."

That was the same thing the Americans said, but the Germans seemed more professional. They knew everything about me, and suddenly they read out a sentence that left me amazed.

"Selcuk went with a friend to Afghanistan to fight there. He was stirred up to do so in a mosque ..."

Allegedly Selcuk's brother had told a customs official this on the telephone at Frankfurt Airport. Selcuk, the Germans said, had received a fine because his dog had bitten someone. He hadn't paid it, and when he went with the officials into their office and called his brother, the brother had refused to help him and told the officials not to let him leave under any circumstances. I don't know whether this was true. But I could imagine it was.

Now I knew why Selcuk hadn't come to Pakistan and why the Americans in Kandahar already knew so much about me. The customs official must have passed on the information, and it had gotten to the Americans. I told the Germans I didn't know anything about this phone call because at that point I was already on the plane.

"I think he probably didn't want to let Selcuk go, just as my mother or brother wouldn't have let me go. I don't know why he said that, but I imagine he made it up. He wanted to prevent Selcuk and me from flying to Pakistan. He probably didn't know I was already on the plane at that point and that he could get me in trouble. My parents or my brother might have made up something similar to keep me from going."

The Germans said two students at my trade school had testified that I ran around the school with a big turban and had said I wanted to become a Taliban fighter. They showed me pictures of two students. They were both Turks.

Those were the same two people, I said, who used to accuse me of being a pimp. When I was eighteen, I used to drive my father's Mercedes to the trade school on Thursdays and Fridays. Back then, I worked in discos, had short hair, shaved, and wore stylish suits. The two Turks had always tried to get me into trouble. Where did he get the Mercedes? they'd ask. He's definitely dealing drugs. That was a lie, and now they were telling more lies about me. I never said I wanted to become a Taliban fighter or go to war in any form. And I never wore a turban.

"You bought combat boots, fatigues, and field glasses before you flew to Pakistan ..."

Combat boots? Did they mean the pair of KangaROOS that the police in Pakistan had taken from me? Fatigues? In Bremen, I had bought a pair of pants with side pockets and removable legs that you can get in any camping store.

"And as far as the field glasses were concerned," I said, "I did have a simple pair of binoculars with me, but they were small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. My parents gave them to me. Now they're gone."

I had a pain in my elbow and kept massaging that spot. One of the Germans asked why I kept doing that. I told him about the IRF teams, and explained that one of the soldiers had twisted my arm.

"But that's nothing," I said, and told them about being tortured in Kandahar, about the electric shocks and chains, the water-boarding and solitary confinement cells in Guantanamo, even about the incident with the women.

None of that seemed to interest them.

"Let's get back to the point," they said every time I told them about being tortured.

***

That evening I was back in Block Mike.

"How was it?" asked Ebu Ammar.

"I had visitors."

"Germans?"

"Yes."

"Germans are known to be just. You've got no worries. If they've come all the way over here to interrogate you, they'll bring you back to Germany soon."

"The Germans will probably interrogate me as well," said Abid.

Definitely, I thought, he was from Germany, too.

***

That night I thought about what the visit might mean. The Germans hadn't exactly been helpful and had tried to trick me, and when I'd asked them whether I had been given a lawyer in Germany and whether people there had any information about me, they had just said they weren't able to answer those questions.

Like the Americans, they had only been after evidence they could use to accuse me of some crime.

Whenever I spoke about being tortured, they changed the subject. But the truth was I had been tortured! I had to tell them! As interrogators, they were duty-bound to carefully record everything I said and to make it known to my family, the German government, and the public. Weren't they supposed to have asked me about my treatment as well? But at least, I thought, our conversation had been taped.

I was convinced that my family and the German public knew that government representatives had come to see me. Surely it was an official visit.

***

The next day I told them about Abid from Hamburg, my neighbor in Block Mike. Who was that, they wanted to know, and I told them what I knew about him.

They asked whether I knew him from Germany.

"No," I said. "The Americans call him the 'Big German Guy.'"

But my German interrogators didn't seem interested in Abid.

They came and went from the room again, as they had the day before. Maybe they wanted to talk something over in private, or perhaps they had just smoked a cigarette.

"We have a number of questions we want you to answer only with a simple yes or no. You should answer immediately without taking time to think. Just yes or no. Is that clear?"

"Okay."

"Have you ever worn black shoes?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever seen children's films?"

"Yes."

"Are you from Al Qaeda?"

"No."

Trick questions, I thought.

"Faster," they said. "You have to answer faster. Do you drink water?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever had a toothache?"

"Yes."

"Do you love your mother?"

"Yes."

"Did you want to join the Taliban?"

"No,.

"Do you like your father?"

"Yes."

"Did Selcuk pay for your ticket?

"No."

"Have you ever had a pet?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever experimented with explosives?"

"No."

"Do you approve of Osama bin Laden?"

"No."

"Do you like your brother?"

"Yes."

"Do you like Osama?"

This went on for at least an hour.

The big blond guy didn't say much during this, and then the other two left the room, leaving him behind alone. When they came back, they wanted to know what I intended to do after I was released. Did I want to get a job?

"Of course, I want to work," I said. "How else am I going to earn money?"

"Would you like to work for us when you return to Germany?"

I thought it over. "What would I do for you?"

"Find out interesting things. You would get into certain circles to which others don't have access."

"What kind of circles? The Hell's Angels?"

I had to laugh. Of course I knew they were talking about mosques and the tablighis.

"You could be a big help to us ..."

They wanted me to spy for them. I would never do that, I thought. I'd rather starve to death. But it might help me to feign interest.

"What would it be like?"

"We'll tell you as things progress. But we have a V-man who would meet you daily at prearranged times and places."

I nodded. At the time, I didn't know that a V-man was the German term for an undercover informant, so I would have nodded just the same if he had said X-man or T-man.

"Okay," I said. "Good idea. Let's do it. Will I contact you?"

"No. You can meet the V-man whenever you want. He'll pass on everything you have to us."

Then all three of them left the room. After a while they came back.

"Mr. Kurnaz," they said. "We believe you've lied to us. There are some things we want to check to get concrete evidence against you. You'll see. It looks very bad for you."

"But why?" I cried. "I told you everything. You know that. You know everything about me."

"We have our own evidence. We'll base our actions on that."

"You know all too well that I have nothing to do with any terrorists."

"That's it then. We're going back to Germany."

They left the room, and the escort team came and brought me back to Block Mike.

***

"You see," said Abid, "they only came because of you. If they were interested in holding interrogations, they would have questioned me, too. But they only wanted to talk to you. You'll be home soon."

Home soon? Before I was captured, I never could have imagined a government like Germany's covering up the fact that it had sent intelligence agents to visit someone like me, but now I wasn't so sure. After all, they had suggested that I become a spy for them in Bremen.

The Germans interrogated me for around twelve hours those two days, and afterward Abid was transferred, and the Americans intensified their questioning. I was interrogated two or three times a day. They desperately wanted to know what the Germans had asked me and what I had told them. Why did you tell them about being tortured? they asked, pulling my hair. You're only making things worse for yourself. For days, they asked nothing but questions about what I'd told the Germans, even though they already knew what I'd said. What lies did I tell them, the Americans asked. They also asked me about the "Big German Guy." But what was I supposed to tell them about him?

Later I found out there were another two prisoners from Germany. One was a Tunisian, the other an Algerian. The Algerian, whose brother lives in Frankfurt, gave me his address in case I was ever released. But I don't have the address any more. It was taken away from me during the next cell search.

***

In late 2002, General Geoffrey Miller took over command of Guantanamo, and our situation dramatically worsened. The interrogations got more brutal, more frequent, and longer. The first order General Miller issued was to commence Operation Sandman, which meant we were moved to new cells everyone or two hours. The general's goal was to completely deprive us of sleep, and he achieved it.

I was moved from one block to the next. The escort team would storm in, put me in chains, run with me through the corridors, push me to my knees, and leave me there. The whole procedure would be repeated an hour later. I was transferred from Camp 1, Block Alpha, to Camp 2, Block Echo or from Camp 1, Block Alpha, to Camp 2, Block Bravo. The chains were put on and removed. I had to stand and kneel-twenty-four hours a day. I had barely arrived in a new cell and lay down on the bunk, before they came again to move me.

My neighbors were perplexed because not all the prisoners were treated this way. Later I found out that the operation was carried out on five specially selected prisoners. I was among the first-perhaps because I had refused to confess.

When the escort team had finally left the cell, I'd say hello to my neighbors, sit or lie on the bunk, and try to sleep. But as soon as the guards saw me close my eyes, sitting or lying on the bunk, they'd kick the door and yell at me, until I got up again. Soon I didn't bother greeting my neighbors. I just fell down on the bunk and tried to get a moment's sleep, before the guards woke me with a kick at the door or a punch in the face. There were maybe ten or fifteen minutes a day when I wasn't being watched.

In between transfers, I was interrogated. During this period, my interrogator was always the same man and the questioning went on a lot longer; I estimated the sessions lasted up to fifteen hours. During the sessions, the man would simply disappear for hours. I sat chained to my chair or kneeling on the floor, and as soon as my eyelids drooped, soldiers would wake me with a couple of blows. Once I spent more than two days in the interrogation room before the man returned.

The man told me to call him Jack (not his real name). He asked whether I wanted to change my story.

"If you change your story," Jack said, I'll be able to help you."

Cage door open, cage door closed. Standing, kneeling, standing, kneeling. The escort team came, the escort team went.

"Do you want to tell me something interesting?" asked Jack. "If you do, I can get you a nice place to sleep. Nice and warm with a mattress and a blanket."

Days and nights without sleep. Blows and new cages. Again, the stabbing sensation of a thousand needles throughout my entire body. I would have loved to step outside my body, but I couldn't.

"If you work with me," Jack said, "you can sleep for as long as you want."

I no longer knew what block I was in. Sometimes, I would start quivering for no reason. The movement of my hands, arms, and legs seemed to be taking place in a dream.

"I've gotten used to the metal bunks," I told Jack.

Sometimes I heard ringing sounds that weren't there. Other times I heard a low hum in my ear that refused to go away.

"You can keep your bed, Jack!"

"Okay," said Jack. "If you think this is fun, keep it up."

When I could no longer get up, they sent the IRF team, who said they would hit me for as long as it took for me to get up and go with them to the next cell. But I was too weak. All I could feel was a buzzing in my head like a siren. They picked me up, and my knees buckled. During the last days of this treatment, they had to carry me around. They'd take me from one cage to the next, then to Jack, and then to another cage. I can only remember bits and pieces of this.

In the end they gave up-probably because it was simply too much work for the guards to carry me around all the time. Over time, it was as if they were the ones getting punished. I was allowed to sleep, and when I woke up, the other prisoners helped me calculate how long this treatment had lasted. Three weeks. I went three weeks without sleep. At this point, I weighed less than 130 pounds.

***

The air-conditioning units in the solitary confinement cells varied between cold and hot, so when they brought me to solitary confinement, I didn't know whether I would freeze or sweat. In the next few years, I was transferred back and forth between Camps 1 and 2 within Camp Delta. In total, I estimate I spent around eighteen months in Camp 1 and maybe two years in Camp 2. The rest of the time I spent in the isolation blocks Oscar, November, and India as well as Romeo and Quebec, whose walls were covered in Plexiglas.

Those cells were like ovens. The sun beat down on the metal roof at noon and directly on the sides of the cage in the mornings and afternoons. All told, I think I spent roughly a year alone in absolute darkness, either in a cooler or an oven, with little food, and once I spent three months straight in solitary confinement.

The rules for solitary confinement changed every few, months. Sometimes I was allowed a blanket at night and then would have to hand it over in the morning. Sometimes I didn't get a blanket at all. Sometimes there was a mattress, sometimes not. During one stint I got food, and none the next.

The procedure with blankets worked like this. The guard would appear in the morning, and I would shove it, folded, through the slot. One time the guard called the IRF team and told them I had refused to hand over my blanket so they stormed into the cell and beat me up. They especially liked doing this to me after I had broiled in an oven and froze in a cooler for a month. They'd then say I had broken the rules and extend my term of solitary confinement for another four weeks.

I couldn't see any point to what they were doing. They could have just locked me up in solitary confinement for months on end if they wanted to. Why the pretense? It was up to individual interrogators anyway to determine how long they kept me and other prisoners in isolation. When an interrogator told the guards after questioning that I would have to stay in solitary confinement for another four weeks, that's what happened. I would be put back in the hole, and every time I was due to be released, they'd say I refused to hand over my blanket or spit on the ground or insulted a guard, and I'd get four more weeks of solitary confinement. The only law was my captors themselves, regardless of what they wrote in the forms they were constantly filling out.

At some point, it occurred to me that they were probably just writing down excuses in their reports. That I had gotten a blanket and refused to give it back. That a punishment had been ordered because I had dearly violated the rules. That the IRF team had to be called to bring the prisoner to reason. That I would have to spend a further month in solitary confinement in accordance with the rules. Everything was crystal dear. What could they do about it? The prisoner should have handed over his blanket. That's the way it would look to an outsider, I thought as I sat in the dark and the heat or the cold, should an outsider ever read these documents. That hypothetical someone would never imagine the guards were lying.

That just about drove me crazy, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I became. I didn't think the guards were acting on their own accord, just to be evil. People higher up had drawn up regulations so that they could one day say that there had been rules, dear and fair, but no one would ever find out about the one overarching, unspoken rule that mandated that the rest of the regulations were to be constantly broken. On paper, I would always be the one who had broken the rules. I thought a lot about this in the darkness.

They had robbed me of my freedom. They had taken away part of my youth, valuable time, probably the most important time in my life. They had taken my family, my passport, and my rights. They had robbed me of sun and sleep and put me in coolers and ovens. If we had been able to survive without food, they would have taken that away, too. They only gave us enough to survive. The only thing I still had was the air I breathed. At least they couldn't take that away, I thought, this air, which stank of rust and diesel fuel.

But once again, I was mistaken.

***

It was my time to go into the rec area for a walk, and two soldiers, one black and one white, escorted me there. I had just walked into the yard, but after I had taken only four or five steps, the white soldier shouted:

"Come back out of there! Come on, out! Back in your cage!"

"Why? I just got here!"

"Time's up," said the white soldier smiling. ''I'm the one making the decisions around here, and I say you're going back into your cage now."

"OK," I said.

Then they chained me up. Once I was back in the cell, it wasn't long before the white soldier reappeared.

"Do you want to take a shower?" he asked.

Maybe he wants to make it up to me, I thought.

"OK, you can shower," he said.

They led me to the shower cell and unchained me, but it was just the same harassment. The white soldier turned on the water as I was getting undressed, and as soon as I wanted to get into the shower, he turned it off again.

"Time's up," he said.

The guards both laughed.

"You're going back home."

"OK. I'm going back to the cage. But this cage is nothing. What do you think your cage will look like in hell?"

"I don't believe in that kind of nonsense," said the white guard. "Shut up!"

They chained me up again and we walked along the corridor. The other prisoners were praying, so the guard began to whistle and stomped with his boots on the arched parts of the metal flooring, making it bang. Then he started to run very quickly, pulling me behind him on the chain like a mule and jerking me back and forth on the shackles. The black guard was behind me. Finally, I lost my temper.

I stopped.

"Keep moving!"

"Stop jerking me back and forward like that."

"Move!"

He wrenched me back and forward again.

That was it.

Although my hands were chained together in front of my stomach, I managed to grab his hand, then his sleeve, and his shoulder. My wrists were bleeding, but I didn't care. I wanted to show him that I could get the better of him-with or without handcuffs. I already had him by the collar, and he tried a judo move, shoving his leg in front of my hip to throw me. But I leapt over his leg with my chained feet and threw him over my hip so that he landed on his back. I had taken him down with his own trick. I jumped on top of him and brought my forehead crashing down on his nose. It started bleeding immediately, and the soldier groaned. I kneed him in the ribs.

It had all happened very quickly. The black guard tore at my hair, but he couldn't pull me off the soldier. He kicked my head and my back, but I didn't stop. The guard ran off.

When he came back, I heard the voice of the block sergeant.

"Stop! Stop it! Let go of him!"

"OK," I said, "But first you have to promise he'll keep his mouth shut. Then I'll let him go."

"I promise," said the sergeant.

I let the soldier go.

No sooner was he back on his feet then he pulled me to the ground and sat on top of me. The sergeant and the other soldiers restrained my feet and hands and pressed my shoulders and my head to the floor.

Someone shouted, "They're finishing off Murat!"

The prisoners shouted and kicked their doors.

"It's alright," I shouted. ''I'm alright."

The prisoners in the block calmed down again. The guards stuck me in my cell. The soldier whose nose was bleeding locked the door.

"You're not a man!" I said. "You're just a load of hot air. I beat you up when I was in handcuffs and shackles."

"You didn't beat me up. There's no way you could beat me up!"

"So what did I just do?"

I washed my hands and feet and tried to clean the blood off my T-shirt and pants. Then I got ready for prayers. I bowed down and began, although I knew what was coming.

The IRF team pulled me out of the cell, down the corridor, and out into the open. There they waited for the papers that would permit them to take me to solitary confinement. They threw me to the ground, surrounding me.

"This is how we do it here," said the soldier whose nose was still red.

"That still doesn't make you a man," I replied.

I didn't feel much after that. They dragged me semiconscious to block India.

It was the first day of fasting the month of Ramadan, Winter 2003.

***

I was put in a solitary confinement cell like any other, fitted out with corrugated metal sheeting. I had never been to India, and I was surprised that it wasn't cold. I immediately realized that something was wrong. There wasn't any air! The air conditioning unit over the door wasn't humming, and that was the only supply of air in here. They had turned off the air conditioning.

I kicked the peephole to move it a bit. I kicked it again and again but nothing happened. Had I become too weak, or was the peephole just built better than in the other cells? After several attempts I gave up. The effort was costing me too much oxygen. The walls were covered in condensation. It was hot.

I kicked the side of the cell to see if I had a neighbor. I held my ear close to one place where the welding looked weak. I already knew that we would have to speak quietly, or else they would spray pepper gas into the cell. I had been completely alone in solitary confinement often enough without any neighbors to talk to.

"Salaam alaikum," I said.

There was no answer. I kicked the wall again.

"Salaam alaikum?"

"Alaikum salam! Who is it?"

"It's me, Murat!"

"Which Murat?"

"Turkish Murat! From Germany ..."

"Long time no hear! How are you?"

I recognized the voice. It was the man I had seen in X-Ray. The man who weighed less than ninety pounds and was waiting to die.

"Is it you, Daoud? Abu Daoud?"

"Yes ..."

Suddenly the peephole opened. Tear gas streamed into my cell.

"Quiet! You're not allowed to talk!"

The gas stung my eyes, but I was curious. I was happy he was still alive, and wanted to know if he had put on weight, although I couldn't speak because I had to cough and couldn't catch my breath. I couldn't say anything for several hours. Whenever I tried, I started coughing and gasping for air. I drank some water, water that stank of chlorine-but it didn't help. The gas didn't disperse. The cell must have been completely insulated. I heard Daoud knocking every half an hour and saying:

"Murat! Murat? Are you still there?"

The peephole opened again. Nothing happened. They just wanted to see what I was doing. Some fresh air came in that way and I felt better afterward. After a while I tried to speak to Daoud again. Very quietly. I knew I couldn't survive another round of tear gas. I would have suffocated. I knocked on the wall.

"Murat? Are you there?"

Abu Daoud had in fact put on weight. I was pleased to hear that he was feeling better, but I couldn't talk any more. I had to cough again, and I didn't have the energy to stay on my feet or to speak. I lay down on the bunk, but after a while I was hardly getting any air so I moved to the floor. Maybe it would be better there. But I was too tired to even sit up straight. I lay down on my back and pressed my nose up close to the crack between the floor and the wall, thinking that some air must have been coming through there since the crack wasn't sealed with rubber. I breathed very slowly, but it was becoming tortuous, as if whatever air I did manage to catch was becoming heavier and heavier. I felt dizzy.

I don't know if I blacked out at some point. Maybe I fell asleep. Maybe I lost consciousness. A number of times I could sense myself waking back up, and then the guards kicked the door and opened the peephole.

That let some air in. I opened my eyes.

"Yes, he's still alive," one of the soldiers said.

"OK, then close up again," said the other.

I lay back down on the cell floor until they returned-it took hours. This time I had decided not to open my eyes so that some more air could come into the cell through the peephole. It opened.

"India 2! Wake up!"

They kicked the door, and then I heard the guards close the flap and disappear. Footsteps from several guards followed. The flap opened again, but I kept my eyes closed.

"Wakeup!"

They sprayed me with water from a high-pressure hose, which felt like a slap in the face, the water getting into my nose and mouth. I jumped up. I no longer cared about air. The hose was stuck through the peephole, and I heard the guards laughing as I fell over. The stream of water forced me back against the wall. Then it was over and the guards moved off, laughing. The floor was covered with water. I lay down on the bunk, but I couldn't get any air so I layback down on the wet floor. I could breathe a bit better there. The water slowly drained away.

***

It was Ramadan, and I was given a slice of white bread and a few small carrots or a quarter of an apple in the evening. Once I was given a quarter of a pear. That made me think about how we used to stuff ourselves in the evenings at home during Ramadan. I was getting less and less air. I blacked out.

I woke up when the guards came. The flap opened, the red light went on, and some air came in. Sometimes I got up to pray, but I didn't know whether the time was right. Thoughts whirred through my head, most of them about food. I remembered eating whole packets of sliced bread with cold cuts and cheese for breakfast. Now I was getting one slice three times a day. I thought about my family who were celebrating Ramadan right now in Hemelingen. What would my mother be serving for breakfast?

I blacked out. The flap opened. I opened my eyes and realized that I needed air more desperately than food or water to survive.

Air, just air.

On the third day of Eid, after Ramadan, they finally opened the door and let me out.

It was evening. The prisoners in Camp 1 were singing Islamic songs. The guards kicked the doors and ordered them to stop, but they kept on singing. I met the guard whom I had beaten up in the corridor. He was wearing sunglasses and pretended not to pay me any attention. On my way to the cage, the prisoners greeted me.

"Where were you?"

"Solitary confinement."

"Which block?"

"India."

"The whole of Ramadan?"

I had been in India 2 for thirty-three days.

***

They had fine-tuned the Guantanamo system. I understood now that prisoners were intended to feel as miserable and desperate as possible every single moment of their lives-this, as the Americans would say, was "maximum discomfort." They were constantly depriving me of anything that would have helped me get used to my situation: sleep, a blanket, time, exercise, food, air.

I would only just start to get adjusted to my new neighbors when I was taken to another cage or put into solitary confinement. They put us under maximum pressure around the clock, separating us from anything that could have given us strength or confidence. That's why we were continually moved and questioned. They ridiculed our faith and tried to  separate us from Allah to make us give up any hope of ever getting out of  hat hell. We were to be made as weak and as small as possible so they could get something out of us in interrogation or at least break us. I didn't give up hope. It is part of my faith never to give up hope. If Allah was willing, I could be released at any moment.

***

One day I was taken back to the container that was reserved for use by foreign interrogators. The big, blond German guy was sitting at the table. The other two hadn't come. An American was sitting next to the German, who had put his feet up on the table and was staring at the screen of a laptop. There were motorbike magazines lying next to it. I was happy. He'd brought them, I thought, because last time I had told him that I liked motorcycles. I was shackled to the chair. The German didn't acknowledge my presence but just showed the American something on the screen. They whispered to each other.

That lasted about two hours. I sat in the chair and waited. They didn't say a word to me, and the magazines were too far away for me to see them. Suddenly the German lifted his head and stared at me.

"It's been almost two years, Mr. Kurnaz, and today you had another chance to prove to me that you are innocent. But you messed it up. Unfortunately, you didn't use your time."

"I thought you were going to ask me questions?"

"That was very clever of you. Today your time is up, but tomorrow you'll get one last chance. I don't have much time, so think hard about what you are going to say."

Then he disappeared.

The next morning I was brought back into the room, where the big, blond German guy was sitting at the desk. He pushed a CD into his laptop without saying a word. Photos of Selcuk, obviously taken surreptitiously, appeared on the screen. In one of them, Selcuk was praying in a mosque. The picture was taken from the floor. Maybe with a watch or a mobile phone, I thought. In another picture, Selcuk was sitting in front of his balcony door in his undershirt, yawning. In a third, he was talking to young people, and in others, he was entering or leaving a mosque.

"Do you still think you want to work with us?"

"Yes," I said.

"OK. We will let you know. It will probably work out. But you will have to cooperate and tell all."

He pressed a button and shut down the computer. Then he put his feet on the table and leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head.

"You have nothing to worry about. After all, you're on a Caribbean island. Relax."

He closed the laptop, stood up, and went to the door. Then he turned around.

"Have a look at the biker magazines, if you want."

I glanced at them. They were from April 2004.

***

Sometimes iguanas carne into the blocks. One of them crawled up the lattice of my cage, and I fed it breadcrumbs. It ate out of my hand and slept in a pipe above my cage. I saw it crawling out of it in the morning. Sometimes land crabs carne out of the pipe, tiny ones. They also liked bread. Once, a guard caught me feeding the iguana. That meant ten days in solitary confinement -- the most lenient punishment there was.

***

When I heard wild screams again, I knew it could only be something involving the Koran. One of the guards had taken a Koran, thrown it onto the floor, and trampled it. We could only hear the wailing from a far-off block, but we knew what had happened. That same evening, a prisoner ripped up his T-shirt and tried to hang himself.

I could hear the IRF teams and the guards nervously walking back and forth. There was tear gas in the air. The prisoner was immediately discovered and taken away. Several people had threatened to commit suicide if the Koran was desecrated again, and that's how the new hunger strike began. The news was passed on from block to block. We knew almost everyone would take part.

I didn't eat anything for twenty days. The last two or three days I didn't drink any water either. It simply became too strenuous for me to use the tap. You had to press it down really hard. I tried to walk the few paces that were possible in the cell, but at some point, I didn't have enough strength. Starving myself was becoming increasingly difficult because some of my neighbors in the blocks had started eating again. I could smell the food, even when it was cold or lukewarm. I battled with myself, but decided to see my hunger strike through. My faith didn't prescribe it, I just wanted the desecration of the Holy Book to stop. Meanwhile, the interrogations continued.

I was getting weaker and weaker, and at some point they came, put me on a stretcher, and took me to a medical ward. I dung to the stretcher. My whole body cramped up-I was afraid they would amputate one of my limbs. Two men appeared, in uniform, and one had a badge on his chest with the word Doctor. That really frightened me.

"Do you want to eat now, or not?" asked the doctor.

"No."

They gagged me and shoved a tube up my nose, stopping several times because the tube filled with blood. Then I was taken to interrogation. An IRF team beat me, while I was still lying on the stretcher.

Eventually, I was taken back to the block, where I was told that one of the emirs had arranged with the general for all copies of the Koran to be taken out of the cells. Some of the prisoners were already in critical condition because of the hunger strike. The Americans probably thought it would be too much work keeping us alive with those tubes. The emir had negotiated the deal, and the general's suggestions were discussed in each block. All except three or four of the prisoners started eating again after that. The second condition of the deal was that they would no longer play the American national anthem during our prayers. A third condition was that we would receive hot meals. After the hunger strike was over, they presented us with a menu that listed very exotic dishes: Thai chicken, lamb curry, or Turkish pasha rolls. But when we got our first platefuls, we saw the same things as always: vegetables and bread, mashed together, or half-cooked rice with pieces of fruit. If "Mediterranean chicken breast" was written on the menu, then there would be a couple of hard potatoes and two tough strips of dried-out chicken on our plates.

I started eating again for two days, but then I couldn't stomach anything. Whenever I went to the bathroom, I had blood in my urine. My whole body ached and I was running a high fever. I could hardly move -- even talking was too tiring. My neighbor told the guards that I wasn't well. It was Nuri, the electrician from Izmir, who I hadn't seen for years.

"Nuri, I don't want to go to the infirmary. Don't tell them to take me there."

"Murat, you have to let them treat you."

"So they can amputate something? No! Don't tell them anything. I'm staying here'"

When the guards came, Nuri told them that I was still weak after the hunger strike and was asleep. On the second or third day of fever, I didn't get up at all. I tried to say something to Nuri, but I couldn't. I couldn't even turn my head.

I sensed that I was going to die.

"Murat? Can you still hear me?"

Late at night he called out to me again.

"Murat ..."

I didn't have the strength to say very much

"Listen. There's no point any more. If you get out, tell my family how I died."

Nuri beat his fist against the mesh. He was crying.

Then it went quiet.

I still don't know what was wrong with me. Perhaps, because of my hunger strike, my body couldn't get rid of waste. I had hardly gone to the toilet during that whole time, and maybe my body had been poisoned. Or perhaps it simply couldn't take food any longer. I must have laid in my cell for several days. I remember occasionally opening my eyes and looking at the ceiling. I couldn't tell if it was day or night. I don't remember anymore.

I woke up on a stretcher in a medical ward.

A bottle of transparent liquid was hanging above me, and there was a needle in my arm. I was weak and in pain. I couldn't see anyone, only a machine that beeped. My hands and feet were in chains, but they were still there. I was relieved. At some point they removed the tubes. Someone asked me some questions. Whether I had been sick as a child. What illnesses I'd had.

I could sit up. I could eat. I had survived.

I could even hear music.

The guards were listening to rock music.

***

Every prisoner knew who General Miller was and what we had to thank him for when Operation Sandman commenced and harsher interrogations and confinements were introduced. The general often strode through the blocks together with a group of officers, grinning as if he was very pleased. He was an older man, tall and a bit paunchy. He walked around in a uniform with lots of stars on his shoulders, handing out coins to the guards and block sergeants. One of the sergeants was so happy that he even showed the coin to some of the prisoners. I called out and asked him whether I could see it, too.

"A coin from the general!" he said. "He gave me it because I'm good."

"Really? From General Miller?"

"Yes," he said and opened the flap.

He pressed the coin into my hand. The name of the general, Geoffrey Miller, was written on it. Underneath: Guantanamo. There were stars on it and a motto, something like: "General Miller is helping make the world a better place."

I took the coin, threw it in the toilet, and flushed.

"What are you doing?" shouted the sergeant.

He ran straight out and came back with an IRF team. After they were finished with me, they reached into the toilet U- bend and tried to fish out the coin. It was gone. Of course, I was sent to solitary confinement.

I had been sitting on my bunk for several days before I noticed that the guards had left the peepholes open so that they could simply look in as they passed by. I heard steps in the corridor and pressing my eye to my peephole. I saw that they were all open. I heard one of the prisoners shouting in Arabic: "Listen up, Miller's coming! If you want to give him a gift, then get ready and do it now!" The flaps were open because of Miller's visit.

This was an order, and I knew what was going to happen. General Miller had come to inspect Oscar Block. Another general or high-ranking officer and several captains were walking by his side.

When they reached the middle of the corridor, the first prisoner threw a mixture of water and feces, collected in a bowl or in an Emarie packet, at the general. He hit his target. The general let out a cry, held up his arms to shield his face and turned away. At that moment, he got another load from the cell opposite. He ran down the corridor to the end of the block, and everyone else hurled the contents of his bowl. The officers tried to shield the general. The captain, who placed himself between us and the general, was spared.

Our punishment turned out to be relatively mild. We were not given any bread for several days, and our spell in solitary confinement was extended by a month. There was nothing else they could have done short of killing us.

A few weeks, later I saw Miller in a Camp 1 block. He was strutting through the corridor as usual.

"Why are you walking about so arrogantly? Everyone knows that you ate shit in Oscar," one prisoner said in perfect English.

Miller turned red and started walking more quickly.

"Your name is Miller? We've got a better name for you: Mr. Toilet!"

The prisoners laughed. That day there was no food for the whole block and rations were halved for about forty days.

But from then on, General Miller was known by his new name among the prisoners.

***

Over the course of time I did meet some soldiers who treated us like human beings, Once a guard came to me with toilet paper, He looked at me and said:

"I know that your God gives you strength."

"Are you a Muslim?" I asked.

"No," he said. "But I can see it. You've been living for so long in these small cages. No one can stand that, Sometimes we talk about it. You pray and God helps you. Otherwise you'd go crazy. If I had to live in this cage, I'd be sick within a few days."

That really surprised me.

There was also an older guard I had been observing for some time. Whenever anyone was being hit, he stood back and didn't take part, Even when he was assigned to an IRF team, he stayed outside the cage and refused to hit the prisoner. The other soldiers cursed him. But he just shook his head.

I spoke to him that day.

"I would like to ask you something."

Go ahead ..."

"Why didn't you take part just then?"

''I'm a human being just like you. What is happening here, is inhuman," he said.

That struck me.

The guard told me that he had a friend who had been in Vietnam and ended up in captivity there. After he was released, he had told him about his imprisonment and torture.

"I know what my friend went through. That must not happen again, It is incomprehensible that our government is doing the same to you as the Vietnamese did to the American prisoners. It's terrible!"

I occasionally ran into him in other cellblocks, but I never got the chance to speak to him again.

There was another guard who was in his mid-thirties. Whenever he was distributing food, he always asked me if I wanted another plateful. I also spoke to him a few times. He quite openly said that he didn't agree with what was happening in Guantanamo but that he signed up a long time ago. If he had known what it would be like at the time, he would have never joined the army, he said.

"When I arrived here," he said, "our superiors said you were killers and dangerous terrorists. They showed us movies about September 11 and gave us several weeks of training. Over and over again, they drove home how dangerous you were. I believed them at first. But then I saw you praying and reading the Koran. I found out that many of you are very friendly. I can even trust you. You don't take drugs, you don't steal and you don't commit adultery. I didn't know any of that before. You share your food even though you are all very hungry."

"MP" was written on the badge on his arm. All of the guards wore this badge, but this guard was different. He said that President Bush had ruined America's reputation in the world.

"Now I know the truth," he said. "I have seen it with my own eyes. I only have a few days left to serve. Then I'm finished with the Army." He was working in my block on his last day. He came to me and said:

"Murat, I've only got two hours to go." He was very excited.

Then he came back and said: "Only one hour to go."

When his time was almost up, he reappeared, parked himself in front of the door of my cage and looked at his watch. There were a few guards standing a bit off to the side. He called them over.

"Hey, come and watch what I'm doing!"

The guards came closer. He looked at his watch and started to count.

If Five, four, three, two ..."

When he counted to zero, he took off his armband. To the outrage of the other guards, he motioned as if he was about to wipe his butt with it. Then he threw the armband on the floor and stamped on it.

''I'm not an MP any more!"

He trampled on it in the way the guards had trampled on the Koran.

"You see that? That's it!"

I don't know whether he was punished for his actions. That evening he came back to my cage. I was sitting on the floor and he squatted down in front of my door.

"I'm sorry. I really hoped you would get out. I wanted to say goodbye."

He had tears in his eyes.

''I'll try to help you when I get back to the States."

He pushed his fingers through the wire mesh. We said goodbye. I thanked him for his friendship and the many extra helpings that he gave me.

Unfortunately, I never asked him his name.

***

In September 2004, a guard brought a letter for me into my cage. It said that I was going to be brought in front of a military tribunal in Guantanamo. I was going to court? After all this time and all those interrogations? The tribunal was called the Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The tribunal would determine whether I was an enemy combatant. But I had never fought! Maybe the court would come to this very conclusion-and acquit me. The letter contained the words: "George W. Bush, President of the United States of America v. Murat Kurnaz, plaintiff."

They came to get me two weeks later. The hearing took place in an interrogation room. Was this another trick? No. There were no interrogators there, just three high-ranking officers sitting at a long table. I saw their epaulettes and their ribbons. A man sitting at a table at a right angle to the judges with a tape recorder in front of him read out that two colonels and a lieutenant were present. Sitting opposite him at another table was a man who could speak Turkish.

He said one of the three military personnel was my attorney. The others were the judge and the prosecutor.

The man in the middle, the judge, read something aloud, but I couldn't understand half of it. When the translator repeated it, I noticed two mistakes. For one thing, the judge said that police in Pakistan had questioned me about Selcuk. That was wrong. For another, it was stated that I had been taken to the military camp at Bagram from Pakistan even though I had been in Kandahar. How could a court make a mistake like that?

The translator said that I would be allowed to ask questions later.

He asked me whether I understood what the court was saying.

"Yes."

The judge continued to read aloud and then he said something that I could understand even in English:

"The prisoner had links with a person who was later involved in a suicide bomb attack. Selcuk Bilgin is the suicide bomber."

"Suicide? Bombings?"

"You can respond in a minute," the translator said.

"Would you like to make a statement?" the judge asked.

I was shocked.  Selcuk? A suicide bomber? I asked the court when and where it allegedly happened. They weren't allowed to tell me that, the judge answered.

My whole world suddenly didn't make any sense. But these people didn't lie. It was a court after all. Was Selcuk dead? And had he killed a lot of people?

'I am here because Selcuk blew himself up?" I asked. "I didn't know. I didn't know that he was a terrorist. We worked out together and prayed in the mosque. We both had dogs. That's why we were friends. He was like a big brother to me. I didn't know he would do something like that. If he changed, I didn't notice. He never talked to me about anything like that. I don't need friends like that! My religion is peaceful."

The judge carried on.

Then they asked me what I was doing in Pakistan.

I explained.

***

After I had waited in vain for Selcuk at Karachi airport, I bought myself a telephone card, but the card didn't work. Someone had swindled me. But the second card worked. I called SeIcuk's wife, but she hung up. Twice. Then I flew to Islamabad to meet a guy named Hassan I had met on the plane, But I couldn't find him because he had given me a false address, So I traveled alone to Lahore to the Mansura Center, I was told the head of the center wasn't there, but that I should spend the night there and talk to him the next morning, In the morning I was given breakfast, but the center's director still had not arrived, Then in the office I was told that  hey wouldn't enroll me, I was a foreigner, It was too dangerous, I should go home. What was I supposed to do?

That morning -- it was October 7, 2001 -- war had broken out in Afghanistan.

I was disappointed, I didn't want to go back home immediately and was determined to stay. The tablighis in Bremen had told me that tablighis in Pakistan traveled in small groups from mosque to mosque, studying there. So I would just join them, In any case, I didn't want to give up.

I caught a bus to Islamabad, where I went to a mosque and met a group of tablighis, At first they didn't trust me because I came from Germany. Maybe they thought I was a journalist, Then I got to know Mohammed. He was curious and spoke English well and he even knew a little Turkish. We joined the tablighis and slept in various mosques. New tablighis kept on joining us, while others would leave, Sometimes there were ten of us, sometimes thirty. The teaching lasted almost all day. In between, I walked through the city and explored the markets, the Kung Fu schools, and the snake charmers.

***

The court asked me if the tablighis gave me food, and I said yes. Every evening a few people would set off to the market to buy food for everyone, It was incredibly cheap. And every evening we argued about who would be allowed to go to the market. That was tradition, Mohammed said.

The judge wanted to know when and where I was arrested and what the Pakistani police had asked me.

I was amazed. Didn't they know?

***

Two weeks after the hearing I was taken by an escort team and brought before the tribunal again. The judge read out the ruling. I was an enemy combatant, categorized as dangerous.

The judge justified the ruling by saying that I was a member of the Al Qaeda organization. The evidence that he cited was that I was a close friend of a suicide bomber and that I belonged to the Jama'at al-Tablighi because I had received support and food from this group.

"I would like to know whether I have to stay here or whether I can go  home ..." I said.

"Mr. Attorney, do you have any questions on the prisoner's behalf?"

"No."

He had hardly said a single word throughout.

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