Mustafa had tried to warn me, but the guards pushed me out the prison door behind him. I saw uniformed soldiers and police officers and people with masks over their mouths. A bag was pulled over my head, my hands were cuffed behind my back, and I was shoved into a car.
I couldn’t see, but I could hear the shouts of a crowd of protestors. I heard the driver mutter in Bosnian, “Get this trash out of my way.” A group of protesters had thrown themselves in the car’s path to try to block it. I’m grateful for their brave efforts, even though they were unsuccessful. Eventually, I felt the car roll forward and pick up speed. I began to feel clammy and nauseous. I thought maybe it had something to do with the injection I’d been given earlier in the day.
Or maybe it was shock. Either way, I felt miserable. And then I passed out.
I didn’t know where I was when I came to. I heard people, I assumed the police officers who had seized me, speaking in Bosnian. They sounded scared. One of them called and requested an ambulance, and a short while later, a doctor and nurse arrived and started asking me questions. When I mentioned that I had gotten an injection earlier in the day and didn’t know what it was, the doctor became agitated.
“He has to go to a hospital,” he told the police officers.
They were reluctant. “You can’t treat him here?”
“No,” the doctor said. “And if he dies, you’re responsible.”
I was placed on a stretcher and into an ambulance, accompanied by the doctor, the nurse, and some officers. Someone took the bag off my head, but I couldn’t see out of the ambulance, so I still wasn’t sure where I was.
I heard us go through a tunnel and then, suddenly, the ambulance turned around and went back through the tunnel. Someone must have called the ambulance driver with new orders. We never did go to the hospital.
Thankfully, as time passed, I began to feel less ill. My worry about being sick gradually gave way to fear about where they were bringing me. Despite what my lawyer had said on the news, I was still hoping that I wasn’t Guantanamo-bound.
But when I overheard the nurse say to the doctor, “My sister bought a house here in Butmir,” my heart sank. The Butmir neighborhood, everyone knew, was home to the American military base in Sarajevo.
When the ambulance came to a stop, I was unloaded, still on a stretcher. It was dark out, but not quite pitch black—probably about 4:00 or 4:30 am. The Bosnian police handed me over to American soldiers. As I was carried through the front gate, I heard the soldiers tell the police and the doctor and nurse that none of them were allowed to enter.
The soldiers brought me to a large tent. There were rows of mats on the ground, spaced far apart, with iron chains next to each mat—it reminded me of an animal pen more than anything else. The soldiers put large headphones over my ears and goggles over my eyes, so I couldn’t see or hear, and they placed me on a mat and chained my hands and legs to the ground. I was still in the clothes I’d been wearing in prison—no coat or hat or gloves—so I was freezing cold. I lay on the ground, shivering, and waited for morning to come.
A few hours later, I was unchained, the goggles and headphones were removed, and I was carried to a bathroom. One of the soldiers offered me breakfast. “Here,” he said, speaking French—they knew Algerians speak French—“this doesn’t have pig meat in it.” I declined. Even if he were telling the truth, how could I eat at a time like this? ... [mehr] https://lithub.com/whatever-guantanamo-is-like-it-cant-be-worse-than-this/
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