My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me [Hardcover]

Mahvish Khan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 24, 2008

Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away.

For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage—as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan's story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is —and who we are.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In her moving debut memoir, a young journalist recounts her time as a translator for the detainees of notorious Guantánamo Bay prison. As a law student and American-born daughter of Pashtun (ethnic Afghan) immigrants, Khan seeks a translator position at one of the private law firms that represent the Guantanamo inmates, some of whom spend years in prison before offered a "fair" trial-or even access to counsel. Shockingly, many of the detainees Khan encounters are average citizens placed in prison due to unfortunate circumstances, the blind aggression of modern anti-terror tactics and the incompetence of its enforcers; one detainee, elderly stroke patient Nusrat, was detained after questioning the authorities regarding the arrest of his son (accused of having ties with al-Qaeda). Revealing near-universal abuse, both mental and physical, inflicted on the prisoners, Khan's account is plenty powerful-and that's before she travels alone to war-torn Afghanistan in order to prove her clients' innocence. Khan also divulges her poignant reunions with several prisoners following their release, a bittersweet breath of fresh air amid a nightmarish, eye-opening and important account.
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From Booklist

Khan, the daughter of Afghan immigrants and a recent law-school graduate, began volunteering as an interpreter for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) following the 2004 Supreme Court decision stating that Guantánamo prisoners had to be allowed access to U.S. courts. She first visited the base in January 2006 and met prisoners with widely diverse backgrounds, from a 22-year-old picked up in Pakistan, probably by bounty hunters, and turned over to U.S. forces to detainee #1009, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, an illiterate old man from the mountains of Afghanistan. Acknowledging that she had no access to the 14 high value detainees with obvious ties to the Taliban, Khan interviews many whose incarceration appears dubious at best. Each has a story of being savagely beaten, deprived of sleep, sexually abused, left in solitary confinement for months, exposed to extreme cold and constant noise—all with no opportunity to prove their innocence. Stunning details all but hidden from the daily news reports may bring American readers to conclude, as has Khan, that my government has duped me. --Deborah Donovan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; First Edition edition (June 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586484982
• ISBN-13: 978-1586484989
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,149,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book June 15, 2008

By Poe

Format:Hardcover

This book is one of those books that you will not be able to get out of your thoughts. The book beautifully written. It is almost impossible to put down. What I enjoyed most about My Guantanamo Diary, is that it it transcends the story of Guantanamo. It is a human story about relationships, love and betrayal that I think many people will be able to relate to.

Mahvish Khan is a brilliant writer. The book is joyous, and smart and at the same time distressing. She has a pleasingly cynical sense of humor, one that cuts right through the material. This is such good material that is well considered and presented.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me June 16, 2008

By allison

Format:Hardcover

A MUST read book - An insightful, heartrendering, and beautiful piece of literture. I laughed, shed tears, vacilated between the shock of the governments torture methods and pride of the author's courage and determination to uphold the tenable principles of the United States Constitution.

The author allows readers to experience events, tribulations and personalities through her eyes, cultural knowledge and objectivity. I vicariously journeyed the route - Florida - Guantanamo -Afghanistan with Mavish talking to me.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular book And a MUST read in an election year July 27, 2008

By Beth DeRoos HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In this book My Guantánamo Diary the author shows why in an election year, we citizens have to know what our government is doing. Mahvish Khan is an American born lawyer, which I hope people remember.

She is not an enemy of the United States, but such a lover of the United States Constitution, which I wish more supporters of the Bush administration were. She even notes that when she first went to Guantánamo even she assumed she would be meeting terrorists.

The author also is a very positive person so please don't assume the book is all gloom and doom. As an American I found the book to be a wonderful insight into how far we have come since Washington was President, to a place I personally don't like.

The book will or should make you ask yourself if you were arrested, how long do you think you should be held without contact with a lawyer or visits from family? And the author also shares that those men who have been freed after six or more years of arrest, because they were not guilty, do not have hatred toward the American citizen. Would you be as gracious if you were in their shoes?

The book also reminded me that George Washington wrote in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman, saying that Muslims should be hired. Thomas Jefferson owned and read the Quran. Muslims have been in America since the early 1700's.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone in the US should read this July 9, 2008

By RhodeIsland 1969 VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This well-written expose of Guantanamo Bay puts a human face on the prisoners that are incarcerated there. The shameful detention of 'enemy combatants' in miserable conditions by the US government, in some cases for years without a trial, needs to be better known.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "HOW CAN Y0U POSSIBLY HELP GET ME OUT OF GUANTANAMO IF YOU CAN'T EVEN GIVE ME A BOOK?" August 10, 2008

By Rick Shaq Goldstein

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The author is an American born of Afghan immigrants. Her Father became a successful cardiologist and her Mother became the director of neonatology. Mahvish grew up caught in between the realities of two worlds... her parent's restrictive, conservative, old world disciplines, and her longing for a bit more of the looser American way. She graduated from the University Of Michigan and then attended law school at the University Of Miami. In 2005 while in law school, "she was studying the federal torture statues and how policy makers had cleverly circumvented legal principles in creating the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where prisoners in the "war on terror" could be held indefinitely without being charged with any crime." Mahvish felt the pain of September 11th as an American... "But also understood the need to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering of the Afghans, when hundreds of Afghan men were rounded up and thrust into the black hole of detention at Guantanamo." This led her to volunteer to become an interpreter between volunteer lawyers and the detainees. And this leads to the core of this heart-breaking... heart-warming... educational odyssey... into what is really going on in Guantanamo, and the horrifying abuse in route to there .

In an attempt to convey to potential readers, the "delicate" power in the words and meaning communicated by the author in this book... I feel it would be helpful to share with you how it affected me. I am an honorably discharged Viet Nam era Veteran, who has always felt very strongly that America was losing a lot more of our precious American lives in battle, because we seem to be the only country that adheres to true "RULES OF ENGAGEMENT".... While other countries entire military plans are built around suicide bombers blowing up and murdering innocent civilians, women and children... our soldiers literally have to call lawyers from the battlefield before they make their next move! But here is where this wonderful young woman EDUCATED ME like no newscast or newspaper was able to do. She so perfectly "straddled" both sides of the ethnic line between her heritage and her birthright.

What I learned made me both mad and disappointed in the lack of legal "equality-of-justice" to other human beings. Believe me... I know there are some pretty despicable characters at Gitmo... but there are also innocent men who were snatched out of their families... out of their jobs... out of their countries. I also know that in every jail and prison in the world everyone says they're "innocent", and as one of the volunteer lawyers at Gitmo said: regarding the "face of evil... how normal it looks, how so many of the men who perpetrated some of the worst crimes in history - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - had been men who appeared perfectly ordinary, who were kind to children and dogs."

But here's what I learned from this book, and feel must be done, so some of the tarnish can be cleansed from America's name: Lawyers must be assigned immediately to any "enemy combatants" arrested. There must be a time limit as to how long someone can be held without a trial or evidence. (Due to most cases involved at Gitmo being international in scope, the period does need to be much longer than a normal case in America... but no one should be allowed to be kept in such de-humanizing conditions for five years without a trial and conviction.) All sexually demeaning atrocities, such as being made to stand or lay naked for extended times should be outlawed. Rape and sexual perversion (imagine me having to state this in America!) should be outlawed and perpetrators should face heavy jail time themselves. Prisoners should be allowed to have writing supplies and receive mail on a timely basis. (Not holding up letters for a year or more.) AND HERE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POLICY THAT SHOULD BE CHANGED IMMEDIATELY: **UNLESS IT IS A HIGH RANKING ENEMY SUCH AS BIN LADEN, ETC. STOP THE POLICY OF PAYING REWARDS FOR TURNING PEOPLE IN!

*** HERE'S WHY ** "Many of the men insisted that they they'd been sold to the United States. During the war after September 11th, the U.S. military air-dropped thousands of leaflets across Afghanistan promising between $5,000.00 and $25,000.00 to anyone who would turn in members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Considering that the per capita income in Afghanistan in 2006 was $300.00 or 82 cents a day, that's like hitting the jackpot. The median income for each American household was $26,036.00 in 2006. If a bounty system of equal proportions were offered to Americans, it would be worth $2.17 MILLION. The average American and the average Afghan would have to work for eighty-three years to make that kind of money." Pakistani's and Afghan's who had a grudge against a neighbor were turning people in... getting the reward... and the poor soul who was "fingered" spent years and years in the hell that was constructed at Gitmo. One of these unfortunate men had gotten into an argument with a worker that was supposed to connect water to his house and didn't. They got into a fight, and the worker turned the homeowner in, and he wound up spending over three years in the bowels of Gitmo hell. "THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) has said it was unaware of any sort of bounty being paid for the prisoners." **YET INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK ARE TWO PICTURES OF THE LEAFLETS THAT WERE DISPERSED ALL OVER PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN! "Pakistani president Musharraf even bragged about it in his memoir, "In The Line Of Fire": "We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars, he wrote, admitting that his agents had handed over 369 men to the U.S. military in exchange for CIA "prize money". According to Amnesty International reports, two-thirds of the men who landed in Guantanamo were picked up in Pakistan, where many were "groomed" in local jails to grow out their beards and look more like Taliban before being sold to the U.S. military.

It is a FACT that most of the prisoners being held in Gitmo were never on a battlefield. If this book can make such a big impression on this patriotic veteran... I can't wait to see the effect it will have on people who don't start out with as hard core beliefs as I did. One of the biggest goals of every book ever written is to educate... and this book has sure as hell educated me! Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Guantanamo Diary Thoughts July 27, 2012

By Love at First Book

Format:Paperback

"My Guantanamo Diary" by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan is not a book that I had on a list or had recommended to me. While gazing through the "Librarian's Choice" section in my library, I stumbled across the book and thought the title looked intriguing. Luckily, I decided to read "My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me" because it was a fantastic, thoughtful, and even political, read.

"My Guantanamo Diary" is written by former law student and journalist Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, who has been published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times.

The book tells the story of Mahvish in law school, learning about the injustices that were occurring at Guantanamo Bay, and wanting to get involved. Mahvish begins her journey believing that these men may be terrorists and dangerous criminals, but they deserve a fair trial. She quickly discovers that more of the detainees may be innocent rather than guilty, and the evidence for their detention is slim to none. Mahvish explores some of the Afghan detainee's stories, their capture, torture, journey through Gitmo, as well as their family life at home.

The book does get political (although very easy to read and understand for someone who is not political at all), and has some anti-Bush comments, although it is not anti-America. The stories are touching and the injustices that are committed are hard to argue with.... Here are some of the quotes that I found notable from the book, which may help to illustrate what I mean:

"While I believe that Guantanamo may hold evil men as well as innocent ones, I also believe that only a full and fair hearing can separate the good from the bad" - Author's note, xxi
"A statistical analysis of DOD documents relating to 517 current and former Guantanamo detainees shows that only 5 percent of the detainees has been captured as a result of U.S. intelligence work." - p. 59, regarding the fact that many detainees were given up by Pakistani society for large bounties, so big that the bounty could take care of the families for life
"The West fears the Muslim world because of the actions of a few bad people, and those bad people are considered just as evil in the Muslim world as they are in America." - p. 242, spoken by a Gitmo detainee
Mahvish also described Afghan society, humanizing the men, women, and children, and reminding readers that there are many Muslims and Afghans out there that are not Taliban, that love America and Americans, and that are suffering injustices due to the Taliban regime. Some startling faces about Afghan life are that the average Afghan earns $0.83 a day, and one in four children dies before the age of five.

"My Guantanamo Diary" also illustrates some baffling situations, such as when flowers are no longer allowed inside Gitmo (threat to security?) and when one law firm representing clients was accused by Gitmo superiors of giving his clients Under Armour underwear, and the ensuing responses back and forth with which to prove the law firm's innocence and the back story of where the underwear might have come from.

I highly recommend "My Guantanamo Diary." It's a book that will make you think, feel, and maybe research some of the information yourself.

"It's easy to mistreat something being called No. 1154. It's easy to shave its beard, kick it around like an object, to spit on it, torture it, or make it cry. It's harder to dole out such abuse when No. 1154 retains its identity: Dr. Ali Shah Mousovi, a pediatrician who fled the Taliban, worked for the United Nations encouraging Afghans to participate and vote in the new democracy." - back cover

Like my review? Check out my blog and tell me what YOU think! Read more ›