In February 2004, after more than two years in captivity, Slahi had still had no contact with his family. The only letter he had received before that had turned out to be a crude forgery.
On the 14th, the US Army released the first letter from my family. It was sent through the International Committee of the Red Cross. My family wrote it months before, in July 2003. It had been 815 days since I was kidnapped from my house and had all contacts with my family forcibly broken. I had been sending many letters to my family since I arrived in Cuba, but to no avail. In Jordan I was forbidden even to send a letter.
__________________ was the one who handed me that historical piece of paper, which read:
Nouakchott [Slahi’s family home, the capital of Mauritania] _________________
In the Name of God the most Merciful.
Peace be with you and God’s mercy.
From your mom _____________________
After my greeting I inform you of my wellbeing and that of the rest of your family. We hope you are the same way. My health situation is OK. I still keep up with my schedule with the doctors. I feel I am getting better. And the family is OK.
As I mentioned everybody sends his greeting to you. Beloved son! As of now we have received three letters from you. And this is our second reply. The neighbours are well and they send their greetings. At the end of this letter I renew my greeting. Peace be with you.
Your Mom ___________
I couldn’t believe that after all I had been through I was holding a letter from my mom. I smelled the odour of a letter that had touched the hand of my mom and other members of my beloved family. The emotions in my heart were mixed: I didn’t know what to do, laugh or cry. I ultimately ended up doing both. I kept reading the short message over and over. I knew it was for real, not like the fake one I got one year ago. But I couldn’t respond to the letter because I was still not allowed to see the ICRC.
Meanwhile, I kept getting books in English that I enjoyed reading, most of them western literature. I still remember one book called The Catcher in the Rye that made me laugh until my stomach hurt. It was such a funny book. I tried to keep my laughter as low as possible, pushing it down, but the guards felt something.
“Are you crying?” one of them asked.
“No, I’m all right,” I responded. It was my first unofficial laughter in the ocean of tears. Since interrogators are not professional comedians, most of the humor they came up with was a bunch of lame jokes that really didn’t make me laugh, but I would always force an official smile.
Redactions marked in the text were made by the US government when Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s diary was cleared for public release
Listen to live and recorded readings by Brian Eno, Colin Firth and others, as well as a panel discussion with Slahi’s lawyer and brother about this remarkable account of imprisonment. Guardian Live: Guantánamo Diary, Tuesday 20 January, 7pm, London
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