Written in collaboration with Antonio Aiello, Yemeni artist Mansoor Adayfi's memoir Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo is a remarkable feat of storytelling by an innocent man held without charge for 14 years at the infamous detention center at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base.
The intimate truths revealed here, on the eve of the detention center's 20th anniversary, require fortitude on the part of readers, yet the shocking reality of how the U.S. government purchased hundreds of men, kidnapped and sold by Afghan warlords, and subjected them to torture and inhumane confinement is only one slice of the narrative. Adayfi divides his story into sections titled Arrival, Resistance, Hunger and Departure, and interplays dark comedy and graceful imagery to illustrate how detainees who represent 50 nationalities and speak more than 20 languages found "small moments of joy and beauty, of friendship and brotherhood" despite being caged like animals.
During his captivity, Adayfi became a resistance leader, hunger strikes being the preferred form of protesting cruel treatment. It was the small things that lifted his spirits: memories of his mother making tea, a detainee's beautiful singing, the soothing balm of prayers and a Black guard's kindness. "The Black officers were always nicer. I don't know why," he writes.
Adayfi hopes to quiet the ghosts that still haunt him and to chip away at the stigma of being a Guantánamo detainee. By shedding light on the broader story of the detention center, Don't Forget Us Here offers an immensely valuable lens for readers willing to confront the moral and ethical--not to mention legal and public relations--disaster that is Guantánamo. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer