All these plans and thoughts were going through my head when I was using the bathroom. I looked at the roof, but there was no way to escape there; the roof was concrete. I finished cleaning and shaving and left. Outside of the bathroom there was a hall without a roof; I thought I could maybe climb the wall and leave the compound by going from one roof to another. But there were two constraints: one, the wall was about 20 feet tall and there was nothing to grab onto in order to climb; and two, the whole compound could be encircled in a matter of minutes by the police, so that no matter where I landed I would be secure in police hands. I realized escape would remain an unrealized dream for somebody who suddenly found all doors before him closed except the door to heaven.
The DSE kept making calls to the incoming flight that carried the special mission team. “They should be here in about three hours. They’re in Cyprus now!” he said. Normally he was not supposed to tell me where the plane was, or who was on the plane, or where I was going to be taken; the Americans wanted to maintain the terrorizing factors as harshly as possible. I should know nothing about what was happening to me. Being taken to an airport blindfolded, put in a plane, and taken to a country that is an eleven hour flight away together make enough horrible factors that only people with nerves of steel would survive. But the DSE didn’t care about telling me everything he knew. Not because he was worried about me, but because he knew for a fact that agreeing to such a horrible operation was at the same time agreeing to give up power. The turmoil against the Mauritanian President was already there, but the DSE knew this would certainly break the camel’s back. I knew the same, and so I kept praying, “Oh, Lord please don’t let people spill blood in my name!”
The DSE learned from the tower that the plane was expected around 7:00 or 7:30 p.m. The recorder had been sleeping the whole time, so the DSE sent him home. It was around 6:00 p.m. when the DSE, his assistant, and I took off in the Director’s luxurious Mercedes. He called the airport watch one more time to make the necessary arrangements to smuggle me securely without anybody noticing. I hoped his plan would fail and somebody would rat the government out.
The DSE headed in the opposite direction of the airport: he wanted to waste time and arrive at the airport about the same time as the Jordanian delegation. I was hoping that their plane would crash. Even though I knew it was replaceable, I wanted the plan to be postponed, like if you got news of your death and you wanted to postpone it. The DSE stopped at a grocery store and went in to buy some snacks for us to break the fast; sunset was going to catch us at the airport about the time of the unwelcome arrival. In front of the store stood a white U.N. truck. The driver had entered the store and left the engine running. I thought, with some luck I could possibly hijack it, and with some more luck I could get away, because the Benz would have little chance against the stronger body of the Toyota 4-wheel-drive truck.
But I saw some drawbacks that discouraged me from the attempt. The hijacking would involve innocent parties: in the cab sat the family of the truck driver, and I was not ready to hurt innocent people. A hijacking would also involve neutralizing the Benz, which could cost the lives of two police officers. Although I wouldn’t feel guilty about them getting themselves killed while trying to unjustly and illegally arrest me, I didn’t want to kill anybody. And was I really physically able to execute the operation? I wasn’t sure. Thinking of the operation was sort of daydreaming to distract myself from the horrible unknown that was awaiting me.
I should mention that in Mauritania the police don’t have the American’s extremely paranoid and vigilant technique of blindfolding, ear-muffing, and shackling people from head to toe; in that regard Mauritanians are very laid back. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anybody is as vigilant as the Americans. I was even walking free when we arrived at the airport, and I could easily have run away and reached the public terminal before anybody could catch me. I could at least have forcibly passed the message to the public, and hence to my family, that I was kidnapped. But I didn’t do it, and I have no explanation for why not. Maybe, had I known what I know today, I would have attempted anything that would have defeated the injustice. I would not even have turned myself in to begin with.
After the grocery stop, we took off straight to the airport. There was hardly any traffic due to the holiday; people had retreated peacefully, as usual on this day, to their homes. It had been eight days since I last saw the outside world. It looked bleak: there must have been a dust storm during the day that was just starting to give way in favor of the ocean breeze. It was a situation I had seen a thousand and one times, and I still liked it. It’s like whenever the dust storm kills the city, the ocean breeze comes at the end of the day and blows the life back into it, and slowly but surely people start to come out.
The twilight was as amazing and beautiful as it had always been. I pictured my family already having prepared the Iftar fast-breaking food, my mom mumbling her prayers while duly working the modest delicacies, everybody looking for the sun to take its last steps and hide beneath the horizon. As soon as the Muezzin declares, “God is Great” everyone would hungrily grab something to drink. My brothers prefer a quick smoke and a cup of tea before anything; my sisters would drink first. None of my sisters smoke, smoking for a lady in my culture is not appropriate. The only absent person is me, but everybody’s heart is with me, everybody’s prayers are for me. My family thought it would be only a matter of several days before the government released me; after all, the Mauritanian authorities told my family that I have done nothing, they were just waiting until the Americans would see the truth and let me be. How wrong was my family! How wrong was I to put my faith in a bunch of criminals and put my fate in their country! I didn’t seem to have learned anything. But regret didn’t seem to help either: the ship had sailed.
The Mercedes was heading soundlessly to the airport, and I was drowned in my daydreams. At the secret gate, the airport police chief was waiting on us as planned. I hated that dark gate! How many innocent souls have been led through that secret gate? I had been through it once, when the U.S. government brought me from Dakar and delivered me to my government twenty months earlier. Arriving at the gate put an end to my dreams about a savior or a miraculous sort of a superman who would stop the car, neutralize the police officers, and carry me home on his wings so I could catch my Iftar in the warmth of my mom’s hut. There was no stopping God’s plan, and I was complying and subduing completely to his will.
The Airport Police Chief looked rather like a camel herder. He was wearing a worn-out Boubou, the national dress, and an unbuttoned T-shirt.
“I told you I didn’t want anybody to be around,” said the DSE.
“Everything’s alright,” the chief said reluctantly. He was lazy, careless, naïve, and too traditional. I don’t even think he had a clue about what was going on. He seemed to be a religious, traditional guy, but religion didn’t seem to have any influence on his life, considering the wrong conspiracy he was carrying out with the government.
The Muezzin started to sing the amazing Azan declaring the end of the day, and hence the fast. “ALLAH is Great, Allah is great.”
“I testify there is no God but God,” once, twice, and then twice, “I testify Mohamed is the messenger of God.”
“Come to pray, Come to pray, Come to flourish, Come to flourish,” and then, twice, “God is Great” and “There is no God but God.” What an amazing message! But guess what, dear Muezzin, I cannot comply with your call, nor can I break my fast. I wondered, Does this Muezzin know what injustice is taking place in this country?
There was no clean place around. All the miserable budget the government had approved for the restoration of the airport had literally been devoured by the agents the government put its trust in. Without saying anything, I went to the least dirty spot and started to perform my prayer. The DSE, his assistant, and the chief joined in. After I was done praying, the DSE offered me water and some sweet buns to break my fast; at that same moment the smal
l business jet hit the runway. I had no appetite anyway, but the arriving plane sealed any need to eat. I knew I was not going to survive without eating, though, so I reached for the water and drank a little bit. I took a piece of the sweet bread and forced it inside my mouth, but the piece apparently landed in a cul-de-sac; my throat conspired against me and closed. I was losing my mind from terror, though I tried to act normally and regain my composure. I was shaking, and kept mumbling my prayers.
The ground crew directed the small airplane toward the Benz. It came to a stop inches away, the door opened, and a dark-skinned man in his late forties stepped down the accommodation ladder with steady steps. He was rather heavy, with one of those big bellies that no amount of tucking can do away with, and had one of those beard and mustache combinations that keeps drowning in anything they drink. Oh Lord, I wouldn’t share a drink with one of those people, not even for a million dollars. As soon as I saw the guy, I gave him the name Satan.
When he hit the ground he scanned us standing before him with his fox’s eyes. He had a dry, neutral smile, and the habit of tweaking his mustache, and he kept moving his eyes, one wide-opened and the other squinted. I could easily see the shock on his face because he didn’t seem to find the person he was looking for, namely me. But you could tell it was not the first time he led an abduction operation: he completely maintained his composure, as if nothing big was happening.
“We’ve brought people here in bags,” his associate Officer Rami told me later in Jordan.
“But how did they survive the trip without suffocating?”
“We make an opening for the nose to facilitate a continuous oxygen supply,” Officer Rami said. I don’t know about the bags story, but I do know cases of kidnapping terrorist suspects to Jordan.
Satan was expecting his prey to be shackled, blindfolded, earmuffed. But me, standing before him in civilian clothes with eyes wide open like any human being, that struck him. No, that is not the way a terrorist looks—especially a high-level terrorist who was supposedly the brain behind the Millennium Plot.
“Hi,” he said; he obviously wasn’t used to the beautiful Muslim greeting, “Peace be with you!” He quickly exchanged words with the DSE, though they didn’t understand each other very well. The DSE wasn’t used to the Jordanian dialect, nor was the Jordanian guest used to the Mauritanian way of speaking. I had an advantage over both of them: there is hardly any Arabic dialect I don’t understand because I used to have many friends from different cultural backgrounds.
“He said he needs fuel,” I explained to the DSE. I was eager to let my predator know I am, I am. I took my bag and showed my readiness to board, and that’s when Satan realized that I was the meager “terrorist” he was sent to pick up.
The DSE handed him my passport and a thin folder. At the top of the accommodation ladder there were two young men dressed in Ninja-like black suits who turned out to be the guards who were going to watch me during the longest eleven-hour trip of my life. I quickly spoke to the DSE in a manner I knew Satan wouldn’t understand.
“Tell him not to torture me.”
“This is a good guy; I would like you to treat him appropriately!” the DSE said vaguely.
“We’re going to take good care of him,” answered Satan in an ambiguous statement.
The DSE gave me some food to eat during the flight. “No need, we have enough food with us,” Satan said. I was happy, because I liked the Middle Eastern cuisine.
I took the seat that was reserved for me, and the leader of the operation ordered a thorough search while the plane was rolling on the runway. All they found was my pocket Koran, which they gave back to me. I was blindfolded and earmuffed, but the blindfold was taken away to allow me to eat when the plane reached its regular altitude. As much as I knew about the basics of telecommunication tools, I was terrorized when they put on the earphone-like earmuffs: I thought it was a new U.S. method to suck intels out of your brain and send them directly to a main computer which analyzes the information. I wasn’t worried about what they would suck out of my brain, but I was worried about the pain I may suffer due to electrical shocks. It was silly, but if you get scared you are not you anymore. You very much become a child again.
The plane was very small, and very noisy. It could only fly for three to three-and-a-half hours, and then it had to take fuel. “They are in Cyprus,” the DSE told me several hours before their arrival in Nouakchott; I figured the return would be by the same route, because such crimes have to be perfectly coordinated with the conspiring parties.
Satan offered me a meal. It looked good, but my throat was stiff and I felt like I was trying to swallow rough stones. “Is that all?” Satan wondered.
“I am alright, Hajji,” I said. Hajji literally means somebody who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, but in the Middle East you respectfully refer to anybody you don’t know as Hajji. In Jordan they even called every detainee Hajji in order to keep the names secret.
“Eat, eat, enjoy your food!” Satan said, trying to give me some comfort to eat and stay alive.
“Thanks, Hajji, I’ve eaten enough.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Hajji,” I replied. Satan looked at me, forcing the most dishonest, sardonic smile I ever saw, exactly like he did when he stepped down out of the plane back in Nouakchott airport.
The guards collected the garbage and placed the tray table in the upright position. I had two of them watching me, one right behind my neck, and the second sitting next to me. The guy behind me was staring at me the whole time; I doubt he ever blinked his eyes. He must have been through some rough training.
“In my training, I almost lost my composure,” one young recruit later told me in the Jordanian prison. “During the training, we took a terrorist and slew him in front of all students. Some couldn’t take it and burst out crying,” he continued.
“Where did you guys train?” I asked him.
“An Arabic country, I cannot tell you which one.” I felt nauseous, but tried my best to act in front of the guy as if every-thing were normal and he were a hero. “They want us to have no mercy with terrorists. I can kill a terrorist who is running away without wasting more than one bullet,” he demonstratively claimed.
“Oh, that’s great! But how do you know he is a terrorist? He might be innocent,” I gauged.
“I don’t care: if my boss said he is a terrorist, he is. I am not allowed to follow my personal judgment. My job is to execute.” I felt so bad for my people and the level of cruelty and gruesomeness they have fallen into. Now I was standing for real before somebody who is trained to kill blindly whomever he is ordered to. I knew he wasn’t lying, because I met a former Algerian soldier once who was seeking asylum in Germany, and he told me how gruesomely they dealt with the Islamists, too.
“During an ambush, we captured a sixteen-year-old teenager, and on the way to the jail our boss stopped, took him off the truck, and shot him dead. He didn’t want him in jail, he wanted revenge,” he told me.
I wondered why there was so much vigilance, given that I was shackled and there were two guards, two interrogators, and two pilots. Satan asked the guard who was sitting beside me to empty his seat, and he sat beside me and started to interrogate me.
“What’s your name?”
“Mohamedou Ould Salahi.”
“What’s your nickname?”
“Abu Musab.”
“What other nicknames do you have?”
“None!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Hajji!” I wasn’t used to an interrogator from the Sham region, and I had never heard that accent in such a scary way. I find the Sham accent one of the sweetest in the Arabic language, but Satan’s accent was not sweet. He was just evil: the way he moved, spoke, looked, ate, everything. During our short conversation we were almost shouting, but we could hardly hear one another because of the extremely loud whining of the engines. I hate small planes. I always feel as if I’m on the wing of a demon
when I travel in them.
“We should stop the interrogation and resume it later on,” he said. Thank you, old engines! I just wanted him out of my face. I knew there was no way around him, but just for the time being.
At around midnight GMT on Wednesday, November 28, 2001, we landed in Cyprus. Was it a commercial airport or the military airport? I don’t know. But Cyprus is one of the Mediterranean paradises on Earth.
The interrogators and the two pilots put their jackets on and left the plane, most likely for a break. It looked like it had been raining; the ground looked wet, and a light drizzle was caressing the ground. Every once in a while I stole a quick glimpse through the small, blurry window. The breeze outside gave away the presence of a cold winter on the island. I felt some noises that shook the small plane; it must have been the fuel cistern moving. I drowned in my daydreams.
I was thinking, Now the local police will suspect the plane, and hopefully search it. I am lucky because I’m breaking the law by transiting through a country without a transit visa, and I’ll be arrested and put in jail. In the prison, I’ll apply for asylum and stay in this paradise. The Jordanians can’t say anything because they are guilty of trying to smuggle me. The longer the plane waits, the better my chances are to be arrested.
How wrong I was! How comforting a daydream can be! It was my only solace to help me ignore and forget the evilness that surrounded me. The plane indeed waited long enough, about an hour, but there was no searching the plane. I was nonexistent in the passengers’ list that the Jordanians gave to the local authorities. I even thought I saw police in thick black uniforms coming near the plane, but I was not to be spotted because I was sandwiched between two seats and had to keep my head down, so I looked like a small bag. I might be wrong though, and just saw them because I wanted the police to come and arrest me.
Satan, his associate, and the two pilots came back and we took off. The pilots switched places. I saw the fat pilot sitting in front of Satan; he was almost as broad as he was tall. Satan started a conversation with him. Although I couldn’t hear the talk, I assumed it to be a friendly discussion between two mature men, which was good. Satan grew tired like everybody else, except for the young guard who kept his never-blinking eyes pointed on me. Every once in a while he made a comment like, “Keep your head down!” and “Look down,” but I kept forgetting the rules. I had the feeling that this would be my last flight, because I was certain I wouldn’t make it through the torture. I thought about every member of my family, even my far nephews and nieces and my in-laws. How short is this life! In a blink of an eye, everything is gone.
The Mauritanian Page 17
