by Anna Perera
Moving as one through the glass doors to get to him, “Khalid!” Nadim and Sabeeh shout.
“We’ll look after him,” Sabeeh says, nodding to the shop guys, while Nadim bends low to gently take Khalid’s shaking hands from his damp forehead. Shocked by the fear in his wild popping eyes, he pats his shoulder.
“Hey, Khalid. You’re OK, mate. We’ll take you home.”
But Khalid doesn’t answer. He can barely walk straight.
30
GUL
Today sunshine streams through the open kitchen window. The sound of heavy traffic can be heard zooming down Oswestry Road because the short cut to town has been closed due to roadworks. Not that Khalid minds. Resting an elbow on the kitchen table, he’s chewing a blue pen and wondering what else to tell Tariq after scrawling two pages of news that he doubts he’ll ever see.
He’s already told him about reading his letter to Mr. Tagg in front of the whole school and the amazing reaction of all the kids. Plus how he’s continually stopped by people he doesn’t know and everyone expects him to say something, anything, to account for his time in Guantanamo Bay. He’s running out of ideas.
Surely they must realize he would rather forget about the place and talk about Rochdale’s latest win. Fed up with the thought that the subject will never go away, which hits Khalid harder each time he sits down to write to his cousin. He quickly rushes through the description of the lame bunch of kids from yesterday.
“There’s that terrorist who tried to blow up London,” one of them shouted, sending a shiver of fear and rage up Khalid’s spine.
If only everything would calm down, he might be able to get on with his life. Get through another day without having a panic attack and being overcome by despair at the years he’s missed out on.
Then seeing Niamh. Learning she’s going out with Josh Parker of all people. No wonder Khalid needed help getting home that day. He’d built her up into some perfect beauty who loved him—who was going to fall into his arms the moment she saw him. Out of desperation mostly. And she’ll never know how just the thought of her kept him going. Still keeps him going, though not in the same way as before. Now when he pictures her face, he sees her as she actually is: a nice girl, not a pin-up fantasy or some kind of savior at all. Someone whose eyes and smile used to light up many lonely hours, and he’ll always be thankful to her for that.
Looking around the kitchen for inspiration at the polished knives in the correct slots of the wooden knife holder. At the blue striped dishcloth folded neatly on the metal drainer. Bar of pink soap in the new see-through plastic dish. Everything in the kitchen makes Khalid smile. Mum, in her favorite navy-blue dress, stops sprinkling nutmeg, salt and pepper on the plate of chicken breasts to smile back.
Opposite him, Gul, with glossy hair fanning over her shoulders, arms everywhere, draws a picture of someone else’s street. Khalid writes to Tariq about her racing to finish coloring the birds in the sky before the dinner plates and cutlery clatter down and how stumps of wax crayons are rolling like marbles across the table. Snap-snapping to the floor as she wildly shades the horse in the field brown, the grass green, the houses the same yellow as the summer sun.
The sound of falling crayons brings back the powerful noise of clacking food trays and the picture of Tariq staring at the air conditioner. Alone. Bent double on the bed, hoping for the sound of footsteps that might bring him someone to talk to while he waits for the call to prayer to sound across the block. Another brutal twenty-four hours of nothingness stretching out in front of him without any idea when it’ll end. Without anything to look forward to now that Khalid’s not there.
“Gul, can I have that drawing to send to Tariq?” Khalid asks. “I’ve run out of things to say and you know he once had a sister called Radhwa the same age as you.”
“I remember.” Gul smiles. “But he can’t have my picture.”
“Did he ever mention Radhwa to you?” Mum turns to face him suddenly.
“No. Never. But he always liked hearing about Aadab and Gul.”
“Such a shame.” Mum shakes her head. “I can’t help wondering what part Tariq played in this whole mess.”
“MUM! You don’t even know him or anyone he used to chat with. He just invented a silly game that someone decided was dangerous. He’s stuck there right now, as innocent as I was.”
“I understand everything, you know that, Khalid. I feel sad for Tariq. For what happened. But those things he said about your father, they can’t be forgiven.”
“Mum, don’t judge him unless you know all the facts, OK? I made that mistake,” Khalid says. But seeing he’s made her feel guilty, he attempts to cheer her up. “Any chance you can make fluffy chips to have with the curry?’
Her face softens into a smile. “Yes. Plenty of potatoes in the cupboard, son. How happy it makes me saying “son” to you. Yes. My son is here with us once more.”
“Don’t get soppy again. You promised you wouldn’t.”
“Soppy? Me? Not me, son. Never.”
Khalid grins as his attention turns to the swirl of orange smoke Gul’s adding to her picture.
“Gul, don’t wreck it with that horrible orange color.”
“Why not?” A silly grin is plastered across her face.
“I don’t like the color, that’s all.” Khalid frowns at Gul. Concerned because Mum’s hiding her tears by looking for something in the highest cupboard and he doesn’t want Gul to see her crying.
There’s not much more I can tell you, cuz, Khalid writes quickly. I don’t think that feeling of total misery will ever really go away. Soon, I promise, you’ll get home. But whenever I start to think of that prison, I stop and remind myself how kind most people are in the world. Did I tell you Mac, my nice neighbor, is going to teach me to drive his car? For free. How cool is that?
The front door clicks. Khalid listens for his dad to pause in the hall to hang up his brown zip jacket. He comes in, his face full of warmth and happiness when he sees Khalid.
“Hi, Dad, did you see that poster for the oriental rug sale on Saturday up the road?” Khalid asks.
Before answering, Dad smiles and quietly slips off his brown shoes to reveal ribbed gray socks, then empties his pocket of nutmeg cake wrapped in wrinkly tin foil on to the kitchen table.
“Yes, it starts at ten in the morning and goes on the whole day.” He scrapes the chair back and sits down.
“Well, we’re going. Don’t look so surprised. Just think of it as a little act of kindness on my part.”
“Oh, I will, I will.” Dad laughs.
Mum, Aadab and Gul join in too.
There’s nowhere in the world Khalid would rather be than right here . . .
Spying his dad’s new shoes on the floor reminds him of something. “Dad, give us your shoes. You’ve got dirt all over them. A right mess they are.” He darts to the cupboard under the sink to take out the cardboard box.
His dad stares at him, amused, as Khalid unfolds a sheet of newspaper on the floor and sits cross-legged. He lays the cloth and brushes neatly side by side on the paper, just as he’s seen his dad do so many times. Carefully, he opens the tin of dark-brown Kiwi polish and pats at it with the brush. Then, fist in the shoe, he spreads the polish evenly, working it into the leather one section at a time. Focusing hard on polishing the rims of the sole, before starting on the toe to patiently bring up the shine. In the middle of all this hard work he breathes in the lovely smell of sizzling chicken cooked with toasted almonds and couscous, and a small fire lights up not only in Khalid’s eyes and stomach, but also in his heart.
Dad looks on with approval and Khalid knows this small act of kindness means more to him than he could ever imagine.
Then, for that moment, as he sits on the kitchen floor cleaning Dad’s shoes, some of the sadness in Khalid’s heart lifts and the past collapses into a little burst of happiness. The kind of happiness that a loving family brings.
Afterword
The fact that has st
ruck me hardest about Guantanamo Bay is the number of juveniles who were brought there, as many as sixty in a total population of some 780. And not just “juveniles”—but kids.
These kids include Mohammed el Gharani from Chad, one of Reprieve’s clients, who had never even been to Afghanistan until the US paid a bounty to his captors and took him there. US Intelligence thought Mohammed was in his mid-twenties: despite years of interrogation, it had not been discovered that he was only fourteen years old and had gone to Pakistan simply to learn about computers. US District Judge Richard Leon later determined that he was innocent of any wrongdoing, and he was released after more than seven years in captivity.
Mohammed was innocent and should have been in school. Yet he learned the lessons of adolescence in a maximum security prison, in cells with those reputed to be the most dangerous of terrorists.
Sadly, it’s happening elsewhere. Now a similar situation is occurring in the US detention center in Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, where a kid called Hamidullah was himself just 14 when he was first detained. At Reprieve, we’re working to defend his rights and the rights of other prisoners. As a nation, we cannot expect the world to embrace democracy and the rule of law unless we respect it ourselves.
—Clive Stafford Smith
Founder and Director, Reprieve
March 7, 2011
For more about Reprieve’s work regarding
Guantanamo Bay, please visit www.reprieve.org.uk.
GUANTANAMO BAY TIMELINE *
2001
September 11, 2001
Operatives of Al-Qaeda, an international terrorist group, attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
October 7, 2001
The war in Afghanistan begins. The US military targets the Taliban, the ruling militia in Afghanistan, which refuses to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
December 2001
Osama bin Laden escapes from Afghanistan.
2002
January 11, 2002
Twenty suspected terrorists are detained at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. They are the first detainees to arrive.
January 17, 2002
The US military allows the Red Cross to establish permanent residence at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
January 18, 2002
President George W. Bush declares that Guantanamo Bay detainees are not protected under the Geneva Conventions, which require that certain rights are given to prisoners of war.
February 27, 2002
Detainees go on a hunger strike to protest a rule against wearing turbans, which are a common part of Muslim religious life and are often used during prayer.
April 25, 2002
Camp Delta is built to house 410 prisoners.
2003
April 23, 2003
The US military admits that children sixteen and younger, many of whom have been held for a year, are among the detainees. Three boys from Afghanistan, ages thirteen to fifteen, are among the inmates and are held in a dedicated juvenile facility; they are released in 2004.
May 9, 2003
Guantanamo Bay prison reaches 680 detainees, the most it has held at one time.
October 9, 2003
The Red Cross says there is “deterioration in the psychological health of a large number of detainees.”
2004
October 16, 2004
According to the New York Times, detainee abuse is more pervasive than the Pentagon has let on.
2006
February 15, 2006
A report from the United Nations recommends the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison.
May 28, 2006
According to London lawyers, dozens of children as young as fourteen years old have been sent to Guantanamo Bay prison, and they estimate that more than sixty detainees were under eighteen when they were captured.
June 29, 2006
The US Supreme Court rules Guantanamo Bay detainees are protected under the Geneva Conventions.
2007
February 7, 2007
According to a Pentagon inquiry, there is no evidence of abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
2009
January 14, 2009
A senior Bush administration official releases a public statement detailing the torture of one of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.
January 22, 2009
President Barack Obama issues executive orders to close Guantanamo Bay within one year, to ban CIA interrogation techniques that might be considered torture, and to review the prison’s detention policies.
2011
January 22, 2011
Two years after President Obama’s executive order to close Guantanamo Bay, the prison remains open with 174 prisoners. Many have called for its closure, including General Colin Powell, General David Petraeus, and General Wesley Clark of the US armed forces; former FBI Director William Sessions; and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
April 25, 2011
Leaked classified documents reveal that more than a hundred detainees at Guantanamo have been innocent or low- risk inmates, including cases where officials were aware of their status.
May 1, 2011
Osama bin Laden is killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a covert operation authorized by President Obama.
May 3, 2011
When asked whether the information leading to Bin Laden was obtained by waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique, Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan replies, “Not to my knowledge.”
*For sources, please see last page.
Guantanamo Boy Synopsis and Discussion Questions
by Michael Robinson, award-winning
high school social studies teacher
SYNOPSIS
The book begins six months after the events of 9/11 in Rochdale, a large city near Manchester, England. Khalid is an average fifteen-year-old student at Rochdale High who enjoys hanging out with his friends, watching and playing soccer, and playing video games on the family computer. His father is originally from Pakistan, and his mother is from Turkey. The family is Muslim, but his mother does not wear the Islamic veil, and the family only occasionally says Friday prayers. The family goes on a vacation to Pakistan to visit and help Khalid’s father’s sisters move to a better house. Once there, Khalid’s father goes missing, and Khalid goes to search for him. While looking for his father on the streets of Karachi, Khalid becomes part of a street demonstration. Unable to find his father, Khalid returns home, where shortly thereafter several men storm into the house and take Khalid prisoner.
Over the course of the next two years, Khalid is taken from Pakistan to Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo Bay. He is questioned relentlessly about being involved in terrorism and undergoes tremendous mental and physical torture. With the help of his family, community, and his lawyer, Khalid is released from Guantanamo Bay shortly after his seventeenth birthday and allowed to go home to England where he is finally free to live his life. This is a story of injustice, survival, and courage. Khalid was your typical average boy in almost every way, but after surviving two years of imprisonment, torture, conditions of near insanity, and severe loneliness, Khalid shows how the human spirit can overcome and survive the worst situations imaginable, proving he is anything but average.
THEME DISCUSSION
Use the following questions and prompts relating to the overall themes in Guantanamo Boy as a basis for discussion of the book.
Family
How does one’s family influence the choices that one makes?
Discuss how one relies on his/her family for help, support, and guidance.
Prison and Punishment
What is the purpose of a prison?
Discuss if the punishments found in the book are effective and appropriate.
Discuss if torture should be used to obtain information from someone.
Terrorism
Define terrorism and a terrorist act.
Discuss what type
s of terrorist acts have occurred in the United States and other countries around the world.
Discuss how countries should respond to terrorist acts against its people.
Governments
What is the role of a government?
How do governments protect and provide security for their people?
Discuss how a country can balance a person’s rights and still provide the security that is needed.
Religion
Define religion and discuss the role it plays in society. How do religions affect a person’s way of living?
Discuss how the world’s two largest religions (Christianity and Islam) are similar and different. What about other religions, such as Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism?
CHAPTER DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND PROMPTS
