A riveting memoir that puts a human face on those who have been imprisoned.

As a law student and a daughter of immigrants, I thought the prison camp’s very existence was a blatant affront to what America stands for. How could our government create legal loopholes to deny prisoners the right to a fair hearing? I didn’t know whether the men at Guantánamo were innocent or guilty—how could anyone know if there was no investigative process or trial?—but I believed that they should be entitled to the same justice that even a rapist or a murderer gets in the United States.
     I was young and idealistic. (I still am.)

So begins Mahvish Khan’s remarkable memoir, which originated as an acclaimed article in the Washington Post. Born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan and outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantánamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest substitute 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.

We follow Khan’s personal odyssey as she meets those detained and records their stories. There is pediatrician Ali Shah Mousovi, who admits his unease at being moved again and again around the camp’s blocks (so that prisoners cannot form friendships that last more a few months). He would stare for hours at the one letter from his daughter that arrived uncensored, “a gift.” And then there are two brothers, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and Badr Zaman, who survive by writing poetry—at first etched on Styrofoam cups with their fingernails, and later on paper provided by the Red Cross. Their verses are circulated and memorized by fellow detainees.

The author journeys to Afghanistan, the country of her ancestry, against her family’s wishes. “For Afghans, death is a part of life,” she is told by a guide when she tours a tribal area wrought with killings. “We are used to it.” 

For Mahvish Khan, her experiences were a validation of her Afghan heritage—as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantánamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Her story is a challenging and courageous test of who she is—and who we are.