Hallowed Eve--A Letter to Mansoor Adayfi

 Over many years, as a participant in Witness Against Torture, wearing orange jump suits and hoods, the role phantasmagoric, embodying a presence of men in Guantanamo, we often practiced for ourselves, an exercise to recall our own privileged lives along with the years of detention without charge or trial, in Mansoor Adayfi's case, a Yemeni detainee known to Guantanamo guards as 441, wrongfully deemed one of the 'worst of the worst' and punitively held 14 years without charge or trial. 

Hi Mansoor,

Thanks for your work elevating in Poland and Germany, currently, [the Guantanamo art exhibit]. I'm writing with an observance that it is a special privilege to write you. We often, in years of Witness Against Torture (WAT) circle, would reflect on words and expressions of men in Guantanamo, and in recent years, appreciating your work from Serbia in solidarity with Gaza and speaking out plans to use the Guantanamo facility to house 30,000 migrants.

I imagine you are busy crafting op-eds for January? [24th anniversary, January 11, 2002 arrivals to Guantanamo]I have a number of aspirations and hopes to plant as seeds for 2026/1448 H [Islamic year] and I would ask for a word of your encouragement.

I recall a zoom launch party publishing your story "Do Not Forget Us Here," which won the 2022 Evelyn Shakir nonfiction prize. It only told part of the arc of story--leaving for future book--stories leaving Guantanamo. Curious if that writing will emerge. Meanwhile, following you biking around as fundraiser for the Guantanamo Survivors Fund, which some of my relatives contributed to, and now in travels, debunking myths and giving a perspective of history. 

In the Catholic Church today is an observance of the 60th anniversary about a particularly authoritative document's declaration of support for interreligious dialogue. And in the next several Sunday's the Church liturgy focus turns to the end of ordinary time, marking endings, apocalyptic themes--judgment, ripe themes to reflect on symbols of injustice and the urgency of closing Guantanamo. 

It is this tradition that my background, first as a Jesuit, 2005-2010 for five years seeking to be a priest, eventually finishing with a Masters in Theological Study in 2015, including in my theological reflection Guantánamo activism such as the hunger strikes in my papers, the '05, '07, '09-'10, '13, [hunger strikes] that you participated in.  The denial of the right to practice Islam is a torture you experienced, one of many you shared on Democracy Now (accessed here). Describing life in Camp X-Ray cages "that summer heat was a hell" and later-"Camp VI ...we called it many things. A black hole. Maximum control. The cemetery. Hell." To me, yes, as a religious person this expression works.

Nearly twenty years ago I first learned about those WAT activists on pilgrimage to Guantanamo on the radio as I did dishes in my religious community, listening as two of my Jesuit elder priests were in that delegation Fr. Steve Kelly and Fr. Bill 'Bix' Bichsel. 

From the time you were a teenager, a student at an Islamic Center, sold for a bounty to the CIA and brought to Kandahar, in addition to torture and indignities, you faced so many maddening obstacles, so many heartrending losses. One of the saddest moments was losing brothers in Guantanamo--Yassir, Mana'a and Ali's deaths in Camp Delta's Alpha Block weren't suicides--al-Amri, Hajji Nassim, Awal Gul, Adnan Latif, who I wrote a letter to during the Jan 2012 WAT fast --your brother who died of cancer and your sister who drowned swimming in a mountain spring. I do know we have carried nine caskets in our theatrical actions. More difficult than beatings, than force-feeding, was how US soldiers treated the 105-year-old in cell next to you. 

In '02 when General Miller came in to break hunger strike with pepper spray, dogs, cavity search, I was then studying abroad in El Salvador, ten years after their peace accords. 

By '06 I was a young aspiring priest in the Jesuit order serving St. Joseph's Parish in Yakima, WA when more than 200 were participating in hunger strike at Guantanamo, and 20, including you, were having tubes forced through the naval cavity Ron DeSantis, the future Governor of Florida, was a navy lawyer at Guantanamo who advised using forced feeding to break the hunger strike, and observed your force feeding.

In 2008, I participated in an Ash Wednesday protest against waterboarding, about the time you got your first letter from home after six years of total darkness. I was in a seminary program of the Jesuits and you were on your second year of a hunger strike and weighed only about one hundred pounds. You were learning English in Camp VI using Around the World in Eighty Days, USA Today, Men's Health and National Geographic. At Loyola University of Chicago I was learning Arabic-- aspiring to serve Jesuit Refugee Services, including for 10 weeks in 2008 studying classical Arabic, in Amman, Jordan; by then, King Hussein's interrogators came to Guantanamo and tortured you saying they would rape the women in your family.

 In '09 you were negotiating for art class, on hunger strike. In November 2010, I protested torture at Ft. Benning, GA and served six months in federal custody (a January 2011 blog entry by Fr. Bob Cushing, a chaplain who visited me mentions I am seeking to be in solidarity with men in Guantanamo and WAT). 

I refused forced labor and in consequence was housed five days in solitary; you chewed the large tubes used in force feeding and underwent a surgical procedure; then there was that five months you spent in solitary confinement, nine years total in solitary, for accidentally stepping on the shoes of a guard in a crowded walkway on the way back from interrogation. 

Guards had broken your ankle, wrist, fingers and your nose several times. Sometimes, bahr, the sea, could be glimpsed secretly and the mystical prayer returning you to Aden, Yemen. And then there was the Iguana, affectionately known as 'Princess'. 

[A graphic novel adaptation Guantanamo Voices I reviewed carries across Mansoor Adayfi's resilient sense of humor].

 -- Pope Leo XVI, concludes in Apostolic exhortation Dilexi te: "Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic:"

Nov 2, UK based Prisoners for Palestine will begin a hunger strike (here) May the God of Nonviolence inspire in our hearts the examples of the saints and may we pray for the hallowed dead and to preserve what theologians call "dangerous memory" the struggle to right injustices.

Mark 13:24-27

But in those days after that tribulation

the sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light,

25and the stars will be falling from the sky,

and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

26And then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory,27and then he will send out the angels and gather [his] elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.