Until I was 35, the most significant relationship I’d had as an adult was with an iguana.

It wasn’t easy to meet anyone where I was for all of my 20s and nearly half of my 30s, at the prison camp at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. After I arrived, I was put in an isolation cell, where huge fans outside of each cell ran day and night, making deafening noise to prevent us from talking to each other.

Even when we went outside for recreation, we were not allowed to talk to the other detainees. But outside we did meet new friends: the cats, banana rats, tiny birds and iguanas that came through the fences, asking to share our meals.

I had a good friendship with beautiful young lady, an iguana. She was so elegant. She used to come every day at the same time, and we would have lunch together. When I went on a hunger strike, I had no food to give her, and I was ashamed to stand there without food as she came up to me. Sometimes the guards punished us for sharing our meals with the animals, but they couldn’t stop me from talking to her.

She couldn’t talk back, but she was a good listener. As the years passed, our friendship grew into a strong bond.