On November 20, 2008, sitting in my cell in Guantanamo, I swallowed food for the first time since 2006. It was a celebration of sorts. Earlier that day, my friends and I had listened to Judge Richard Leon announce his decision in our case, Boumediene v. Bush. It had taken nearly seven years and a successful appeal to the United States Supreme Court to compel the judge to review our case, but once he did, it only took a matter of days for him to realize there was no case against us. When he ordered our release, I was so relieved, so overcome with emotion, so excited to be reunited with my wife and children, that I don’t even remember what I ate.

The next morning, I resumed my hunger strike.

“Next time I eat,” I told the guards, “it will be in my own home, from the hand of my wife.”

Another 181 days passed before I was actually released. With the exception of my one celebratory meal, I had eaten nothing but what was force-fed to me through a tube. I emerged from Guantanamo at 5’9” weighing 125 pounds. When my older daughter first saw me, I was so wasted away she didn’t recognize me. “This man,” she told my wife, “is too old to be my father.”

I am sometimes asked why I went on a hunger strike. Did you want to die? Had you given up? The answer is no. Even in the darkest moments of my seven years in Guantanamo, I never let go of the hope that I would one day see my wife and daughters again.