Entrance of Camp Six, Guantanamo Bay

No One Reads Kafka in Gitmo

Passing Time in the World’s Most Notorious Prison

A Jamaican love song plays at Guantanamo Bay’s tiki bar. The woman cries that she will wait for her man forever. I drink my beer and think of Zin, the wife of British detainee Shaker Aamer. It’s been eleven years since the Northern Alliance arrested Shaker. Though not charged with any crime, he sits in a solitary cell a few miles from the tiki bar. Zin Aamer is still waiting.

Waiting for ferry to take us from leeward to windward side of the base

Guantanamo Bay is where people wait. A faded relic of The War on Terror, four of its eight camps stand empty for lack of prisoners. Called “contrary to who we are” by President Obama, it costs nearly 2 million dollars per detainee per year to operate. Of the 779 men who have passed through, only 7 have been convicted of crimes. 164 remain. According to the chief prosecutor, 144 will never be charged at all.

Guard tower. Camp Delta

Ringed with razor-wire, Guantanamo practices a security culture so rigorous that when a journalist accidentally left an iPod in his bag, our press escort worried that the guards who confiscated it would have to smash it with a hammer. Guards peer at each detainee through cell cams every three minutes. Detainees are moved between camps in shackles and sometimes on backboards, something a guard told me was for “their safety” but could not explain how. Their genitals are searched before and after they use the phone.

Show Cell. Camp Five, which houses hunger-strikers and non-compliant detainees in solitary cells. I am not allowed to draw the faces of most guards.

But for all the security theater, on press tours, Guantanamo feels like a dollhouse without the dolls. Detainees are conspicuous in their absence. Military police walk me through kitchens, a hospital, and show-cells. Cooks prepare six sample meals (including garlic chicken) just for me to taste. Medics lecture next to the restraint chair they use for force-feedings. In empty cells, guards arrange neat rows of “comfort items” (Koran, toothbrush, soap, comb, prayer cap, Rubbermaid bin for likely-futile legal papers) representing the detainees’ only possessions.

Guantanamo is the world’s most notorious prison, but we see the detainees’ lives as if through dark water. To know them, we have a few leaked assessments, a few administrative review board transcripts — some tribunal president telling a British prisoner “I don’t care about international law.” The rest sinks into classification. In Gitmo, even the library stamps are secret.