The Mauritanian (Guantánamo Diary)

The purpose of the new Introduction to The Mauritanian, initially published as Guantánamo Diary, is twofold. First, the author provides context for his release from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2016. Second, he identifies his writing objectives and describes his writing process for the original manuscript; his work with his editor, Larry Siems, to restore the manuscript; and the help he received from his legal team, led by Nancy Hollander. This information provides contextual background about The Mauritanian as both a historical document and a unique book in the history of prison memoirs (such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead).

Slahi’s release provides the resolution that was missing from the original publication. The narration ends in 2005, and the original was published in 2015. Slahi wasn’t allowed to see the book at that time. Not until 2016 did Slahi’s lawyers win his release, following a long, hard-fought legal battle. This battle included his successful habeas corpus, which the US government then challenged. After Barack Obama’s election, “[e]verybody in GTMO—detainees, interrogators, and guards alike—truly believed that Obama would make good on his promise to close the place” (xlii). However, the closure didn’t happen, and the author learned the difference between election promises and the presidency. In terms of style, Slahi concludes his story of captivity in the Introduction by noting how he was blindfolded during his transportation from Guantanamo to freedom in Mauritania, just as when he was taken to Guantanamo 14 years earlier. This touches on two of the book’s primary themes: Depersonalization and Dehumanization and The Absurdities of Life as a Detainee. Slahi cynically notes that the US government refused to use the term “free” and preferred the euphemism “transfer” instead. Slahi’s mood on the way back home to Mauritania—feeling hopeful and nervous—is the opposite of his mood in the first chapter, which describes his arrival at Guantanamo, when he felt understandably lost and devastated.

He began working on the original manuscript as part of a compulsion to write that he’d felt since childhood. The author wrote other manuscripts during his time at Guantanamo, from which he has received only excerpts since. He conceptualized his writing as a way of telling his side of the story. Thus, the manuscript’s objective surpassed simply communicating with his lawyers about his ordeal. Later, the restoration of the redacted version was a painstaking process: “To be honest, I do not know why many of the things I wrote were censored, and I cannot follow the logic of many of the redactions” (xlvi). Indeed, some of the redactions seem absurd because they appear to pose no risk to US national security. For this reason, the new edition features faux redactions in gray that keep the text legible.

The restoration “often felt like we were trying to restore a very ancient building” (l). The author worked with the redacted copy of the book, “making notes above the redactions and in the margins, and then I would take a break, go home, eat lunch, and remember even more” (l). Thus, the 2021 edition combines the author’s diary written in captivity and his recollection of the truth as he remembers it. This process underscores the importance of memory in historical writing in this genre.