One Week in GTMO: Contending with my Post-9/11 Muslim-American Identity

“I can’t come. I’m going to be in Guantanamo next week.”

“Mai, you’re really starting to get way too creative with your excuses…if you don’t want to come to the birthday party, you can just say so.”

Albeit one of my more colorful ones, it was certainly no made-up excuse. In February, I was selected to observe one week of the 9/11 military commission hearings on Guantanamo Bay as an NGO observer. While no amount of preparation could have paved the way for the immensely straining, yet rewarding moral, academic, and professional journey that a week on the island would promise, what I truly did not expect to experience was the intensely-personal path I was about to embark on.

As a Muslim-American woman in her mid-twenties, I am what you would call the “9/11 generation.” I remember waking up to a frantic phone call from my father’s friend who told my mother to turn on CNN; we watched the harrowing scenes of the towers collapsing and I distinctly remember hearing the name “Osama bin Laden” for the very first time.

We were blessed to grow up in a community as open-minded as the California Bay Area. While the reports we would watch and anecdotes we would hear of Muslim-Americans being subject to vicious taunts and vindictive “retaliatory” attacks were distant, they were, for a middle school student, impossible to ignore. Once a wallflower that simply looked like any awkward dirty-blonde pre-teen in her private school uniform, I faced new challenged while classmates began asking me questions about the headscarf my mother had recently started wearing, while social studies teachers brought up “terrorism” and “Muslims” in discussions that seemed recurring every other day.

Without realizing it, the aftermath of 9/11 began to change me. My curiosity in my ethnic Egyptian background and Muslim religion spiked; I began developing an affinity for anything Middle-Eastern, volunteering at my local mosque more frequently, and claiming my voice at a time when so many voices were being heard. Constantly put on the defensive by my peers, bombarded with endless media coverage, and surrounded by a national sentiment that extended even to airport security checkpoints, I found my identity turning into something that no one else could ignore. So instead of underemphasizing it, I embraced it, slowly maturing into an outspoken and proactive community activist, developing a comfort while fielding even the most ridiculous questions about my faith (ie, whether someone would have to marry me if he saw strands of my hair) and doing so with a sassy sense of humor that became a personal trademark.

As I sat through college classes on Orientalism, wrote op-eds for detainee human rights campaigns, and graduated to pursue a law and policy career in a field largely unpenetrated by Muslim-Americans, a part of me often figured that 9/11 had shaped my maturation and interests. But, it was only after I stepped onto the 757 at Andrews Air Force base heading for Guantanamo one Saturday morning that I truly began to contend with the tangible impact that terrorism had on me, an impact that was compounded even further by my hyphenated identity as an American, a Muslim, and a woman.

Much like any navy base, Guantanamo boasts a number of indicators of robust civilian life: a handful of convenience stores and a larger grocery store much like a Wal-Mart, a fire station, hospital, outdoor movie theatre, bowling alley, and even a local museum. Beautiful beaches color the island, exotic fish can be spotted on clear days, and remarkable pieces of coral are noticeable from miles away.

Things become significantly more surreal once you begin to explore the legal and prison-related purposes of the base. Guantanamo houses the first-known expeditionary legal complex, featuring a $10 million courtroom and a 100-tent city (where we were housed), that can be disassembled and reused anywhere once it is no longer needed for its existing purpose. The courtroom was built for particularly this trial, with tables and holding cells constructed for each of the “9/11-five.” The judge, prosecution, defense counsel, and media are all shipped via plane for every court hearing and every business matter they need to appear on the island for. While the lights of Camps 5, 6, and 7 can be spotted from the island’s hills and glimpses of the administrative offices of Camp Iguana can be seen from one particular beach, it is almost easy to forget that over 120 prisoners continue to be housed in the island’s prison facilities.

When tanning on the rocky beaches and fawning over the island’s selection of Frito-eating iguanas, it is almost easy to forget where you are for a few seconds. Once the moments of naïve bliss pass however, you are noticed. As one of the first blatantly-Muslim-American women on the island (as one defense attorney described me), you are especially noticed. The soldiers inquisitively discern your presence, some of them reminded of the women they interacted with while serving tours in Iraq. The defense counsel are eager to speak to you and share the knowledge they’ve amassed about their “also-Muslim” clients. The defendants recognize a piece of cloth that covers your head and strangely feel “at home.”

When I walked into the courtroom that first Monday morning, just three panes of glass and a forty-second delay separating me from the “9/11-five,” I noticed their recognition and watched them slowly turn back to look at me. At one point during the week, a fellow NGO observer asked: “Is dying your beard with henna part of the Muslim tradition?” As I smirked at how I was expected to represent the Muslim faith even on the beaches of Cuba and began to answer the question regarding KSM’s more-than-noticeable facial hair, I felt a discomfort for the first time. It would take me weeks to realize exactly why.

On the morning of 9/11, the perpetrators of the attack had claimed the lives of thousands in the name of a religion that I had grown to embrace and love; they had spoken in my name, and now, here I was, answering on their behalf. Despite years of ease during which I had inadvertently become the designated spokesperson for my Muslim community, I began to feel like I was answering questions about a belief system that was similar to mine, but not mine. For the first time in my life, I felt that for over a decade, I had lived my life answering questions that were being asked because of these men’s actions, contending with the tenets of my faith to distinguish them from these men’s tenets, and evolving from a quieter wallflower to a public spokeswoman to ensure that my family, friends, community, and I were not arbitrarily boxed in with these men. While immensely proud of the woman I’ve matured into today and refusing to victimize myself and detract from my own agency, I slowly and finally learned how accurate it was to say that “my Islam” had indeed been “hijacked” on the morning of September 11th.

Albeit emotionally jarring, my time at Guantanamo was especially rewarding. I witnessed a dramatic scene in which one defendant disclosed that he recognized his newly-assigned interpreter from the CIA black sites, I spoke with military JAGs who were zealously representing clients who had declared war on their ways of life, and I heard “torture” being spoken for the first time in the military courtroom in the wake of the Senate report’s release. The trip was one of nuance. I contended with the undeniable reality that representatives of the United States had employed brutal methods of torture on enemy combatants, that a military commission incorporates a number of procedural legal irregularities that often detract from American ideals of justice, and that despite how horrific the events that the “9/11-five” had allegedly perpetrated, they are undeniably entitled to internationally-recognized standards of due process during the time in which they remain in American custody.

Observing the 9/11 military commission hearings left me with much: an ability to both applaud and criticize elements of the legal process, a pride in the American commitment to due process that, although temporarily violated by our engagement in torture, would ultimately overcome, and most importantly, a recognition of the nuance of my identity: that I could be a Muslim-American woman proud to identify with every community that I hailed from, unafraid to criticize each community’s limitations, and only able to speak on behalf of myself, while no others speak on my behalf.