What stands out the most, besides the dystopian horror of the events that unravel in Slahi’s life following the September 11th attacks, is Slahi’s own character. In his book, he writes of moments where he found hope and comfort — other inmates, a cup of tea. He writes about what it took to survive the beatings, sexual assaults and sleep deprivation. He describes his relationships with guards and his interpretations of the system that keeps and confines him. His assessments of the people he meets, his interrogators and guards, and their characters and personalities, are shrewd and complex. Guantánamo Diary is impressive for its literary qualities — it is a rare gift to be able to weave a story in your fourth language over hundreds of pages, yet Slahi writes compellingly and engagingly in the dominant language of his imprisonment.

In fact, the only awkwardness in the text comes from the weight of the redactions, which are an absurd paratextual theater. Often as not, the redactions were incomplete — their general content apparent from the context or the same name or date unredacted a few pages later on. In one instance, when Slahi describes breaking down, they redacted the word “tears.” Elsewhere half of the word rheumatism was blacked out as were most of the feminine pronouns throughout the text. Siems does his best to provide information on some of the redactions — the spaces of which can frequently be filled from available information from Slahi’s hearings (like obvious references to particular detainees or dates). They often offer insight into the Pentagon’s particular concerns in the text (for example, the presence and role of female guards or interrogators, as evidenced by redacted feminine pronouns), exposing rather than fully concealing.

Slahi has a gift for conveying not only the injustice of what has happened (and is happening) to him, but the absurdity of it. He wryly notes that his 1991 and 1992 involvement with Al Qaeda was for the sake of ousting Najibullah’s communist government in Afghanistan, an effort the US favored strongly. He chronicles his disbelief at the proceedings, and touchingly describes his early innocence about what being in US custody might mean for him. Throughout the text he faces over and over again the repetitive, never-ending interrogations, each covering the same the same ground as the last with no progress. Slahi inexplicably finds insight and compassion — writing about the confusion he sensed in his interrogators, and the chaotic impact of 9/11 on American counterterrorism efforts.

It is infuriating to witness, through Slahi, the stubborn insistence by interrogators of his guilt and complicity in terrorist plots — their wooden accusations and misinterpretations feeding indefensibly cruel measures. Their intractability might seem laughable if it did not come with such astounding consequences: an innocent man taken from his home and transported from prison to prison around the world without charge. Their central tautology remains: you are here, therefore you are a terrorist; you are a terrorist, therefore you are here.

Slahi portrays guards and interrogators from Senegal, Mauritania, Jordan, Guantanamo Bay, Canada and Germany, as at turns ignorant and cruel, flailing and vindictive — and sometimes uncomfortably human. The narrative’s surreal absurdity, its twists and turns always leading back to the same cell in Guantánamo, is worthy of Vonnegut or Kafka.

Slahi tells a Mauritanian folktale in which a man is plagued by a rooster who thinks he is an ear of corn. It is futile to convince the bird otherwise because you cannot talk to a rooster. “For years,” he writes, “I’ve been trying to convince the U.S. government that I am not corn.”