Severe affliction and rebirth

Author's name: Fayez Al-Kandari

The last moments in Guantanamo were as difficult as the first. It is like a knife wound; entering is painful and leaving is painful, but the two pains are different. They share the anxiety of the unknown, like someone inside a tunnel who is apprehensive about the terrifying darkness that surrounds him, and someone leaving it who is worried about what the light hides within him. It is not surprising that the free man is afraid of the clanking of the chains, but it is surprising that the prisoner is afraid of the ululations of good tidings. How painful it is to stand on the threshold of freedom, anxious about it, like a small child who longs to walk, run, and jump, but is afraid of falling, hesitating between crawling and standing up. What I mention in this book actually happened. Stories that are closer to fiction, I lived them moment by moment for fourteen years, to put them in your hands without exaggeration or excess. If it reaches a living heart that seeks the truth and is sincere to it, then it was written for it. But if it encounters watchful eyes and hateful hearts that search for what condemns and look for what is bad, that see the oppressor’s tyranny but do not see, that hear the moaning of the oppressed but do not hear, and that the truth calls to them but they do not understand, rather they refuse to understand, then let them look for another book to amuse themselves with, for this book was not written for those who do not carry within themselves a human heart.