Letters from Guantánamo Audiobook By Mansoor Adayfi, Antonio Aiello cover art

Letters from Guantánamo

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Letters from Guantánamo

By: Mansoor Adayfi, Antonio Aiello
Narrated by: Mansoor Adayfi, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Elias Khalil, Ibrahim El Helw
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About this listen

In weeks after the September 11 attacks, 18-year-old Mansoor Adayfi was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to US forces for bounty money. After months of interrogations, he was sent to the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as one of its first prisoners. Like the nearly 800 other men imprisoned at Guantanamo, Adayfi didn’t know why he was imprisoned or for how long. He had never seen a skyscraper and couldn’t imagine what the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center looked like, much less how they were destroyed.

At one point during his first days at Guantánamo, he was instructed to write a letter to his family. He knew interrogators would use whatever he wrote as leverage against him, so he wrote a fake letter to his family. That small act of rebellion made him feel human again and allowed him to address his captors in a way he couldn’t during interrogations. So Adayfi continued to write to his captors disguised as letters to the outside world. He wrote to the pope, space aliens, President Obama, Men’s Health Journal, the Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Donald Trump, and many, many others.

In this three-act production, we experience Adayfi’s coming of age and transformation from a willful and sardonic teenager accused of being an Al-Qaeda general into a hardened resistance fighter to a mature student and artist released after 15 years of imprisonment without ever being charged with a crime. In the story’s epilogue, Adayfi, now freed, finds catharsis by writing one final letter back to Guantánamo. Inspired and encouraged by Adayfi, others whose lives were turned upside down by Guantánamo write their own letters, including families of former prisoners, attorneys, CIA analysts, and former prisoners.

This unforgettable Audible Original brings you close to all the things that make us human—despair, humor, imagination, and an unwavering will to thrive in the most unimaginable circumstances.

©2024 Mansoor Adayfi (P)2024 Audible Originals, LLC.
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About the Creator

Mansoor is a writer, artist, human rights advocate, and former prisoner detained for over 14 years without charges or trial at Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp. He was resettled to Belgrade, Serbia, in 2016 as part of an agreement between the US and Serbian governments. His essays, op-eds, and columns have been published in/on The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Middle East Monitor, The New Arab, and Common Dreams, among others. He also contributed to the 2022 ECCHR publication Rupture and Reckoning—Guantanamo turns 20 and to the scholarly volume Witnessing Torture, published by Palgrave Press.
Adayfi wrote the introduction to "Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay," the art exhibition at John Jay College of Justice in New York City, helped produce the Whicker Prize-winning BBC radio documentary The Art of Now about art from Guantánamo, and was featured in the CBC podcast Love Me. In 2019, he won the Richard J. Margolis Award for nonfiction writers of social justice journalism. His critically acclaimed first book, Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo, was published in 2021 by Hachette and won the 2022 Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award. Together with his friend and collaborator, Antonio Aiello, he was a Sundance Institute Fellow in Episodic TV to work on From Guantánamo, With Love, a limited series TV show adapted from Don’t Forget Us Here, now in development.
Adayfi graduated with honors from the Nikola Tesla University Faculty of Engineering with a bachelor's degree in management. His thesis, "Rehabilitation and Integration of Former Guantanamo Prisoners into Social Life and the Labor Market," served as the basis of the Guantanamo Survivors Fund, which he co-founded with American attorneys and US-based NGOs. In 2023, he organized the Close Guantanamo Conference at the European Parliament. Mansoor is currently pursuing his master’s degree in project management.

About the Co-Author

Antonio Aiello is a writer, editor, and journalist who creates stories from the periphery of the mainstream. His work has appeared in/on The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, LitHub, Electric Literature, The Carolina Quarterly, and PEN America, among others. His interview with Don DeLillo was published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. As former Content Director and Editor at PEN America, he founded and edited the online literary series The Illustrated PEN, PEN Ten Interviews, the PEN Poetry Series, PEN/Guernica Flash, and the translation magazine Glossolalia. In collaboration with Princeton University, Aiello directed the NEH-funded digitization of PEN America's collection of rare and at-risk audio and video recordings dating back to 1966. More recently, he worked with his friend and collaborator, Mansoor Adafyi, on Adayfi's memoir, Don’t Forget Us Here, Lost and Found at Guantánamo, graphic narratives for The Nib and Guantanamo Voices, and numerous articles and opinion pieces. Together with Adayfi, Aiello is a Sundance Institute Fellow in Episodic TV, and adapted Don’t Forget Us Here into the limited series TV show From Guantánamo, With Love, now in development.

Dear Listener,

Why did I choose to tell this story now, in this way?
"I wrote this story now to remind you how the US Military Prison Camp at Guantánamo remains open after 22 years and still holds 30 prisoners. While we know men were tortured there, we continue to ask “Could Guantánamo have been more humane?” instead of “Why does Guantánamo even exist and why is it still open?” Guantánamo is a dark and scary place, but if you look closer, you will find friendship, love, and even art. This is what I want to share with you. Of the 779 men held there, only 10 were ever charged with crimes and only 1 was convicted. So, who were we? We were sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and so much more. I was a teenager when I arrived, stubborn and afraid. These letters offer an intimate and sometimes humorous glimpse of how I became a man over more than 14 years in prison. I always wrote my letters chained, sometimes on hunger strike, often in isolation cells. My letters are fragments of my soul and bear witness to a dark period in US history. Like me, they are lucky to have survived. I hope they inspire a deeper understanding of how resilient the human spirit is, and how hope triumphs over despair, light over darkness. With love from Guantánamo, Mansoor Adayfi, GTMO441"– Mansoor Adayfi, writer of Letters from Guantánamo

What listeners say about Letters from Guantánamo

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Astounding

As an American, I am ashamed at the treatment described in this book. The abuse described at Guantonomo Bay sounds just like slavery. I appreciate the resilience of the captives and the humor. An eye-opening sad book, but a story that must be told-all a part of American history like it or not.

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What do we stand for?

We are supposed to be liberating and helping those under tyranny. Stripping someone of their humanity in the ways described is not what the flag is supposed to stand for. Praying for healing in everyone and all families involved

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Abu Gharib 2.0

Here's one that I can give a good review and share. I always wanted to know what goes on inside. Now I know and I don't like it. You won't either. What was it like from a prisoner's point of view? Read on. How does it compare to the torture chamber Abu Ghraib? You be the judge? It's not in the news any more, is it still open? Ask the 30 remaining "enemy combatants" who are untried and unconvicted. How much does it cost to operate it today? read on.

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Masterful use of humor to explore a horror.

In this autobiographical audiobook, Letters from Guantanamo, author Mansur Ahmad Saad al-Dayfi, a former detainee, was ultimately found innocent after imprisonment without charges from 2002 to 2016. Although the US government contends that he might have been a low-level fighter, he has never waivered from his assertion that as a teenager, he was kidnaped for ransom by thugs, and when his family couldn't pay, he was sold to the Americans for the bounty offered for al-Qa'ida members.

Mr. Adayfi recounts his time in Guantanamo and the conditions he endured there, his hunger strike, and his forced release to Serbia, a country with a history of hostility to Muslims instead of repatriation to his native Yemen.

Early in his captivity, he is instructed to write a letter to his family. Suspecting that his captors want to imprison them, too, he writes a letter to a fake family, directing its content at the censor he knows will read it. The act of rebellion helps him cling to his humanity. This book springs from that letter. The epistolatory format provides a powerful vehicle for this autobiography, as is his plea for the release of many detainees who, like him, were rounded up or sold to the American forces in the days following the 911 attack--a time when many were ready to believe any accusation leveled against a young Muslim. Narrated in part by the author Mansoor Adayfi and co-author Antonio Aiello, it has a visceral impact and mixes the horror of Guantanamo with a touch of humor that only pathos can inspire.

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never knew

I have heard about this place but never knew of it. it's sad that America held those innocent people like that for 14 yrs!!! for nothing. SMH very good read just sad that amerikkka is like this

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Great method of storytelling

Took a horrible subject most avoid and presented it in a way that spoke right to your heart mind and consciousness

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Shameful Government

This was an amazing story. I don't know how do many can make it through without being filled with rage and bitterness. The US government is boundless in their shamelessness and complete disregard for humans; American or others.

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Brilliant, novel approach!

The way it was written - absolutely brilliant. Such a novel approach to such a gut-wrenching topic. I wish the author all the best

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Phenomenal!!

Wow!
I am in awe of this selection. It made me laugh, ponder, empathize, sympathize, rejoice. A must read for all of humanity.
The only negative review I read, described this audiobook as “despicable “ because of the lives lost on 9/11. The reviewer obviously did not listen to the story.
The author addresses 9/11.
I rate it a 10 out of 5 , all around!

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Can't say I am shocked

Great story. Highly recommend. Great example how a person can be victimized only because he is from different culture. Hearing how he was interrogated makes SS soldiers look like real gentlemem.

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