From The Memoirs Of A Non-Enemy Combatant Part 21

Boy arrived just before dawn. The cells in No are built for isolation. It is a solitary facility designed to break prisoners. Unlike the steel-caged blocks of Camp America, No's cells are made of concrete. Boy would spend the next several days in a four-foot-by-seven-foot concrete box with no natural light. There were two buckets, one for him to defecate in, and another to urinate. There was a spigot for cold water that was sometimes shut off, and a thin mat on the ground where he was to sleep. On the walls of Boy's cell was what appeared to be blood spatter. To him it must have looked like the last prisoner had been beaten to death.

He spent his first two days at Camp No in complete isolation and saw no one. At night, he was kept awake by the screams of other prisoners. Often it sounded as if men were being severely tortured; other times it sounded like a woman was being raped and beaten. These were simulations intended to break prisoners. Coco said this was an effective tactic the OGA interrogators used. They would claim that what the detainee was hearing was his wife or daughter in the adjacent cell when really it was a female interrogator acting out the part.

On November 13, day three of his isolation, Boy was visited by an OGA interrogator, a man in plain clothes. These interrogators, according to Coco, are usually white males in their midforties to late fifties. They wear black shoes with white socks. The OGA interrogated Boy on that day for approximately seven hours without break. Boy was then allowed to rest for one hour before the same interrogator returned, fresh and ready to begin again. The interrogator stayed on for another five to six hours before Boy was allowed to sleep. If there weren't screams keeping him awake, it was loud music coming from one of the neighboring cells.

The same interrogator visited Boy for three consecutive days on similar terms. One long stretch of interrogation without break, and then a second interval into the night. By day six of Boy's imprisonment in Camp No, Coco reported, the OGA interrogator seemed "extremely agitated." He was not as confident or alert as he was at the beginning of their sessions. Something seemed to be weighing on him, qualities Coco rarely detected in OGA interrogators at Camp No.

During Boy's final session, the same interrogator started early, at 0600, and came out of Boy's cell less than an hour later shaking his head. He looked "disturbed," according to Coco. The man walked down the dark corridor to where another interrogator on a break was smoking a cigarette. "This is a f.u.c.king reach around," Boy's interrogator said. "He doesn't know jack s.h.i.t."

The smoking man made a gesture with his shoulders, indifferent, and Boy's interrogator said, "Get him the f.u.c.k out of here."

From what I've been able to ascertain, Boy was moved to Camp Echo not on November 11, as the Pentagon records attest, but on November 18, one week later.

The cells in Echo are divided into two rooms. One makes.

up the prisoner's living quarters, with a bed and a toilet-sink combo. The other half holds a steel table, two chairs, and an I-bolt cemented to the ground. This is where Boy would eventually meet with his lawyer.

Boy was without the pen and paper he had occupied himself with in Delta. Everything he'd been permitted to keep with him in his old cell had been taken away, including the English copy of the Qur'an that once belonged to the prisoner David Hicks. There were no longer any guards for Boy to converse with. And no one else could be heard on his new cell block. On November 27, after several grueling days in extreme isolation, and stripped of his ability to write or communicate with anyone, Boy tried to take his own life.

Using his towel and strips of cloth from a white undershirt, he fashioned a noose and tied it to the bars dividing the two rooms of his cell. He stuffed the remaining fabric into his mouth to stifle any noise he would make during the act.

When the guards, who routinely checked in on each prisoner every ten minutes, found Boy, he was still alive, struggling to hold on to the noose around his neck. He had one foot toeing the edge of the bed, barely keeping his body aloft.

The guards rushed in and cut him down.

He spent only two days in the infirmary under evaluation until he was deemed fit to return to his cell in Echo.

Boy's Combatant Status Review Tribunal was again delayed.

Ted Catallano first met with Boy in early December 2006. BEHAVE was now everywhere, and the Pentagon could no longer delay Catallano's requests to meet with his client. They were, however, able to delay the consultation just enough so that Catallano had only a week to prepare Boy for the CSRT that had been rescheduled. Catallano would not be able to defend Boy, because it was a military proceeding, but he was notified that Boy would be defending himself. This worried Catallano for several reasons. The CSRTs had been under contention since they were created. They have been considered "mock trials" by many reputable litigators involved in these cases. Catallano has said, "At any other time these processes would be illegal. And any time we make movement in court to shut them down, the administration overrides the ruling, which in my opinion is a disgusting abuse of executive power." What worried him even more was that Boy refused to meet with his designated personal representative, a request the command at Guantanamo honored without fuss.

When Catallano arrived at Echo, he brought with him a hot mocha latte from Starbucks, a Big Mac, french fries, and a vanilla shake. All of these he had purchased on the opposite side of the bay, where the litigators stayed. On their first day together, Boy was somber and not readily willing to cooperate. He felt betrayed by his federal interrogator, Special Agent Spyro Papandakkas, and he was traumatized by his time in solitary confinement and the stressful techniques he had been exposed to. The idea of going over his defense with someone completely new, just days before his tribunal, exhausted Boy. "He wasn't happy to see me in the least," said Catallano. "This man had been broken. In my opinion he was not fit to defend himself in a tribunal. I pet.i.tioned to get us more time, but we were denied. I had to win him over in a very short time frame." Catallano tried to convince Boy to accept the military's counsel but was unsuccessful. So with only a few days left, Catallano started to prepare Boy for the trial of his life. At night he read a copy of Boy's confession, a doc.u.ment that had been submitted as evidence, known during the trial as Exhibit 3B. Their preparation had been curt, but by the end he felt confident that Boy could handle it. "He was a public figure who loved the limelight. Once I was able to get through to him, I knew he'd step up. We had prepared his opening and closing statements, which he wrote himself. And from his words alone, I knew he could do it."

The tribunal took place on December 9, 2006, in a makeshift courtroom inside a trailer. Catallano watched the proceedings on a black-and-white monitor in a neighboring trailer set up for journalists and lawyers. Boy met his personal representative for the first time on the morning of his CSRT as he arrived at the tribunal.

According to the allegations given at the Hernandez tribunal, Boy's detention was due to the following: (1) On October 9, 2006, a federal jury in Newark, New Jersey, found AHMED QURESHI guilty on five counts of terrorism and other felony charges, including his material support of a group of Somali terrorists known as the ASPCA (the Armed Somali People's Coalition of Autonomy). QURESHI was arrested in Newark, New Jersey, at a Sheraton hotel after bomb-making materials (ammonium nitrate fertilizer) were exchanged with a Cooperating Witness working with the FBI. (2) AHMED QURESHI stated that he cultivated a relationship with the ASPCA in order to sell bomb-making devices while having full knowledge of the group's intent: to target several highly populated s.p.a.ces and landmarks in and around New York City, including Bryant Park during Fashion Week, among others. QURESHI stated that he had hoped to retain a relationship with the Somalis, who were interested in obtaining more bomb-making materials and other weapons such as antiaircraft guns and Stinger missiles. QURESHI also stated that he had an inside man, a "sleeper," already working in the New York fashion industry. QURESHI identified the inside man as the Detainee, BOYET R. HERNANDEZ. QURESHI stated that HERNANDEZ was the "money" behind the "operation," that he controlled the funds and was known in certain groups as the "emir of Seventh Avenue." QURESHI also stated that HERNANDEZ was an a.s.sociate of BIN LADEN (sic).4 (3) A second Cooperating Witness stated that the Detainee planned to travel to Pakistan to acquire materials. On two separate occasions the CW transferred $50,000 United States dollars into the Detainee's business account for the Detainee.5 (4) QURESHI stated that the Detainee was the facilitator of these funding requests and that the Detainee knew about the ASPCA and their targets. (5) The Detainee sent a text message to QURESHI in 2004 that read: "Took Rudy back to sleeper cell and introduced her to my leader." (6) The Detainee made a diary entry in 2004 in which he stated he would "wage war" against other "designers" in the United States. (7) The Detainee made a second diary entry in 2004 in which he stated he would demolish Fashion Week if he were not permitted to show his collection "this time." (8) QURESHI stated that the Detainee told him on one occasion that he was working on a "counterattack" with BIN LADEN. (Let the record show at this time the similarity between the Detainee's publicist Benjamin Laden, aka Ben Laden, and OSAMA BIN LADEN. Any confusion in this count and previous counts will be clarified at this hearing.) It is Ted Catallano's opinion that all of the allegations made against Boy could have been cleared up in one afternoon at Federal Plaza and Boy's detention avoided entirely. But because the climate after 2005 was so volatile, paranoia was infectious, and actions were taken to the extreme. It was less than a year before Qureshi's arrest that four suicide bombers had attacked the London transit system using ingredients similar to what Qureshi had been dealing in: ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

"The allegations were absurd," said Catallano. "They would never have held up in a U.S. court of law. It was cleverly disguised hearsay all based on what one informant alleged while trying to save his own a.s.s. Qureshi was a known criminal p.r.o.ne to tell lies. They knew that from the beginning."

The tribunal lasted a week. The verdict was decided by the convening authority in Washington, not by the council of military personnel present at the hearing. With the pressure on, the convening authority made their decision within a few days. They determined that the evidence against Hernandez was insubstantial, and there was "no credible information that Hernandez provided material support to terrorist groups." Boy's status as a non-enemy combatant was made official. He would be returned home.

V.

I wrote to Ted Catallano while Boy was still awaiting transfer back to his home country of the Philippines. Catallano had me over to his office on West Twenty-fourth Street, close to the garment district. He informed me that the Pentagon had placed Boy under a gag order, one of the conditions of his release being that he not speak to the media about his experiences inside the prison for the term of one year. It was the government's way of stifling any further embarra.s.sment. I found it rather odd that America was keeping a wrongfully accused man under such a strict leash when he had been found innocent by their own tribunal. When I asked Catallano, he said, "It's a condition set by the military. We're working on getting it reversed. They've threatened to have him extradited back to the United States and prosecuted if he breaks the agreement."

"So he can't talk to me under any circ.u.mstances?" I asked. "Even as a friend?"

"Sure, he could talk to you as a friend, but if you were to publish anything that the Pentagon determined to be a breach of the agreement, they could go after him. And what they determine to be a breach of the agreement is exactly what's uncertain. You see, they've been making it up as they go along since the beginning. Each day we're waiting to see what they'll come up with next. Look at the Detainee Treatment Act. Look at the Military Commissions Act."

The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus pet.i.tions filed by prisoners. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that military commissions violated the Geneva Conventions signed in 1949, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 again authorized military commissions to try those accused of violations of the law of war, explicitly forbidding the invocation of the Geneva Conventions when executing the writ of habeas corpus.

However, at the time of my meeting with Catallano, I was unfamiliar with these developments.

"I'm unfamiliar," I admitted.

"Well, get familiar."

Catallano was rather gruff about the situation. He had jumped through hoop after hoop in the Hernandez case, and once he felt progress was being made, he'd suddenly get hit with a clause that had been reinterpreted by the administration, and which would delay his progress for months. Though he didn't say it, I could sense that Catallano thought my article trite and misguided. He felt I would be ignoring what was most important about the Hernandez case. And in a sense he was right. I was looking for the fashionable angle in Boy's story, a designer's life after prison.

"Just remember," he warned at the end of our meeting. "Whatever you write, now or a year from now, is going to be looked at by them. And a man's life hangs in the balance. So it'd better be worth it."

I still hadn't reached out to Boy directly. He had been moved to Camp Iguana, about a kilometer from Camp Delta, where non-enemy combatants were held while the United States negotiated for their release. This was a process that could take several months, even years. For instance, many Yemenis and Uighurs were stuck there indefinitely because of the political climate in their home countries. The State Department had to find hosts that would take them. Even though Iguana was lax by comparison to the other camps, a letter sent to Boy there would still need to pa.s.s inspection. I didn't want to endanger his release, considering the conditions of the gag order. And so I held off on any contact with him until he was home safe in the Philippines.

Boy spent eight weeks in Iguana, a short span considering how long the others were kept waiting. In Iguana the detainees wore white uniforms and lived together in communal cells. Many of them spoke English, having learned it from years spent in captivity. The camaraderie Boy experienced there was life changing, and he made many lasting friendships. He shared a cell with Abu Omar and Ha.s.san Khaliq, two journalists from Islamabad who had been arrested by the Pakistani authorities. They had each been critical of the Pakistani government and wrote about it regularly. Boy also shared the cell with Shafiq Raza and Moazzam Mu'allim, who'd been captured in Afghanistan and sold for bounties of two thousand dollars. Each of these men had served three to five years in Guantanamo Bay before they were determined to be non-enemy combatants.

On February 17, 2007, when Boy stepped off the plane in Manila at Ninoy Aquino International, he received a presidential homecoming. The airport had laid out a red carpet for his return and set up barricades along the length of the runway for the hundreds of journalists from all over the world. The flash photography alone was overwhelming. He was met by his mother, who was accompanied by Ted Catallano. Boy's father had pa.s.sed away earlier that year of stomach cancer. Ben Laden was there, standing alongside hundreds of extended family members on the tarmac to welcome him home. It was an emotional reunion for Boy. He walked arm in arm with his mother down the length of the red carpet, smiling and waving. Reporters shouted questions at him but he merely answered, "Thank you for coming." It was incredibly humid that night, and by the end of the carpet Boy looked as if he were going to collapse. Catallano and Laden helped Boy's mother carry him into the terminal. The headline the next day in the Philippine Examiner read MANILA'S BOY

RETURNS.

I sent an e-mail to Boy after his release, mentioning that I had been following his case from the day he was seized. "It's a gross injustice what has happened, and it makes me ashamed," I wrote. I expressed my deepest sympathy and let him know that if there was anything he needed from me, personally or professionally, he should not hesitate to ask.

My e-mail went unanswered.

Weeks later I received a letter under the guise of a pseudonym, a Ms. Ellie Nargelbach. It was an anagram for Gabrielle Chanel.

Dear Gil, It would please me greatly to meet with you, but as you probably already know, I am under strict orders to keep as quiet as a mouse. A travesty inhumaine! For now my dear friend, I leave you with the idea of coming to Manila to cover the opening of the new Balenciaga store in Makati next month. There's a wonderful cafe nearby with a man-made pond and a gondola. Listening to an opera over an espresso dopio, two can pretend they are in Milano watching all the tight a.s.ses. Just follow the sounds of Puccini to the northwest corridor of the plaza. The cafe is adjacent to Bubba Gump Shrimp.

Yours Truly, Ellie Nargelbach In my reply to Ellie Nargelbach I informed her that I would attend the Balenciaga opening the following month, only my letter was returned to me two weeks later. It was not an issue. I had already bought a ticket to Manila.

The journey from New York was nearly twenty-four hours. I transferred in Narita to an Egyptian airline. Flying coach on the connecting flight, I had little legroom, and after about half an hour my legs began to cramp. For the first time I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Boy during his detention. I had read that detainees were placed into stressful positions for the duration of their transport; they were chained low to the ground with blackout goggles and headphones, deprived of their perceptive senses. I then tried to picture Boy in his cell, the man I remembered. I decided that I wouldn't have made it. As a test, I tried to remain in my seat while my legs went numb. But this alone was too much for me, and I had to excuse myself in order to stand up. One cannot simulate the conditions he had to endure. Boy coming out on the other end, not just alive but living a life somewhere, was a tremendous example of human endurance.

It was early evening when he appeared at the rendezvous point. Cafe Italia was just as he had described it, on the edge of a man-made pond in a high-end shopping plaza. There was a dark Filipino man in pinstripe and a straw boater hat wading in a gondola. An opera, not Puccini, played through a set of speakers hidden in a palm tree high above the courtyard. I had arrived at the cafe early that afternoon, since he hadn't specified a time in his one and only letter as Ellie Nargelbach.

It was not easy to recognize him at first. He was remarkably light skinned, pale in complexion, and wearing a white A-line skirt and navy blouse that looked to be Vivienne Cho. He had on a pair of Chanel flats, and his legs were freshly shaven. His face was masked behind oval vintage sungla.s.ses, and a shoulder-length black wig with bangs covered his forehead. He looked like a sixties movie star. But what gave him away was the Marc Jacobs carryall. This was actually a men's item, a very expensive men's item, which I recognized.

He approached my table and put out his hand. "Ellie Nargelbach," he said, casually. "So glad you could make it."

I was already on my feet and took his hand. Was this Boy's latest incarnation or a paranoid precaution? I must admit it was hard to tell. I decided I would play along. "It's nice to finally see you," I said. "Would you care to join me?"

"I'd love to. But I can't stay long."

"Please, sit."

"Do you have a Kleenex?"

"I have a napkin."

"That'll do." Boy took the napkin and wiped his seat clean before sitting. He looked around the plaza, at the shoppers who circled with large shopping bags from Gucci and Louis Vuitton, then glanced across the pond at the man in the gondola.

"I'm sorry, can I have another napkin?" he asked. Boy patted each of his eyes underneath his sungla.s.ses. "I can't help it."

"It's fine," I said.

"I'm allergic to this place. The pollution. The smog. My skin is hideous."

"You look fine."

"Thank you, you're too kind."

He told me he had been suffering from insomnia as of late. Even the sleeping pills that he now took regularly would only put him out for two to three hours. Last week he had been awake for three consecutive days and had even considered having himself committed.

"We really shouldn't stay here," he said. "Best to get the check and go somewhere else."

He suggested we venture over to a club where his girlfriend, Star Von Trump, was performing that night. Von Trump was a transgender singer who performed at many of the city's popular karaoke clubs. She had a successful following in Manila.

I paid the check and we caught a taxi headed for The Fort, the city's Fort Bonifacio district (formerly Fort McKinley, a U.S. military base until 1949). In the cab Boy took off his sungla.s.ses. It was approaching twilight. The early evenings in Manila were otherworldly; the smog created a vibrant, almost radioactive sunset.

Boy directed the driver in Tagalog, and there was a moment of confusion. The driver seemed to be ignoring him, and Boy became irate and started to raise his voice.

"What did you say?" I asked, once we were moving.

"I called him an idiot."

"Why?"

"He called me one first. He's an a.s.shole and a h.o.m.ophobe. Aren't you?" Boy said to the driver.

"He proboked me, sir." the driver said, politely. "He proboked me."

"Oh shut up," said Boy. "Keep your eye on the road and drive."

The man did as he was told. The argument was over. The rosary beads dangling from the cab's rearview mirror swayed back and forth as we merged onto the highway. I tried to put on my seat belt, but the female part of the buckle was missing.

"Jesus saves."

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"Jesus saves," Boy repeated, pointing to an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a megachurch on the back of the driver's seat sandwiched between an ad for Reebok and a spectacular shot of Michael Jordan, air bound, advertising nothing.

Boy sat back in his seat and took off his wig. His hair was short, and I couldn't help but notice how thin it had gotten. I then tried to diffuse the tension in the cab by asking him about some of the designers we both knew. Boy immediately began to liven at the subject. He was like a different person when talking about fashion. The success of Vivienne Cho's fragrance line had surprised him. "It's actually quite good," he admitted. "They sell it here. She's in duty free." He admitted to buying a bottle for Von Trump. I told him Vivienne was planning to open several more stores in Singapore and Tokyo.

When the conversation turned to Boy's former cla.s.smate, Philip Tang, who had helped him significantly in New York, Boy just shook his head. He was bitter over something Tang had been quoted saying in the tabloids. "Oh, my fair-weather friend," Boy remarked. "I have so many of those now."

On the way to the club, Boy pointed out where he was living. It was a luxury apartment complex called Manhattan City, a small replica of Midtown Manhattan in the heart of The Fort. Manhattan City had five buildings, no one higher than thirty stories, each fashioned in the image of a different New York landmark. Boy's rented apartment was in the tallest one, a mini Empire State Building. There was also a mini Chrysler Building, a replica of Rockefeller Plaza, and even a MetLife building towering over an ambitious and fairly ornate Grand Central Terminal (actually a bus and train station called the GCT). Approaching The Fort district from the highway, one could see a mirage of the Midtown Manhattan skyline, perhaps as Boy had seen it from Queens on his first day in America.

He took out another wig from his carryall and admitted it was Von Trump's clothing he was wearing now. "I borrow from her when I have to go out. It's funny how I've made women's clothing for most of my life and I still can't get used to dressing like this."

"You felt you needed to disguise yourself when you came home?"

"No. It was after I got here. I moved in with my mother, into the room I grew up in. After a few weeks I began to notice that I was being followed by a white van wherever I went. If I went out shopping, there it was. One night I even saw it parked outside my family's house."

"Did you call the police?"

"I didn't question who it could have been. I just left Manila for Samar, the island where my mother was born. My family still has a house there on the bay. The setting was familiar in more ways than one. That's where I met Star, actually. She saved me, you know."

"How so?"

"I went out there with the intention of never coming back. My father had a banka that I had played in as a child. It's just a small d.i.n.ky boat. I planned to take it out into the bay as far as I could."

"And did you?"

"No. It wasn't even there anymore. The sea had washed it away. The caretaker had a banka, but I was too ashamed to take his only one. I offered to pay him for it, you know, but he said just take it. He wouldn't accept my money. He wanted to lend it to me. At this stage the idea was getting complicated. The whole point of the boat was that it would be there when I arrived."

"Were you followed to the island?"

"No. I saw no white van, nothing out of the ordinary. And then I met Star. She was performing at a small club that my cousin owned in Calbayog City. The next day I saw her on the beach from my window. I went down and said h.e.l.lo. She stayed back on the island, and soon my idea of going out into the bay started to fade. Star was pushing me to come back to Manila with her, but I was reluctant. Then one night, when we were playing around, trying on wigs-she has the most fabulous wig collection-I said all right. Though I decided I would need to take precautions."

"And is it working? Are you still being followed?"

"I've seen the van, but not as of late. I take several cars at a time. One to the mall, Greenbelt, or the Galleria, and then I switch cars, or switch wigs in cars. If I do this when I go out, they can't keep up with me. Coming here I took three cars just to be safe."

Boy put on a short brown wig, a pixie look. He straightened it using the driver's rearview mirror.

"We're here," he said.

In the club we watched a few run-of-the-mill drag queens perform top-forty pop songs. The selections were typical of any karaoke bar. Von Trump was the club's headliner that evening. She was like an ideal woman seen through the eyes of a middle-aged American tourist: olive complexion, perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a tall hourgla.s.s figure, long legs. Tonight she was blond; tomorrow she could be a redhead. She was beautiful in her own pretense. Though she didn't possess a great voice, she used it to a seductive effect. It bled s.e.xuality. She closed with "Besame Mucho" and did an encore of "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon." Now and again she looked over in Boy's direction. We didn't say much to each other during the set. We only watched and listened. After, Boy suggested we move to a private karaoke chamber where we could talk.

A hostess led us to Boy's favorite room. He was a regular. Von Trump had been performing at the club for several months now. She brought in the crowds, and Boy came once a week to watch the show.

The subject turned to his ex-girlfriend Mich.e.l.le Brewbaker, the aforementioned playwright whose debut, The Enemy at Home or: How I Fell for a Terrorist, enjoyed a short run on Broadway before the BEHAVE movement eclipsed it entirely. Boy, as one can tell from his treatment of Brewbaker in his confession, was rather unforgiving when speaking about her. "In prison I spent a lot of time thinking about the two of us."

Brewbaker insists she intended for the play's t.i.tle to be ironic. According to her, she didn't set out to make a grand statement on Boy's case. She thought she had written a topical character study of two people caught in the net of post-9/11 paranoia. Brewbaker, who is now seen as a right-wing darling, has made serious attempts to shake this image.

"Have you talked to her?"

"I'm too bitter to ever forgive Mich.e.l.le for writing that play."

With the remote control he chose a song by Chloe, the actress-singer-songwriter who starred in the Broadway production of The Enemy at Home. For a moment we just watched the words of her hit single, "Chas-t.i.tty," fill the screen over a slide show of photos from around the world: London, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Helsinki.