© 2024 WRVO Public Media
NPR News for Central New York
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Interpreter Details Detention In 'My Guantanamo'

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan — whose parents are Afghan immigrants — wanted to do something that would help both America and Afghanistan. She became an interpreter for lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Khan has chronicled her experiences in a new book, My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me.

"It's easy to mistreat something called No. 1154," Khan writes. "It's easy to shave its beard, to kick it around like an object, to spit on it, torture it, or make it cry ... It's harder to hate No. 1154 when you realize that he's more like you than he is different."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags