Guantanamo Voices (an excerpt)

IN SEPTEMBER, Abrams Books will publish Sarah Mirk’s stories of ten people who spent time at Guantánamo since the opening of Camp X-Ray in 2002, including service members, prisoners, and lawyers. A different artist illustrated each story, contributing to this oral history of the prison. Rather than asking simplistic, black-and-white questions, Guantánamo Voices seeks to document a history that’s happening right now, using the comics medium to create a deep, dynamic, and sincere understanding of how Guantánamo shapes our world.

In the excerpt presented in the following pages, illustrated by Omar Khouri, Moazzam Begg’s story begins. Begg, a British Pakistani man who owned an Islamic bookshop in England, was seized in his Islamabad home and eventually held at Guantánamo for three years. He was released in 2005 and never charged with a crime.