The Visitors
Visitors would come three times a day after every meal. They would come by the dozen and I would wait eagerly for them. I would sit with them, thoroughly enjoying their company. I spent long hours with them, and yet did not get bored. They would come and give us hope that life had not come to a halt. Every time I saw them, I felt comfortable. They walked so quickly that the guards didn’t know they were there, otherwise they would be eliminated.
I am talking about the wonderful nation of ants. These beautiful creatures would visit me in my steel prison, bringing hope and life. I secretly saved food for them in a corner. If the guards saw them they would either spray them with pesticide or crush them beneath their military boots. I would get angry, and shout at them, “Do not the ants have a right to life? They do not trouble you so why do you have to kill them?’ When the soldiers found out that we fed the ants, they punished us by cutting our rations. That didn’t stop me from keeping ants in my cell. I observed them and studied their way of life every day.
I would sometimes leave them a peanut, whenever available. I spilt the beans into halves and left each half on the floor with the flat side down. The ants would come and eat the entire bean from the inside leaving the skin as it had been left for them. If you saw it you wouldn’t know that the inside had been eaten until you turned it over to find it empty. I found it amusing. Whenever I put food in the corner, one of the ants would come to search. If it found food it would return to its friends and inform them, and show them the way. The ants all varied in the contribution to the work; some carried small pieces, and others carried pieces bigger than themselves back to their homes. I didn’t know that ants drank before, but now I would save them a few drops of sweet tea, which they would drink until they swelled up.
When the ants came to visit, life would creep back into my dead cell. I would feel hope instead of despair. Their presence in my company, however, was not free of danger, as the soldiers would come to inspect the cells, so I always feared for them. Before inspections I would blow towards them, which made them disperse, while I got rid of the food. They soon became accustomed to this puff of air, which became their warning signal, so that each time they felt it they realized danger was close and ran away. When the soldiers would return me back to my cell after the search, the first thing I would look for were ant bodies. When I didn’t find any I felt relieved, knowing that the ants had safely escaped.
- Ahmed Errachidi
[Ahmed Errachidi was held in extrajudicial detention in the US Guatanamo Bay detainment camps in Cuba for five years until his release in 2007. This piece is an excerpt from his memoir, A Handful of Walnuts will be published by Chatto & Windus in 2012. The excerpt was published in Granta.]