Other prisoners in neighbouring cells had noticed and, as they usually did when a detainee in the United States prison camp in Guantanamo Bay tried to kill himself, they raised a hue and cry in their many languages. It was the first time he attempted this in my block, then he was taken to another place.
He appeared to be unconscious. It was one of four suicide attempts by Mohammed while he was in Guantanamo. He was released in May and lives in the Swat Valley, on the far side of the Malakand Hills from Peshawar, a few dozen miles from Razaq's home. It is a district of God-fearing, conservative, cricket-loving yeomen, who are passionate about their land and liberty, and protective of their right to bear arms; the fields of sugar cane and tobacco are well tended, and prices in the gun shops are more reasonable than their counterparts in America.
In the mornings, a crocodile of small boys in black berets, walking to school, stretches for miles. Mohammed, who is 23 and a baker by trade, is 5ft 3in and light on his feet. He has been having nightmares ever since he came back. His face peers out from behind a lustrous black beard and long hair like a child hiding between the winter coats in a wardrobe. In Kandahar and Guantanamo, he was interrogated 10 times. His face only lights up when you ask about fishing. He has been doing a lot of it - mostly for trout - since his return.
The other day he caught a five-pounder with his Japanese rod. My physical and mental state isn't right. I'm a changed person," he says. Asked why he tried to commit suicide so often, Mohammed is vague. He talks about worries over troubles at home; his mother's health, his brother's business, and "my own problems". But his attempts at self-harm at Guantanamo began after he was confined, without explanation, in a sealed punishment cell for a month - not, it seems, because he had broken camp rules, but because the American authorities had nowhere else to put him while they were finishing new facilities.
In India Block, as the block of punishment cells is known, "there were no windows. There were four walls and a roof made of tin, a light bulb and an air conditioner. They put the air conditioning on and it was extremely cold. They would take away the blanket in the morning and bring it back in the evening. I was kept in this room for one month. We'd ask them: 'Is this a sort of a punishment? As treatment for Mohammed's suicidal state of mind, US medics injected him with an unknown drug, against his will.
