Dont Forget Us Here, Mansoor Adayfi
Dont Forget Us Here, Mansoor Adayfi
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Don't Forget Us Here
Lost and Found at Guantanamo

Author: Mansoor Adayfi

Narrator: Roxanna Hope Radja, Mansoor Adayfi

Unabridged: 12 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/17/2021


Synopsis

This moving, eye-opening memoir of an innocent man detained at Guantánamo Bay for fifteen years tells a story of humanity in the unlikeliest of places and an unprecedented look at life at Guantánamo.At the age of 18, Mansoor Adayfi left his home in Yemen for a cultural mission to Afghanistan. He never returned. Kidnapped by warlords and then sold to the US after 9/11, he was disappeared to Guantánamo Bay, where he spent the next 14 years as Detainee #441.
Don't Forget Us Here tells two coming-of-age stories in parallel: a makeshift island outpost becoming the world's most notorious prison and an innocent young man emerging from its darkness. Arriving as a stubborn teenager, Mansoor survived the camp's infamous interrogation program and became a feared and hardened resistance fighter leading prison riots and hunger strikes. With time though, he grew into the man nicknamed "Smiley Troublemaker": a student, writer, advocate, and historian. While at Guantánamo, he wrote a series of manuscripts he sent as letters to his attorneys, which he then transformed into this vital chronicle, in collaboration with award-winning writer Antonio Aiello. With unexpected warmth and empathy, Mansoor unwinds a narrative of fighting for hope and survival in unimaginable circumstances, illuminating the limitlessness of the human spirit. And through his own story, he also tells Guantánamo's story, offering an unprecedented window into one of the most secretive places on earth and the people—detainees and guards alike—who lived there with him. Twenty years after 9/11, Guantánamo remains open, and at a moment of due reckoning, Mansoor Adayfi helps us understand what actually happened there—both the horror and the beauty—a stunning record of an experience we cannot afford to forget.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Murtaza on September 01, 2021

Guantanamo Bay prison camp is still open today, a fact that is shocking after reading this account of the unfathomable cruelty and torture that has taken place since it opened at the start of the War on Terror. Mansoor Adayfi was taken to Guantanamo as a young man and spent all his twenties and much......more

Goodreads review by Zainab on February 26, 2022

Harrowing, heartbreaking, awe-inspiring, and rage-inducing. A must read about the horrific tortures of Guantanamo Bay - which continues to be operated with impunity by the American government.......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on August 14, 2021

Thank you, Mansoor Adayfi and Hachette Books for the opportunity to read this book. It releases August 18th, 2021. “Imagine if American boys, eighteen years old or even younger, had spent five, ten, twenty years in a foreign prison without being charged with a crime, where they are tortured, punished......more

Goodreads review by Umar on September 01, 2021

A powerful and infuriating book told from the vantage point of Mansoor Adayfi who is a Yemeni national imprisoned by the US for years at Guantanamo Bay. While there are some holes in this story, and it drifts at times, the final half of the book is extremely powerful. Every American should be ashame......more

Goodreads review by Cynthia on September 02, 2021

When Mansoor Adayfi was eighteen, he went to Afghanistan, believing he would return to his home country of Yemen in due time. That never happened. He was, instead, kidnapped by warlords and sold to the US - the lead up to a drawn out case of mistaken identity. He spent the next 14 years as a detaine......more


Quotes

"In this landmark work, Mansoor Adayfi gives us a guided tour through the nightmarish landscape of Guantánamo. He tells a tale of both casual cruelty and organized sadism that should make every American politician redden with shame. But this memoir offers much more than just a gruesome portrait of a bureaucracy gone berserk, for it describes the fierce resistance and ultimate redemption of an innocent Yemeni man consigned to a hellish prison. Let us hope that Don't Forget Us Here will spark a long overdue reckoning with the horrors of Guantánamo and its many victims."—Ron Chernow, former president of PEN America and bestselling author of Grant and Hamilton

"This is a wholly enthralling, relentlessly enraging, and unexpectedly funny book about one man caught in the absurdist world of the War on Terror. With his mordant wit and astonishing perseverance, Mansoor is impossible not to root for. This is a contemporary Unbroken with vital lessons for the American military-intelligence complex, exposing how an ostensibly moral nation becomes a state sponsor of torture."—Dave Eggers, Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

"An incredible story! I am grateful to this joyously heartbreaking book for reminding me of what it means to be not just human, but humane."
 —Azar Nafisi, bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

"Powerful…An important record of prisoner mistreatment as a national reckoning over Guantánamo continues to loom."—Kirkus (starred review)

"Searing...This poignant testament strikes a devastating chord."—Publishers Weekly

"Mansoor’s plight is unfathomable, but his strength most certainly is enviable. His powerful, unforgettable story is a must read in every way."—Booklist

"A profoundly moving and immensely important tribute to the intelligence, resilience, and humanity with which its author, Mansoor Adayfi, survived fourteen years as a detainee in the notorious Guantanamo prison camp."—Francine Prose, bestselling author of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

"After years of hearing and reading only the ‘official’ version of his story, as told by his captors, at last Mansoor himself speaks. Speaking at all after such experiences, which included 14 years of the most serious human rights violations and daily humiliations designed to break the human spirit, is a victory. Speaking as Mansoor does here, of the struggle of Guantánamo's prisoners to assert their humanity, turns the official story about these men on its head, and shows Guantánamo for what it is: a terrible shame and a pointless failure."—Mohamedou Ould Slahi, bestselling author of Guantánamo Diary

"A window of stunning humanity into a place meant to be kept forever secret."
 
 —Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications and author of A Hope More Powerful than the Sea

"A blistering, eloquent indictment of Guantánamo. Mansoor Adayfi vividly describes the abuses committed there and he writes powerfully about the decade and half he spent there."—Peter Bergen, bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden and The Longest War