Don't Forget Us Here cover art

Don't Forget Us Here

Lost and Found at Guantanamo

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Don't Forget Us Here

By: Mansoor Adayfi
Narrated by: Roxanna Hope Radja, Mansoor Adayfi
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About this listen

This moving, eye-opening memoir of an innocent man detained at Guantánamo Bay for 15 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.

©2021 Mansoor Adayfi (P)2021 Hachette Books
Biographies & Memoirs Freedom & Security United States Young Adult

Critic Reviews

"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)

"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 best-selling author of Grant and Hamilton)

"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. Once we read his story, we too must become committed, held accountable and responsible for what happened in Guantánamo, what is still happening and what might happen in the future. This book is about the horrendous reality of life for the Guantánamo detainees. But it is also about resilience in the face of such reality, and joy of being alive, preserving your sense of dignity and identity under the worst conditions. It is about how to create new spaces when all space has been confiscated. Finally it is about how to transcend Guantánamo, making us face up to what it means to be not human but also humane." (Azar Nafisi, best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran)

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A great read.

What a story! I think if it was me, I would have lost hope or lost the plot long ago, but he just kept holding on and believing. I hope he is happy and healing now. I watched an interview he did after reading this book, it was nice to see his smiley face. What an amazing person.

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Don’t forget us here

Wow, what a story. I can’t stop thinking about it and wondering how Mansoor is now. Highly recommend x

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