On the fifteenth evening of Ramadan in a suburb of Belize Metropolis, Majid Khan and his household of 4 sat down for a standard iftar meal to interrupt the daylight quick. There was a leg of a lamb that Majid, a former Guantánamo detainee, had slaughtered himself, sweets introduced by a sister in Maryland, dates from Saudi Arabia.
The temper was a bit boisterous, however not sufficient to disrupt the sleep of child Hamza, who was born two weeks earlier at a hospital within the Central American metropolis. The speak was small, about whether or not the biryani dish was too spicy and the way the lamb was completely roasted.
These are mundane issues, made extra significant as a result of Majid Khan, a former courier for Al Qaeda, was celebrating along with his spouse Rabia and daughter Manaal of their first dwelling collectively, in Belize, their new adoptive homeland.
For 20 years, this household meal was not doable. After the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Khan joined Al Qaeda, agreed to turn out to be a suicide bomber and delivered $50,000 that might be utilized in a lethal lodge bombing in Indonesia. For his crimes, he was held prisoner by america, tortured by the C.I.A. after which imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. He pleaded responsible and have become a authorities cooperator — and, all that point, his spouse waited for him in Pakistan.
“I used to be ready for 20 years for him,” Rabia Khan mentioned with a sigh of contentment. “Everybody mentioned, ‘You’re courageous. You’re robust.’” The circumstances required it. “Now I say to Majid, ‘It’s all on you, not on me.’”
Massive life questions await this household. Will Majid, 44, make a go of his nascent import enterprise of terra cotta pots? Will Rabia, 40, must take child Hamza to Mexico to see a specialist for a kidney situation? The place will Manaal, 20, go to school after which turn out to be a dentist?
However different struggles loom bigger.
Majid nonetheless wants to search out well being take care of the harm he suffered within the C.I.A.’s secret abroad prisons. He has but to suit into the nation that took in his household. He has been unable to open a checking account, due to his previous.
“Life is a take a look at,” he mentioned, describing himself as a glass-half-full man. He sees the subsequent chapter of his life as a possibility to make issues proper. He was damage, he mentioned, and did issues that damage others. He punctuates his remarks with “Might God forgive.”
Even among the many 750 males and boys who’ve handed by means of the jail at Guantánamo, Majid Khan all the time stood aside.
A Pakistani, he went to highschool within the suburbs of Baltimore and have become radicalized there after the demise of his mom in 2001. He left for Pakistan that 12 months, after the Sept. 11 assaults, at age 21, and wed Rabia in an organized marriage. He additionally joined with members of Al Qaeda, amongst them males who’re accused of plotting the Sept. 11 assaults, and was recruited to be a suicide bomber in a never-realized assault on the president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. His selections, he says, have been impetuous and flawed.
He was the primary prisoner who was tortured in C.I.A. custody to plead responsible to battle crimes, almost a decade into his detention as a “excessive worth detainee.” He spent extra years remoted from different detainees than every other prisoner, a lot of that point as a authorities cooperator.
Sixteen months after a U.S. army jury condemned his remedy — calling it “a stain on the ethical fiber of America” — Belize allowed him to resettle there as a humanitarian gesture. At Belize’s insistence, america paid for his dwelling, automobile and telephone and supplied a stipend.
Rabia Khan spent these years as a single mom along with her mother and father and a houseful of sisters and brothers, nephews and nieces, elevating Manaal, their little one who was born after Majid’s seize.
At Guantánamo, he prayed alone, slept the times away and ate alone. “You bought used to it,” he mentioned. His Ramadan rations got here with three dates, typically a packet of honey.
They have been reunited two months after his launch. He met his daughter for the primary time within the V.I.P. lounge on the Belize airport. The husband and spouse who had been aside throughout their 20s and 30s didn’t really feel like strangers.
“I don’t know why,” Rabia mentioned. “Due to the letters, perhaps?”
Manaal confides that it has been an thrilling 12 months, beginning with the sudden information that the daddy she by no means met had been launched from jail. Eight weeks later, she and her mom traveled 48 hours — Karachi to Doha to New York to Miami to Belize Metropolis — and joined him.
There have been visits from her father’s household in america, sightseeing of vacationer spots alongside Belize’s Caribbean coast and now, a child brother — all of the makings of a most uncommon hole 12 months or two earlier than she goes to school.
She glides round her household’s three-bedroom home with a breezy air of possession. She has her first bed room to herself, now bedecked with strings of festive lights. She designed Hamza’s delivery announcement, with an image of a heart-shaped balloon. She despatched it out on her telephone from the hospital to household in three time zones simply minutes after his arrival.
Exterior the house, she and her mom put on robes and canopy their hair with a hijab and their faces with Covid masks, a contemporary model of the austere niqab. He drives the household automobile, a used Chevy Equinox.
“I’m a Pakistani man at coronary heart with slightly little bit of American topping on it,” he mentioned. “So I’m slightly feminist. However I do strictly imagine in Muslim modesty. And honor. I’ve to verify my daughter is modest till she will get married.”
The nation of Belize, with about 415,000 residents, is the dimensions of New Jersey, with about 5 % of its inhabitants. The official language is English, which helps. However for Majid Khan, a person in a rush, integrating has been a problem.
“He has but to sync with Belizean laissez-faire,” mentioned the chief of his mosque, Kaleem El-Amin, who goes by Brother Kaleem. “I believe he wants slightly extra time.”
Majid has not but arrange a storefront for his enterprise, promoting painted pots from Pakistan, or discovered a giant business purchaser.
A part of the issue isn’t any financial institution has been keen to open a global account for the person who delivered $50,000 to an affiliate of Al Qaeda, unaware, he mentioned, of its objective. He was already in U.S. custody by the point the cash was utilized in a bombing that killed a few dozen individuals at a Marriott Lodge in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Aug. 5, 2003.
Belize blames laws on world finance imposed after Sept. 11. A authorities official who mentioned the issue on the situation of anonymity as a result of it includes delicate diplomatic ties mentioned the difficulty was past the attain of the Belize authorities, calling it an “impediment” to Majid’s establishing a sustainable enterprise.
The household’s utilities are on the bank card of his father, who has visited for lengthy stretches. Any enterprise he does requires money and, typically, a Belizean accomplice.
If his spouse must take their child overseas for well being care, he can not accompany them. He has Belizean residency and a pathway to citizenship, however on the request of the U.S. authorities, he has no journey papers.
He additionally wants well being take care of a colorectal situation and again ache he blames on the years he was within the C.I.A. black websites, the place he was brutally interrogated, saved in solitary confinement and have become so despairing that he refused to eat. His American captors broke his starvation strike by infusing a “purée” of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins into his rectum, in accordance with a declassified doc.
His spouse has informed him that he typically thrashes in his sleep, he mentioned, however he remembers no nightmares. He had two free visits with a psychiatrist however selected to not proceed remedy, at $100 a go to. The physician had no experience within the trauma of torture and “didn’t know what jail life was like,” he mentioned.
“I must get patched up,” he mentioned. “Mentally, bodily.”
Every Friday, he makes the 30-minute drive to the mosque to hope in a neighborhood of Muslims, which was denied him throughout his time in U.S. custody. Some are Belizeans who transformed to Islam or their descendants. Others are immigrants, many from Sri Lanka.
The neighborhood welcomed him from Day 1, no questions requested, mentioned Brother Kaleem, the imam, who turned to Islam within the Nineteen Seventies and skilled in Saudi Arabia. That’s the Belizean approach — quiet, accepting.
“If he stays right here lengthy sufficient, perhaps his kids will perceive this place,” he mentioned.
Rabia Khan says her husband is a “softer” model of the person she married. In her phrases, he’s half American, half Pakistani, half Arab — an apt description.
He prefers California dates to the Saudi selection to interrupt a quick. He has a basketball hoop for when a nephew visits from the States. He calls American guests, together with one sufficiently old to be his mom, “Dude.”
For the vacation, he discovered a Belizean with livestock, introduced a ritual knife and slaughtered a sheep. Then the couple stashed the parts of their newly acquired deep freezer. Butchering was daunting. Again dwelling, a halal butcher did it.
One night earlier than dinner at a Lebanese-style restaurant, he known as the proprietor to ask if he might carry his personal lamb over. It was a spiritual factor, Majid defined, and known as it “kosher.” The restaurateur agreed.
When Majid talks about his life, his philosophy is just not not like what he informed a army jury in 2021. His actions with Al Qaeda damage individuals and have been flawed, he mentioned. Might God forgive him. So was the torture, which he described to the panel. It was his first public account of what was completed to him, and he mentioned he forgave his captors.
“The rationale I forgive is that I did a number of unhealthy issues,” he mentioned, sitting on his sofa, the child sleeping within the criminal of his arm. “The purpose is, I’ve no grudge. I might’ve been paralyzed for 20 years from a automobile accident. God determined, ‘I’m going to place that take a look at on you.’”
His time in detention was a wrestle, however a formative one. He realized that he could possibly be imply, impolite and write poetry. He additionally spent years away from the opposite detainees, within the firm of guards and federal brokers, who typically handed the time with poker video games and cigars.
One night, sitting alongside the Outdated Belize River, Rabia tells a narrative:
Majid had been lacking for years. His household didn’t know whether or not he was lifeless or alive till the White Home introduced in September 2006 that he was amongst a gaggle of C.I.A. prisoners moved to Guantánamo.
From there, in a second of deep despair, he wrote her a letter: You could have my permission to begin anew, to discover a new husband.
First she cried, she mentioned. She saved the message from her household. Then she despatched him a livid reply.
“She informed me that if I try this, I’ll by no means see Manaal,” he recalled with a shudder. “By no means.”
Manaal was born within the seventh month of his detention. He had no hopes of launch, had but to take duty for his crimes, cooperate with the U.S. authorities and plead responsible.
That got here later, in 2012, greater than a decade earlier than he could be freed in Belize.
