June 2008

The Other Side of Abu Ghraib - Part Two

The Yoga Teacher Goes to Istanbul

By Joy E. Stocke, Kim Nagy, and Chris Tiefel
With additional editing by Dan Zegart

PART TWO

When lawyers Susan Burke and Shereef Akeel traveled to Baghdad, Amman, and Istanbul to record testimony of the Abu Ghraib detainees, the full horror of what the former prisoners had lived through began to sink in.

Having filed a class action suit against private contractors Titan and CACI Corporations, charging the firms - whose employees worked as translators and interrogators at Abu Ghraib - with conspiring with the American military and civilian personnel to commit torture, Burke and Akeel now waded into the substance of the legal action, obtaining testimony from detainees who were never charged with any crime.

The lawyers listened as former prisoners told of being stomped and punched, covered in excrement, kept awake for days, and sodomized. Stories that deeply disturbed them.

“The stories began to take their toll,” says Burke. “Each time I returned home to my husband, my children and my practice, I realized that I had transferred what I was hearing onto myself.”

Burke turned to yoga for the strength she needed to record the detainee’s testimony and mount an uphill legal battle against Titan and CACI.

On a Saturday morning, after attending class with instructor Jennifer Schelter, Burke had an epiphany. Perhaps Schelter could offer her years of experience teaching breathing techniques and movement to help manage the stress and grief Burke was feeling.

“I thought if yoga is helping me so much, clearly Jennifer would be able to help the people taking testimony and the Abu Ghraib prisoners who had been hurt so badly,” says Burke. “So I asked Jennifer if she would consider coming with me.”

I only saw a few women in Abu Ghraib. One woman was without clothes. She was around thirty-four years old.

I heard women screaming. “Where are you, Iraqi people? Can you help?”

There were about ten boys between the ages of ten and eighteen. All were dressed. Sometimes they would give them a ball to play with in the middle of the hall.

There was a new prisoner—he was the bodyguard for Saddam Hussein. When he [the new prisoner] asked another prisoner for a biscuit, the bread was thrown across the room. A soldier saw the biscuit being thrown and said something I couldn’t understand. But he, the night soldier, told the morning soldier about the incident, so I was made to stand from morning to night. Even though I didn’t do it, I didn’t say anything.

Another soldier came. [When he came] I was standing and every four to five hours he told me to sleep. But after ten to fifteen minutes, he told me to get up.

I stayed there from 6am - 6pm. “Get back! Stand up!”[he shouted.]

So I stood against the wall.

Istanbul 2006 — More than a legal Team Taking Testimony

In August 2006, Schelter joined Burke, Akeel, artist Daniel Heyman, and filmmaker, Rory Kennedy (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) in Istanbul.

Schelter served as transcriber of detainee testimony. In a simple hotel room, Akeel or Burke asked difficult questions, Heyman sketched portraits, and interpreters translated as the detainees told their stories. Testimony could last one or two days.

“One by one, the detainees would be introduced, give their names, their ages, the amount of time they spent in Abu Ghraib,” says Schelter. “The lawyers would walk them through a series of questions, asking about their stories and what it was like for them in Abu Ghraib, starting with their abduction. What it was like for them to be taken from their homes usually at two in the morning.”

The group would break for lunch and then continue the depositions. Often the detainees were shown a binder full of photos depicting the torture. As they looked at the photos the detainees were asked questions, “Were you on this floor? Did you see this beating?”

They were asked if they could identify any of the people in the photographs.

Blowing Smoke Detainee Testimony

He was a black guy - took me out, cuffed me to the bars and put a hood on me. He brought a cigar, a long one, and he lit it. He lifted my hood, blew smoke at me, and then covered my face back up.

He pulled his gun out and was speaking and moved the gun up my body. I didn’t understand what he was saying. After four to five hours he told me to go to sleep. I’d fall asleep for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then he’d say, “Get up! Get up!”

Once I threw up. A doctor came and said, “There is no problem.”

And then the soldier said, “Get up! Go to the back!”

Istanbul, August 2006 Yoga By The Pool

On dark green Astroturf on the rooftop of the hotel, Jennifer Schelter began her morning yoga practice as she had done every morning since arriving in Istanbul. But today, she was surprised when two Iraqis who were working with Burke joined her.

“They said that they wanted to practice with me,” says Schelter. “They were wearing mirror sunglasses in which I could see the blue sky reflecting back at me.”

The men had never practiced yoga before, but Schelter saw that they were different than most beginners. “They didn’t giggle, or say things like. ’Don’t expect me to bend over and touch my toes!’” she says.

Breathing deep through their noses they stretched their spines toward the sky and Schelter wondered what they were thinking as they turned their faces to the sun. It was only 7:30 a.m., but already it was hot and sweat was dripping down their temples.

“Breathe in the sun,” she said.

Above their heads, she saw a single white feather floating in the sky.

“Do you guys see that feather?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said one. “I’ve been watching it.”

“Me too,” laughed the other. “I thought it was a bird!”

The feather floated higher and higher caught in an updraft and the pool filter gurgled, and somewhere below car alarms went off, and Schelter saw the men smiling.

For the final relaxation pose, Schelter helped them adjust their heads and necks so that they lay still. As she listened to their breath slow, she wondered how long had it been since they lay down in the warm sun without the threat of gunfire or bombs?

When they brought their hands to their chests for the closing of the practice, Schelter shared the Sanskrit word, Namaste, explaining that it means, the light in me honors and bows to the light in you.

“Namaste,” they repeated, and then one said, “That was…difficult.” He looked at Schelter, his eyes carrying a competitive twinkle. “How many times a day do you do yoga?”

“About two hours,” she said, “Depending on my teaching schedule and my own practice.”

“I know what yoga is,” he said. “It’s body prayer. I do it five times a day for 20 minutes. You want to see my yoga?”

He stood and brought his hands into prayer position. Bending his knees, he knelt and touched his forehead to the ground before standing up again.

“I do that five times a day. To Allah. It is my yoga.”

Art by Daniel Heyman

A Broken Toothbrush Detainee Testimony

They changed my cell and one night I found a broken toothbrush in it. I was tapping this broken toothbrush when the guard passed, and said, “What’s that?”

I showed him.

“Give me,” he said.

He was white and I didn’t know him. They brought the translator.

He asked, “Why is this with you?”

I told him, “It was here when I came.”

He told me, “You made it. You want to kill an American soldier with it!”

“How am I going to kill with a broken toothbrush?”

He said, “I worked in a place that makes knives. There is no difference between a knife and a toothbrush. We are going to take your clothes and sleeping things out. You have to be naked and punished.”

There were five, including two women. The women were sitting on a chair looking at me. Outside the cell, they cuffed my hands, back and feet. I was naked in front of them and they were talking and laughing. I think they were joking about the hair on my body.

You can’t imagine what it is like to have two ladies laughing at you. After four or five hours, the guard put me inside the cell. I was without covers, or a bed. I slept on the ground. It was very cold. I was fed Army food that had plastic over it. I covered my privates with the plastic. The guard saw this and said, “Give me that!”

So I was naked again.

Istanbul, August 2006, The Best of What Humanity has to Offer

"So many detainees just wanted to be listened to outside the context of the stories they were telling,” says Schelter. “We would go out to dinner and they would ask questions about the United States. They wanted to know simple things like, how could this happen?

They have had an image of the United States for so long as a wonderful place where opportunity and hope can thrive. And if we represent, like Susan says, 'The best of what humanity has to offer humanity,’ then we need to be available for difficult conversations that might not have answers.

In the process, I realized, that I had a stereotyped view about what an Arab man would say and think. Some of those stereotypes were created in Hollywood and became ingrained in me when I was a child. I thought when I went to Istanbul that I was an open person, and I guess I wasn’t so open."

Still, I felt like I could be an ambassador because I was neutral. I didn’t have any agenda with the detainees. I wasn’t the lawyer. I wasn’t the diplomat. I was simply an American citizen who got to say, 'I'm sorry."

The Enemy Really is our own Fear

When Shelter returned home, she found the welcome wasn’t what she had expected.

People would say, “Well, why were you helping terrorists?”

And Shelter would say, “You aren’t getting this. The misinformation surrounding the detainees is deceptive. It’s heartbreaking because it breeds hatred both ways.”

Schelter says that before she went to Istanbul, she thought of torture as disgusting, but like most Americans, it was removed from her life. Even the photographs seemed unreal. It was only when she sat listening to the men talk, it began to strike her that the torture committed at Abu Ghraib was real.

“What I’ve seen is that the detainees and me are no different,” she says. “We all have the opportunity to show up and to speak. That’s 99.9 % of it, and by doing that we can make a difference.

Gandhi said it best. ’The enemy really is our own fear.’”