An effort of will was required by me to sit through the recent television showing of Michael Winterbottom's film The Road to Guantánamo, and I fear that the film may well have proved over-strong meat for many viewers. Based partly on interviews given by three British men – known as the Tipton Three – who survived over two years' incarceration in the notorious prison, the film vividly recreates the events that led to their capture and the subsequent wrongful imprisonment without trial.
The story begins in 2001 when Asif Iqbal sets off from the Midlands, to travel to Pakistan where he will meet and marry his intended bride. He is accompanied by three friends and at some time on the journey the men decide to go to Afghanistan, where they are caught up in the bombing of the country by US Forces. It was not quite clear to me why this diversion was made, perhaps simple curiosity, but it turned out to be a disastrous decision.
One of the friends disappears and is never seen again.
In the film we see the men captured and then herded into metal containers on lorries, to be transported across country. The men are crammed together in conditions that would be inexcusable for cattle going to the slaughter house – and, as was probably intended by the director, this scene made one think of the transport of Jews to the concentration camps in World War 2. One despairs that humanity seems to have learned so little over the intervening years. The men are then flown to Cuba and incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay prison, where they are held without trial for over two years.
There the Americans subject their prisoners to treatment that, without doubt, amounts to torture. In one almost unbearable scene, in order to extract a confession from prisoners, the prison guards chain them, in a crouching position, to the floor of their wire cages, while blinding lights flash and heavy rock music pounds out at an ear-splitting volume.
In March 2003 Asif Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed, and Shafiq Rasul were released without charge and returned to England, left to pick up their lives in whatever way they could. I imagine that their part in recreating their experiences and the making of The Road to Guantánamo must have been cathartic for them and may have helped them to recover some sense of identity, after experiencing a form of ‘hell on earth’. At this time in our history we seem to have the nightmare scenario where ordinary human values have been overridden in a desire to extract maximum revenge for the deaths caused by acts of terrorism, and, most centrally, for those lives lost in the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on the 11th September 2001.
During the week in which The Road to Guantánamo was screened by Channel Four, a moving documentary film was shown on BBC TV which explored the lives, behaviour, and society of the Bonobo Apes, a species mainly to be found in the great rain forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
These utterly delightful creatures are apparently a throw-back to our own ancestors and they are a salutary reminder of how much nicer we might have turned out to be. Certainly, the Bonobos could teach us a thing or two about how to live together peaceably. Members of the group care for each other, and in one instance the group is filmed taking turns to look after a small orphaned ape, whom male and female Bonobos alike feed and comfort. Not without reason are the Bonobos known as ‘The Good Ape.’ I am no sociologist but I feel that it is not a coincidence that the female of the species is the dominant influence in the group, and that maternal love and physical contact between the creatures are an important aspect of their society. The documentary ends with the almost complete destruction of the Bonobo habitat, ravaged during the civil war that raged in the Congo, in which time much of the forest was destroyed and the apes killed to provide food for humans. However, it seems that a glimmer of hope remains. Since the war ended a few surviving Bonobos have been found, which leads one to believe that one day that extraordinary, peaceable society may once again thrive.
The Road to Guantánamo will be on general release and available on video.
Recommended reading: Enemy Combatant:A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantánamo and Back by Moazzam Begg (Free Press, £18.99).
Cicely Herbert is one of the trio who founded and continue to run Poems on the Underground.
Cicely Herbert reviews the film The Road to Guantánamo, directed by Michael Winterbottom.