HERE AT GITMO the mistreatment and torture of us alleged jihadists starts the moment the minimally aggressive guards toss us in the wire cage. Okay, it isn't wire anymore. My cell, in the Delta 7 block, is more like a Best Western, except I have to share the hole-in-the-floor Asian toilet with three other guys. And everything has an arrow on it that points to Mecca. The ceiling points to Mecca. The flap in front of my government-issue jockey briefs points to Mecca. What genius thinks that's a help?

Life here is hard. I'm an older jihadist, age 55 according to legend, and even though the Americans know this I had to wait over two weeks for a colonoscopy. If that's not inhumane, what is? In America, if you don't get a colonoscopy when you turn 50, the next step is they grind you up for pet food. And then some insignificant unknown doctor tried to give me a flu shot, some little twerp right out of Havana Med School. But I knew my rights. I said, "I want Dr. Sanjay Gupta, from CNN!" I got him, too.

So Sanjay checked my heart, my lungs, and then held me down and cruelly vaccinated me for TB and meningitis along with the flu shot. Next he gave me a prostate exam that was the equivalent of water-boarding. I broke down and told Dr. Gupta everything. After that I was ready to read my Koran and write a letter to my sweetheart in Tora Bora, believe me. But two merciless guards made me go to the dentist instead. And that Satan of a dentist! Instead of allowing me to feel pain like a man, he shamed me into taking soothing painkillers so that his drill was a pleasure. When I go back in six months, he'll have me put on a dress and call me pet names, I know it. The disgrace will leave me seething for years.

The food here is very poisonous. Every day a cruel, fat little corporal comes around with three meals I am required to eat. But I say to hell with this daily fresh bread, these expertly prepared egg shavings and yogurt at breakfast, this succulent tuna and rice for lunch and fresh meat and veggies for dinner, and this homemade baklava at Ramadan. To hell with them! They force-feed us prisoners a regulation 4200 calories a day, and we're all ballooning up like Americans. No wonder some of us pull tricks and attack the guards from time to time. Some few prefer to hang themselves rather than eat another granola bar and slide into morbid obesity. And G-d forbid you should get indigestion at night. Try getting a Tums in this place after ten o'clock. You'd have more luck finding a New Testament in Saudi Arabia.

Now, the guards aren't allowed to beat us, not on the day shift anyway, but some will withhold soccer balls if they think we have been unruly. Do you know what it's like to withhold a soccer ball from a man like me? It's like depriving a Christian of his rock music. No Jars of Clay, no Pray for Rain, my little Christian. That's what no soccer ball is like for me. My psychotherapist says I'm going through a period of adjustment. I lie there in a La-Z-Boy with my legs shackled to the concrete floor and reply, "Sure I have to adjust. But look. If you're going to torture me, get it on. In al-Qaeda we don't make anybody wait to be tortured. That's rude."

After I talk to my therapist, I see my habeas lawyer. He says I may go before a military tribunal, or I may be released. When he tells me the tribunal is more likely, I scream, "What kind of attorney are you?" And he says, "Inexperienced." He asks me what I'd do if I were released. I tell him after I blow up New York I will go down south to help the Katrina victims. Any decent man would do as much, I say. He asks if I really think I can renounce terror. Sure, I tell him. I really want to be just like an American: a lobbyist, an evangelist, a gourmet. To that he says, "Get out of here."

I'm still waiting to get out. And when I see that attorney of mine again, who comes far too seldom, I'm going to sue him. Yes, serve papers on my own attorney. I know my rights. But I'll tell you more later. They're bringing the mail around, and I think I see an envelope from Tora Bora.


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