Quotessence
Home / Authors / Mansoor Adayfi

Mansoor Adayfi Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

Famous Mansoor Adayfi Quotes

“So, you Americans kidnap people from all over the world and then tell them, "you chose to be there"? I said. 'I was in Afghanistan. Yes, this is my fault. That doesn't give you the right to hold me forever without any rights or justice. To just forget about me. What about those men who were kidnapped from different countries and brought here? What do you tell them? What if some government kidnapped your son and held him without charges and no rights? What would you say to that?' I looked around at our block. 'Is this what American greatness is about?”

“I thought about all the moments we had experienced in this place that no one knew about. But I didn't want the world to just know about all the bad things that had happened to us. I wanted them to see who we were and how we had survived through friendship and brotherhood.”

“I helped negotiate the end to the hunger strike. I asked for better meals and time for rec. We got five extra minutes each week. I wasn't the general they thought I was--I wasn't even a leader--but I had found my role in this place: To feel the pain of others. To stick up for those who were beaten. And to try to make our lives better.”

“No one wanted to be a block leader because as soon as interrogators found out about them, they disappeared to interrogations and then to solitary confinement. The professor was smart and told brothers to make someone else block leader and he would advise them. So they asked me. I wasn't a leader. I wasn't an instigator. I was young and, like most men my age, I was still learning; I was clever, but not wise yet. I was just a simple tribal man who couldn't sit by and watch other men and boys get abused and mistreated.”