“Compare it with the rat”

“Compare it with the rat” is the refrain of a Mauritanian folktale Mohamedou Ould Slahi invokes to describe the way a fragment of information can become the measure of everything. In the story, a man born blind gets one chance to see the world and sees a rat; afterward, he asks whether every new thing is bigger or smaller than that one glimpse. Slahi places the tale beside the repeated questioning about “Tea and Sugar,” making the rat a compact image of an inquiry trapped by its own point of reference.

The Folktale and Its Measure

The tale’s force lies in the mismatch between the scale of the world and the narrowness of the man’s experience. His comparison is not a second sighting or a growing body of knowledge: the rat remains his sole reference. When the story asks, “Compare it with the rat: Is it bigger? smaller?”, the repeated question conveys both the usefulness and the limit of comparison. It can sort what is encountered, but it cannot make the original glimpse comprehensive.

Slahi introduces the folktale after describing how U.S. interrogators continued to ask about “Tea and Sugar.” His answer, “I mean tea and sugar,” refuses to supply a hidden meaning for ordinary words. The juxtaposition lets the folktale do more than explain a phrase: it shows how a question can persist even when its subject has been answered literally, as if the original suspicion has become the only available measure.

Repetition and the Interrogation Record

Slahi says he cannot count how many times U.S. authorities asked him about the two words, or had other people ask him. He describes the words as having held the interrogators’ attention for more than four years, despite his insistence on their plain meaning. The duration and repetition make the exchange more than a passing misunderstanding: in his account, the inquiry keeps returning to its chosen clue rather than moving beyond it.

The rat story also sharpens the contrast between literal language and imposed interpretation. A blind man’s question is shaped by the one thing he has seen; the interrogation, as Slahi presents it, is shaped by a suspicion that gives two ordinary words exceptional weight. The expression does not establish what the words meant to others. Instead, it frames the interpretive problem: when a single clue becomes the standard, subsequent answers may be measured against the suspicion rather than considered on their own terms.

Testimony, Credibility, and the Limits of a Record

The expression resonates with the different ways Slahi’s statements appear in official settings. At a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, when asked whether U.S. authorities had abused him, he declined to answer, saying he did not have to answer if he was not forced to. The exchange records a refusal, not an account of what happened; its brevity stands apart from the fuller narrative he later said he wanted the board to understand.

At his 2005 Administrative Review Board hearing, after being allowed to meet with attorneys and write about his experience, Slahi spoke at greater length and with irony and wit. He asked the board to understand his story, explaining that understanding mattered to him whether or not he was released. The transcript, however, does not preserve the full account: as he began describing the summer of 2003 at Guantánamo Bay detention camp, the recording equipment malfunctioned, and the document substituted the board’s recollection for the lost section. The contrast between a request to be understood and a damaged record gives the folktale’s narrow glimpse a further relevance: what survives in a file may be only part of what a person tried to communicate.

The later prosecution record also complicates any reading of association as proof of action. Stuart Couch said that Slahi’s intelligence reports did not implicate him in an overt act in the conspiracy to attack the United States on September 11; Couch characterized Slahi’s knowledge of the people named as the principal basis for implicating him. No charge sheet was drawn up, and the evidence described in the account did not establish that the interrogation had uncovered participation in a criminal or terrorist act. The court’s account of the government’s detention rationale emphasized an oath of allegiance, association, and assistance, rather than fighting against the United States. These distinctions do not resolve every allegation, but they show why the difference between a clue, an association, and an act matters.

Narrative Significance

The folktale gives Slahi a way to describe a recurring imbalance: institutions can ask for an account while already possessing a frame that narrows how they hear it. In the “Tea and Sugar” exchange, the literal answer does not end the questioning; in the later hearings and legal record, a person’s words appear within transcripts, summaries, and evidentiary categories that preserve some things and omit others.

Slahi’s closing appeal asks readers to give his account the benefit of the doubt and calls for a proper judicial procedure in which he could present witnesses. The rat is therefore not evidence that resolves the dispute. It is an image of how evidence can be handled when one point of reference governs the rest: the question is not only what was seen, but whether the limits of that first glimpse are recognized.