Yahdih Ould Slahi

Yahdih Ould Slahi, the youngest brother of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, emerges as both a witness to the family’s long uncertainty and one of its practical supports. When a newspaper disclosed that Mohamedou was in Guantánamo, Yahdih’s anger focused on the local authorities who had assured the family that his brother was in their custody and safe. In the years that followed, Yahdih took on a substantial share of the family’s responsibilities, sought to maintain contact with Mohamedou, and helped organize public calls for his release.

Identity and Family Responsibilities

Yahdih lives in Düsseldorf, where he is described as a German citizen and part of a North African community. His life in Germany is closely connected to the extended family in Nouakchott: many relatives live together in a multigenerational household, and Yahdih has assumed a large share of the responsibility for supporting them. The scale of that obligation is conveyed through Mohamedou’s 2004 hearing statement that he had a large family to feed, an estimate the account calls exaggerated but perhaps only by half. Yahdih had taken over Mohamedou’s position as the family’s European breadwinner, turning the older brother’s absence into both a practical burden and a continuing family concern.

The book presents this role through ordinary, particular encounters rather than through a formal account of family life. Over meals in a Moroccan restaurant on Ellerstraße, Yahdih and the narrator sorted and labeled photographs of siblings, in-laws, nieces, and nephews. The task makes visible the family network behind the phrase about having many mouths to feed: relatives are not an abstraction but a group whose images, names, and circumstances Yahdih helps keep in order. Around him are friends, mainly young Moroccans, many also German citizens. They speak Arabic, French, and German among themselves and try English with the narrator, laughing at one another’s mistakes.

The News of Mohamedou’s Disappearance

For almost a year, the family was led to believe that Mohamedou remained in Mauritanian custody. His older brother Hamoud regularly visited the security prison with clean clothes and money for meals. In fact, a week after Mohamedou had voluntarily gone to police headquarters, a CIA rendition flight had taken him to Jordan; later transfers brought him through Bagram Air Base to Guantánamo. The family continued paying for his supposed upkeep in the Nouakchott prison, while officials took the money and disclosed nothing about his location.

On October 28, 2002, Yahdih picked up that week’s Der Spiegel and read that Mohamedou had been held for months in Guantánamo. His response was anger at the Mauritanian authorities who had reassured the family, rather than at the United States. He repeatedly tried to tell his relatives what he had learned, but they were frightened by his accusations and hung up; he called back and began again. The episode shows how the secrecy surrounding Mohamedou’s transfers reached beyond the prison: even the family’s attempt to share newly discovered information became difficult under the pressure of fear and mistrust.

Life in Düsseldorf

Yahdih’s meetings with the narrator also establish a social world beyond the immediate work of supporting the family. At meals in the restaurant on Ellerstraße, friends moved among Arabic, French, German, and English. Yahdih told an immigrant’s joke about an aspiring hotel worker who answers an English test’s request to call someone over by saying, “Please come here,” and, when asked how to make the person leave, proposes going outside and saying the same thing. The anecdote gives the account a moment of shared humor, while its translation from Arabic for the friends and then for the narrator reflects the multilingual setting in which Yahdih lives.

These scenes sit alongside his continuing family duties rather than replacing them. The photographs he sorted with the narrator belonged largely to relatives in Nouakchott, while Yahdih himself lived in Germany and carried much of the family’s financial and public responsibility from there. The contrast helps explain why his role is described not merely as a brother’s concern: he had become a central link between a dispersed family and the man whose absence shaped its daily obligations.

Advocacy and Continuing Contact

Because activism can be risky in Mauritania, Yahdih assumed the family’s lead in advocating for Mohamedou’s release. He helped organize a demonstration outside the Presidential Palace of Mauritania in Nouakchott. Videos of the event show a public campaign involving more than the family alone; Yahdih pointed out that a minister of parliament was the featured speaker. His advocacy therefore appears as organized civic action, undertaken in a setting where the account explicitly notes the risks of activism.

Contact with Mohamedou remained limited. A few days before one visit, Yahdih had taken part in one of the two family calls allowed each year under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The calls connected Mohamedou with relatives in Nouakchott and with Yahdih in Germany. Yahdih had recently written to the organization asking that the allowance be increased to three calls annually. The request is modest in number but significant in circumstance: after years in which the family did not know where Mohamedou was, even a scheduled telephone conversation remained scarce and subject to an institutional arrangement.

The account does not give Yahdih a definitive resolution to his efforts. Instead, it leaves him in the continuing work of supporting relatives, organizing advocacy, and seeking more frequent contact. His place in the narrative is that of a family member who converts private uncertainty into practical and public action, while the limits on communication keep the separation from becoming a completed past.