“Waiting on torture is worse than torture”

“Waiting on torture is worse than torture” gives a precise name to the strain of not knowing when interrogation will begin. In Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s account, the phrase surfaces as he lies awake and sleeps fitfully, caught between wanting the ordeal to begin and fearing what it may bring; even prayer is something he manages amid that uncertainty. Its force lies in the interval it identifies: the threat is already shaping the present before the next interrogation starts.

The Phrase in the Narrative

Slahi connects the thought to an Arabic proverb and says that he can confirm its truth. The surrounding passage gives that confirmation a particular circumstance: mosquitoes disturb his sleep, he wakes repeatedly, and he wonders why the interrogators do not come at once. His attention is fixed on the uncertain timing of what may happen next. The phrase therefore does more than describe fear; it marks waiting itself as an experience of detention.

The account does not make the phrase a general maxim detached from its scene. It emerges alongside small attempts to endure the night, including sleep and prayer, and leads into the guards’ summons to the interrogation room. That movement—from waiting, to waking, to being called—gives the expression its narrative shape without resolving the uncertainty that produced it.

Later Interrogation Records

The phrase belongs to one narrated episode, while other evidence in the book documents a later interrogation regime at Guantánamo. In fall 2003, Stuart Couch received intelligence reports attributed to Slahi and became suspicious about how they had been obtained. An investigator later gained access to the military interrogators’ files, including daily memoranda that recorded both what was said in sessions and how information was extracted.

Those records remained classified, but the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee’s inquiry and a U.S. Department of Justice review summarized the special interrogation and its planning. The committee described a staged removal by boat intended to make Slahi believe he had been taken away from the base, followed by transfer to an isolated hut at Camp Echo. The hut was prepared to reduce outside stimuli, with measures intended to keep light out and prevent visual contact with guards. These findings do not establish that the earlier scene and this later plan were the same episode; they show, in a separate setting, how the anticipation and disorientation described in the memoir sit within a documented system of interrogation.

Evidence, Redaction, and Uncertainty

The manuscript’s annotations address a related problem: how to read an account whose text has been censored. The editor describes the notes as speculations informed by the context around redactions, other passages in the manuscript, and publicly available sources, including declassified documents and government investigations. They are not presented as recovered original text or as a means of uncovering classified material. Where a proposed identification or explanation remains uncertain, the annotations acknowledge that uncertainty and the editor’s responsibility for any errors.

This distinction matters to the phrase’s place in the book. The narrated words are available to the reader, but the book’s account of interrogation also bears the marks of withheld information. The annotations offer context where public evidence permits it without claiming access to what remains hidden. In that editorial framework, the expression names the pressure of waiting, while the surrounding documentation makes visible the limits—and the possibilities—of reading a censored testimony.