My Guantanamo Diary | Mahvish Khan | Talks at Google
58The Authors@Google program welcomed Mahvish Khan to Google's New York office to dicuss her debut book, "My Guantánamo Diary".
"Google got me to Gitmo," is the first line of the book, a young woman's odyssey as she enters the world of Guantanamo Bay Cuba as a translator for the teams of laywers defending the detainees there. Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Determined to bring the due process of law to the people imprisoned at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away.
For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage—as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan's story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is —and who we are.
This event took place on July 18, 2008.