Just over a few years ago, I was working at a well known opticians in the heart of Britains Arabic community or “Sheesha central” also known as Edgware Road. A vibrant community, where most of the men wore simple traditional garments and showed very little sign of the great wealth they possessed, whilst the women flaunted the chance to show off designer bags, sunglasses and headscarves, almost as if they would be considered outcasts if they didn’t.
Being in the W2 area, the store was used to some of London’s rich and well known coming over. We also provided a hub for Nigerian businessmen, politicians and government officials whose dress was also simple, who came to the store as their first port of call to correct their vision (at this point might I add that most of these men had very little need for glasses, but I sense there was a need for expensive spectacles to enhance ones status in Nigeria, as they would spend hundreds on a couple of pairs without giving it a second thought). It was seldom a rare occurrence when two Nigerian families would bump into each other whilst in store, and start talking proudly about their most recent escapades in London.
There were a host of distinguished people that entered the store; each of them reminding me that regardless of how much fame had prevailed their lives, they were still only human. But one that keeps coming to mind when I look back at those days is one that will haunt me forever.
It was mid January time. With the Christmas and New Years spending having taken its toll, it was fairly quiet in store. A family entered. Husband and wife accompanied by their 5 young children. To most people they seemed like your regular family, despite the husband looking old enough to be a grandparent more so than a father. My manager was a man who was on the ball. He had a radar and seemed to know when somebody had entered the store. It was store protocol to approach anybody who walks through the door within 5 seconds, so often you would see the manager charging past the already waiting customers to greet and welcome any newcomers to the optical parade, or in layman terms, the optical “junglist massif”. This time there was barely anybody in the store, and we had been sorting the vast amounts of paperwork that was often left to the end of the day. He approached the family, welcomed them as asked how he could help. They had an appointment to see the optician, so he went to the computer to check the name and time, as well as other bits of information that were required. After confirming the appointment, he asked them to take a seat. My manager came over to me and showed me the name on the sheet he had just printed out. The name had no meaning to me whatsoever. He took me to the side and informed me that the man who was sat in the waiting area, peacefully smiling at his children who were playfully modelling ridiculously large glasses, had only a month earlier been released from the worlds most toughest detention facility – Guantanamo Bay.
Guantanamo Bay. Situated in an isolated area at the South Eastern tip of Cuba, it has been under the control of the US Navy since 1903. A prison that has more security personnel per person than some prisons employ on the whole. A prison that had $1 billion pumped into securing its perimeter. A prison that is so heavily secured that I imagine armed guards protect the security guards. You get the picture. I looked over at the man who was sat in quiet contemplation. A tall man, his shiny-grey hair was thin, long and wiry. His beard held the same characteristics. His face seemed devoid of the tanned colour it once appeared to have contained. His hands were big and frail. If you looked hard enough, you could see his hands still shaking from the memories of his incarceration.
I was asked to pre-screen this gentle giant. Pre-screening involves using two machines. The first gives you a basic prescription for the patient. The second checks the eye pressure. Both require a digital lens to look into the eye, which is shown on a mini-screen. I sat him down in the darkened room and asked him to place his chin on the chinrest. I navigated the first machine so I got the correct reflection of light that was needed to take an accurate reading. After taking the first reading, I realised that the screen in front of me showed the eye of a man who had just been held in complete captivity for the last 5 years, the eyes that were the window to the soul of a man who had experienced imprisonment beyond all imaginable degrees, the eyes that had held so much pain and hatred for so many years and were now trying to savour the freedom.
I hold firmly the belief that the eyes are the window of the soul. If you look deeply enough into somebody’s eyes, it holds the story of their life, the good times and the bad, the stresses and struggles, the love and hate. Have you ever experienced a time when you’ve bumped into a friend, looked them in the eye and noticed something wasn’t right? I think we can all relate to that. That is you looking through the window, into the soul. Well this story is no different. I sat and looked deeply into his eye. On the outside there was a moist glaze covering his eye. The veins in the eye were clearly showing, deep red in colour, protruding out from the iris. This wasn’t just the regular one or two veins. The eye was covered with them. The iris itself, although you could make out they were naturally dark brown in colour, had grey undertones forming. Looking deeper into the iris, into the eye as a whole, the years of torment and suffering this man had suffered stood out more than anything else. His eyes were reaching out in search for someone who could understand him. They were pleading for love and compassion. They were praying that he could just live life peacefully with his wife and children, and leave the past exactly where it happened – in the past.
I finished doing my various tests, and asked him to take a seat back in the waiting area whilst I took a reading from his previous pair of glasses. I use the term glasses loosely here, because the last pair he received were courtesy of the US Government whilst in confinement. They were rubber goggles, designed in such a way so that it contained no metal, presumably so the prisoners couldn’t take them apart and launch an attack using a few screws. After handing them back to him, he decided to take a walk around the store. I observed whilst he looked at various frames, because it seemed highly unlikely that he would like to stick to his current pair. I didn’t observe in any suspicious way, but more so out of curiosity. I wanted to know how a man that has been through what he has been through acts. What does he do now that he is not under 24-hour surveillance (again, I use that term loosely, because in reality you know we are being watch all the time)? He calmly walked to the men’s section, where he picked a few pairs to try on. Just from those actions you could see a humble man, who was fighting to find the peace and contentment within his life. He took the first frame, put them on, and looked at himself in the mirror. He took a little bit longer than most when looking at the mirror. It was at that moment I realised that this small action of trying on a pair of glasses was in fact a massive step to this gentleman becoming a part of regular society again. Such a simple action that I had taken for granted, was in fact an action that gave an individual a sense of being, a sense of worth, a sense that he belonged somewhere. No more would he be forced to wake up and be ready for inspection at a certain time. No more would he be watched like a hawk watches a field mouse. No more would he have to ask permission and receive clearance when he wants to use the toilet. In that extra second he took looking at himself in the mirror, I like to think that he thought all those things. That opening the arms of the spectacles represented the arms of society opening to welcome him back. And then the optician came and asked the gentleman to follow him to the testing room. The gentleman smiled, placed the glasses in the rack, and peacefully followed the optician.
I went home and me being me, Googled the gentleman’s name. I read the story of how he was arrested and incarcerated. I saw photos of him before he was locked away. Now he looks a shadow of his former self. A once well-fed, brightly tan skinned individual, with a sparkle in his eye, had lost that energy that projected out of him like rays from the sun. But he knew that he could start again, and surely enough, that energy will be back with him.
Once known as Guantanamo Detainee #905, the man born in Jericho, West Bank, who had flown to Gambia to finalise a peanut-oil business deal and whose only mistake it was to be carrying a battery charger in his hand luggage was in fact Jamil al-Banna. A Jordanian refugee living in the UK with his wife and 5 children, trying to lead a peaceful, normal life. Jamil al-Banna, a gentleman whose only link with a Terrorist organisation was to have known somebody who was suspected to have links with al-Qaeda. May you and your family find peace in freedom.
Being in the W2 area, the store was used to some of London’s rich and well known coming over. We also provided a hub for Nigerian businessmen, politicians and government officials whose dress was also simple, who came to the store as their first port of call to correct their vision (at this point might I add that most of these men had very little need for glasses, but I sense there was a need for expensive spectacles to enhance ones status in Nigeria, as they would spend hundreds on a couple of pairs without giving it a second thought). It was seldom a rare occurrence when two Nigerian families would bump into each other whilst in store, and start talking proudly about their most recent escapades in London.
There were a host of distinguished people that entered the store; each of them reminding me that regardless of how much fame had prevailed their lives, they were still only human. But one that keeps coming to mind when I look back at those days is one that will haunt me forever.
It was mid January time. With the Christmas and New Years spending having taken its toll, it was fairly quiet in store. A family entered. Husband and wife accompanied by their 5 young children. To most people they seemed like your regular family, despite the husband looking old enough to be a grandparent more so than a father. My manager was a man who was on the ball. He had a radar and seemed to know when somebody had entered the store. It was store protocol to approach anybody who walks through the door within 5 seconds, so often you would see the manager charging past the already waiting customers to greet and welcome any newcomers to the optical parade, or in layman terms, the optical “junglist massif”. This time there was barely anybody in the store, and we had been sorting the vast amounts of paperwork that was often left to the end of the day. He approached the family, welcomed them as asked how he could help. They had an appointment to see the optician, so he went to the computer to check the name and time, as well as other bits of information that were required. After confirming the appointment, he asked them to take a seat. My manager came over to me and showed me the name on the sheet he had just printed out. The name had no meaning to me whatsoever. He took me to the side and informed me that the man who was sat in the waiting area, peacefully smiling at his children who were playfully modelling ridiculously large glasses, had only a month earlier been released from the worlds most toughest detention facility – Guantanamo Bay.
Guantanamo Bay. Situated in an isolated area at the South Eastern tip of Cuba, it has been under the control of the US Navy since 1903. A prison that has more security personnel per person than some prisons employ on the whole. A prison that had $1 billion pumped into securing its perimeter. A prison that is so heavily secured that I imagine armed guards protect the security guards. You get the picture. I looked over at the man who was sat in quiet contemplation. A tall man, his shiny-grey hair was thin, long and wiry. His beard held the same characteristics. His face seemed devoid of the tanned colour it once appeared to have contained. His hands were big and frail. If you looked hard enough, you could see his hands still shaking from the memories of his incarceration.
I was asked to pre-screen this gentle giant. Pre-screening involves using two machines. The first gives you a basic prescription for the patient. The second checks the eye pressure. Both require a digital lens to look into the eye, which is shown on a mini-screen. I sat him down in the darkened room and asked him to place his chin on the chinrest. I navigated the first machine so I got the correct reflection of light that was needed to take an accurate reading. After taking the first reading, I realised that the screen in front of me showed the eye of a man who had just been held in complete captivity for the last 5 years, the eyes that were the window to the soul of a man who had experienced imprisonment beyond all imaginable degrees, the eyes that had held so much pain and hatred for so many years and were now trying to savour the freedom.
I hold firmly the belief that the eyes are the window of the soul. If you look deeply enough into somebody’s eyes, it holds the story of their life, the good times and the bad, the stresses and struggles, the love and hate. Have you ever experienced a time when you’ve bumped into a friend, looked them in the eye and noticed something wasn’t right? I think we can all relate to that. That is you looking through the window, into the soul. Well this story is no different. I sat and looked deeply into his eye. On the outside there was a moist glaze covering his eye. The veins in the eye were clearly showing, deep red in colour, protruding out from the iris. This wasn’t just the regular one or two veins. The eye was covered with them. The iris itself, although you could make out they were naturally dark brown in colour, had grey undertones forming. Looking deeper into the iris, into the eye as a whole, the years of torment and suffering this man had suffered stood out more than anything else. His eyes were reaching out in search for someone who could understand him. They were pleading for love and compassion. They were praying that he could just live life peacefully with his wife and children, and leave the past exactly where it happened – in the past.
I finished doing my various tests, and asked him to take a seat back in the waiting area whilst I took a reading from his previous pair of glasses. I use the term glasses loosely here, because the last pair he received were courtesy of the US Government whilst in confinement. They were rubber goggles, designed in such a way so that it contained no metal, presumably so the prisoners couldn’t take them apart and launch an attack using a few screws. After handing them back to him, he decided to take a walk around the store. I observed whilst he looked at various frames, because it seemed highly unlikely that he would like to stick to his current pair. I didn’t observe in any suspicious way, but more so out of curiosity. I wanted to know how a man that has been through what he has been through acts. What does he do now that he is not under 24-hour surveillance (again, I use that term loosely, because in reality you know we are being watch all the time)? He calmly walked to the men’s section, where he picked a few pairs to try on. Just from those actions you could see a humble man, who was fighting to find the peace and contentment within his life. He took the first frame, put them on, and looked at himself in the mirror. He took a little bit longer than most when looking at the mirror. It was at that moment I realised that this small action of trying on a pair of glasses was in fact a massive step to this gentleman becoming a part of regular society again. Such a simple action that I had taken for granted, was in fact an action that gave an individual a sense of being, a sense of worth, a sense that he belonged somewhere. No more would he be forced to wake up and be ready for inspection at a certain time. No more would he be watched like a hawk watches a field mouse. No more would he have to ask permission and receive clearance when he wants to use the toilet. In that extra second he took looking at himself in the mirror, I like to think that he thought all those things. That opening the arms of the spectacles represented the arms of society opening to welcome him back. And then the optician came and asked the gentleman to follow him to the testing room. The gentleman smiled, placed the glasses in the rack, and peacefully followed the optician.
I went home and me being me, Googled the gentleman’s name. I read the story of how he was arrested and incarcerated. I saw photos of him before he was locked away. Now he looks a shadow of his former self. A once well-fed, brightly tan skinned individual, with a sparkle in his eye, had lost that energy that projected out of him like rays from the sun. But he knew that he could start again, and surely enough, that energy will be back with him.
Once known as Guantanamo Detainee #905, the man born in Jericho, West Bank, who had flown to Gambia to finalise a peanut-oil business deal and whose only mistake it was to be carrying a battery charger in his hand luggage was in fact Jamil al-Banna. A Jordanian refugee living in the UK with his wife and 5 children, trying to lead a peaceful, normal life. Jamil al-Banna, a gentleman whose only link with a Terrorist organisation was to have known somebody who was suspected to have links with al-Qaeda. May you and your family find peace in freedom.
Jamil al-Banna: Before and After.
