Mauritania
The imagery of Mauritania is Slahi's normal setting for his whole life, but once his time in the hands of US intelligence had begun, the imagery only occurs to him through memory. His extreme torture happens in the same lifetime as his life in Mauritania, but it is hard for him to fathom that. The memories of Mauritania are bitter and confusing, because he is hopeless to return. His mother dies while he is trapped in Guantanamo.
Torture
The imagery of torture is depicted in this memoir. Sensory overload, brutal violence, strange, exotic types of punishment, and emotional humiliation were just some of the ways that the US government sought to extort him of information about Al Qa'eda. Slahi maintains that he had never had any involvement with Al Qa'eda, raising a serious question about this torture: did the government get the wrong guy? In any case, the torture is unjust, because he was denied due process.
The missing imagery of due process
The most important imagery in the memoir is the one that isn't there. Where is the indictment? What are Slahi's charges? It's kind of hard to fathom that the government kept him for fourteen years without ever bringing him into a courtroom to hear his charges or to stand trial. There was never evidence presented to him. He never had a lawyer who defended him against the government. This imagery speaks of the outlandish mistakes that were caused by paranoia following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Censorship
One of the most bone-chilling kinds of imagery in the book are the thick black bands that obscure Slahi's memoir whenever he tells something the US government decides too unsavory to share. The censorship is bold and plain. The lines that are erased from his memoir are obviously not information that the censor wanted to include, so the reader can know that perhaps the worst parts of his treatment are being hidden from the public eye.
