Come Hear An Excerpt From THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN

Edited by Sam Thielman

IT'S HERE. Nearly two years of reporting, drafting, successfully suing the FBI and general worrying have led me to this point: the completed draft of THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN. 

That's a misleading sentence. Drafting a book is not the same as completing a book. In reading through the entire text, I see it's missing one somewhat substantial aspect—were this music, I'd say I leave a minor theme underdeveloped and in need of emphasis—and it'll require a little more reporting. But you can only know what a text is missing once you've written the text. And I have written the text. Please clap. 

Every journalist—every honest journalist—realizes, upon reaching the end of a difficult story, how little they knew of the real story when they started it. That is well and truly the case with this book. Having covered Majid before starting, and having been at least peripherally aware of him since George W. Bush announced his transfer from CIA custody to Guantánamo Bay nearly 20 years ago, I thought I had a sense of what his story was. I know now I did not. I certainly did not know the story of his father, Ali, who is the other central character in this book. There are yet more characters I did not know were characters when I began writing it, and I had to travel more than halfway around the world to find them. 

I said when I began that this book is more ambitious than REIGN OF TERROR, my award-winning debut book that I think is frankly pretty good and prescient. That part turned out to be correct. I'm a different writer than I was when I began this project. Another thing I thought I knew at the outset but have now properly absorbed: My role is to present, contextualize and explore a story subject's contradictions; it is not to resolve them. And you will see many, many contradictions in this story—deeply human ones. 

This book takes a risk. That risk is whether an American audience is willing, 25 years after 9/11, to see someone who joined al-Qaeda and then experienced the worst depravity the CIA and the U.S. military could inflict, as a human being. I will gamble my reputation and my professional future on it. I will be at peace with the outcome. I know this story is capital-I Important, and I feel fortunate and grateful that I got the chance to tell it. 

There is much more that needs to be done to the manuscript before Penguin can publish this book. I may keep the subtitle you see above in the illustration, I may not. And there is no pre-order purchase link for TT&DoMK yet. As soon as there is, you will see me promoting that crucial page and asking FOREVER WARS readers to purchase the book in advance, an absolute necessity for the book's fortunes in today's publishing environment. 

But if you're in the New York area on Thursday, November 6, you'll have a chance to be one of the first people to hear an excerpt from it. 

I'm honored to say that at 7 p.m. on November 6, I'll join Tess Owen and Ryan D. Matthews for a reading at Pete's Candy Store on the theme of radicalization. It means everything to me to debut a portion of THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN in Brooklyn. I hope you'll join us for it. 

I should also add that the following week, I'll be part of another reading, this one at the Francis Kite Club on Avenue C, to honor the launch of Boston degenerate Luke O'Neil's excellent new fiction collection We Had It Coming. I'll be "in conversation" with Luke about the book, and it'll also feature readings from a murderer's row: Kylie Cheung, Edward Ongweso Jr., and Grace Robins-Somerville. That's at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12. 

My mind is spent right now from having completed the draft of a book, so I would be doing hackwork if I tried to write about the state of the world. You deserve better than that. Instead you should listen to a crucial episode of American Prestige featuring Alex Aviña discussing ICE as the convergence of the wars on terror, drugs and migrants. Alex provides a moving account of his family's migration to the U.S. that cuts through a whole lot of bullshit to indict America for creating the conditions that prompt so many millions to leave their homes, only to now be hunted as the Imperial Boomerang nears prey closer to the hand that threw it. And as Customs and Border Protection appears to be winning a power struggle with ICE, you'll want to hear Alex explain the heritage of CBP within both a Monroe Doctrine and a Cold War context. Derek Davison predicts in the episode that it will not be long before there is an ICE/CBP drone strike on an American city. This is a Chekhov's gun that has been waiting to go off since the Obama administration executed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (and then his teenage son; and then the Trump administration killed his eight-year old daughter) in 2011. When it goes off, remember the names David Barron and Marty Lederman, for they are the lawyers who chambered the round. 

There is no ceasefire when Israel can murder Palestinians with impunity. News organizations that report "a new test for the ceasefire" only reveal themselves as untrustworthy. Free Palestine, from the river to the sea. 

FOREVER WARS will return next week on something closer to its regular publication schedule. Until then, vote for Zohran Mamdani if you are in New York City and desire a future that you and your family can afford. Wherever you are, tap into your local resource and support networks to ensure that the imminent expiration of SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown does not kill or displace your neighbors. 

But before we go, read about Yaa’kub Ira Vijandre, a DACA recipient whom ICE has detained—and took into custody at gunpoint—for speaking out against ICE brutality, Israeli brutality and the abundant brutality of U.S. foreign policy. His lawyers allege that Yaa'kub's detention is also retaliation for his refusal to become a post-Oct. 7 informant. And naturally, the Trump administration is calling him a terror sympathizer. 

REIGN OF TERROR told you we would reach a place like this. THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN will reveal in much further detail what it means to reach the place we have reached. I thought I was writing a book about the past. I discovered that I had written a book about the future.