SEEING ‘GOOD BEHIND THE PAIN’
Omar Khadr answers questions after CIFF screening of Guantanamo’s Child
Some interviews take longer to get than others.
For Michelle Shephard, booking an interview with Omar Khadr took 13 years.
Shephard, a reporter at the Toronto Star, was at the Globe Theatre Friday night, unveiling Guantanamo’s Child, which she co-directed with Patrick Reed, an up-close-and-personal documentary about Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was sent to Guantanamo Bay as a teenager.
Not only does the film feature the first interview with Khadr since his capture in 2002, but Khadr himself, along with his lawyer (and co-star throughout Guantanamo’s Child) Dennis Edney and his wife Patricia joined Shephard and producer Peter Raymont at Friday night’s screening.
“In 2002, I started covering the Omar Khadr story,” she said, in an interview with the Herald prior to the screening, "because it was fascinating, because (it was the story of ) a 15-year-old Canadian at the centre of a huge international drama.
“I had no idea,” she said, "that drama would take me 13 years to tell, but thankfully I think it’s at its end.
“He’s incredibly articulate and serene,” said Shephard, "and seemingly quite well-adjusted.
“I’ve watched him over the years,” she said, “during the time he was at Guantanamo Bay, when the Pentagon didn’t allow any interviews — and once he came to Canada, we had to fight for two and a half more years to get access to him, because the Canadian government stopped us from doing interviews (with him)."
In the film, Khadr, now 28, opens up about how the experience of being seriously wounded, and incarcerated as a boy for over a decade, impacted him.
“It was really rewarding,” said Shephard, “to finally be able to sit down with him and ask the question, that I’d wanted to ask — and some of his answers surprised me. I felt he was frank, and he answered some questions in ways I didn’t expect — so we felt we were getting something genuine from him.”
Khadr took part in a 20 minute long question and answer session following the film, which included prolonged standing ovations for the Edneys and for Khadr.
When asked how he managed to survive spending almost half his life incarcerated, Khadr said he dealt the pain as it came, not allowing it to fester inside himself.
“I stopped putting faith in specific things,” he said. “I just looked at general things and one of those things is the goodness in people, and even if I was hurt by a particular person, I knew there was good behind that pain — so that could always help me and it made it easier for me (to live with it)."
Even more startling than Khadr’s seeming lack of bitterness over his treatment during his incarceration were other characters in Guantanamo’s Child who found themselves involved in the Khadr story, such as one young 22-year-old American who got shipped to Bagram, Afghanistan, where he became the lead interrogator of 15-yearold Canadian Omar Khadr.
“He did some horrendous things during interrogations,” said Shephard, “but he (also) said, when he saw Omar Khadr in custody, when he was grievously wounded and interrogated as a 15-year-old, (that) it was the first time he started to question his mission when he was there.”
One of the most memorable images in the film was of Edney and Khadr walking by a lake at Edney’s summer cottage, making plans to one day go fishing.
While Edney confessed that they hadn’t done any fishing yet, he added that the first thing Khadr did, upon arriving at the cottage from his release in prison, was to jump in the water, where he spent most of his first day.
Khadr said that was because there’s something very special about floating in water.
“Prison is a place where you’re really kind of held down,” he said, “and you almost really feel the gravity — everything is weighing you down. "For me, water is very symbolic," he said, "because it gives you this sense of weightlessness. I just enjoy it. It’s beautiful."