This is Guantánamo detainee Shaker Aamer’s short story about Colonel John Bogdan, the man who effectively ran the camps at Guantánamo Bay from June 2012 till June this year. Bogdan’s tenure was an unpopular one with detainees; the mass hunger strike that broke out at the start of 2013 was reportedly triggered by an aggressive crackdown ordered by Bogdan, which included intrusive genital searches and the use of rubber bullets to quell outbreaks of unrest in the prison.

In this fable, Shaker claims that Colonel Bogdan is a man without a nose.

–“Colonel John Bogdan Has No Nose,” by Shaker Aamer, Illustrations: Molly Crabapple, VICE