by Shane Bauer
“How are you?” a voice melts in softly. “The interrogator is going to ask you some questions. I will write them down in English and you will write your answers.” I am trying to act relaxed, nonchalant, and confident of my innocence. The interrogator makes brief, bullish utterances. The translator hands me a piece of paper.
Q: What was your mission in coming to Iran? Who sent you here?
“I didn’t have any mission,” I say. “I never meant to come to Iran. Your guards waved us over the border—”
“Please just write your answer.”
It was either Iraqi Kurdistan or Lebanon. Sarah had a week off work at the American Language Institute in Damascus, where we’d been living for a year. Shon and Josh were visiting. We wanted to take a trip. Sarah and I loved Beirut, but it was just a few hours away. We could do that anytime. Why not go somewhere farther away, somewhere none of us had been? Sarah had wanted to go to Iraq for a while. I’d been to Baghdad and Fallujah as a journalist, but never to the “other Iraq.” Kurdistan is a different place, almost a different country. I’ve read write-ups on Kurdistan as a tourist destination in several publications, including the New York Times and Vanity Fair. About a million tourists go there every year.
It is one of the only pro-American parts of the Middle East, more so, I would say, than even Israel. Iraqi Kurdistan, one security contractor told me while I was in Baghdad last February, is where people like him go on vacation. That makes sense—the United States virtually handed Iraqi Kurds their autonomy. It was the least the Americans could do after what happened in 1991. That year, George H. W. Bush made a radio broadcast encouraging Iraq’s Kurds and Shiite Arabs to rise up against Saddam. Apparently believing they would be supported by the U.S. military, both peoples revolted. Saddam killed thousands of innocents and rebels. During the bulk of the massacre, the United States stood by. Eventually, the United States enforced a no-fly zone in the north and south of the country, ostensibly to allow the return of Shia and Kurdish refugees who fled the Iraqi military’s killing spree. The Iraqi troops withdrew from the north and a de facto Kurdish regional government was established, creating an autonomous region.
We visited Kurdistan because it is nothing like Iraq proper. At the border between Turkey and the Kurdish region, officials happily stamped our passports with tourist visas. To get a visa to Baghdad five months earlier, I had to transfer money from Damascus to my fixer so he could bribe officials. In Kurdistan, we visited a castle and ate pizza on the streets. We watched the city of Sulaimaniya erupt in festivities after Kurdistan’s parliamentary elections. I witnessed elections in Baghdad months earlier and the streets were dead. People were afraid of bombings and shootings. Driving was forbidden. In Kurdistan, there were fireworks and music and dancing. It was beautiful.
It seemed like everywhere we went during our first two days in Kurdistan, there were pictures of fantastic mountains on display, so when we arrived in Sulaimaniya on our second night, I asked our taxi driver if there were any places to hike. The place to go, he said enthusiastically, was Ahmed Awa. When we asked our hotel manager the same question, he gave the same answer, pointing to a large poster vaguely reminiscent of a Swiss hamlet with snowcapped mountains and poorly photoshopped waterfalls. “Ahmed Awa looks just like that,” he said. Next to the poster, taped to the wall, was a picture of a waving European-looking couple standing in front of a waterfall at the actual Ahmed Awa.
Sarah, Josh, and I wanted to go and camp overnight, but Shon didn’t. He thought it was a bad idea and, anyway, he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to spend more time in the city. He’d meet us there the next day, he told us.
We arrived at the waterfall at night. It was underwhelming—more a small stretch of rapids than a cascade—but in the Middle East, water is always an attraction. Hundreds of people were camping out with their families. Men played backgammon and poured tea out of thermoses while little children chased one another in and out of tents, squealing with laughter. The air smelled of the apple-flavored tobacco smoke of water pipes. Vendors sold tea and kebabs everywhere.
We asked a tea vendor if there was a trail we could hike on. He pointed us to a wide, well-used path hugging the stream. We walked by moonlight, hearing the music and laughter from below as we stepped carefully over protruding tree roots. The beginning of the trail was lined with stands, closed because of the late hour, displaying cowboy hats, flashlights, and those packets of crappy dry cookies for sale. We walked for a while, then found a soft spot to stop for the night.
In the morning, we hiked. The tea vendor probably didn’t expect we’d walk for hours.
A: We never meant to come to Iran. We had no mission in Iran. We had no mission at all. We were tourists in Iraqi Kurdistan. Our taxi driver and hotel manager recommended we go there. The driver’s number is in my phone. You can find the hotel. Call them. They’ll tell you.
I hand the paper back over my left shoulder. He reads it aloud in Farsi. The tongues of several mouths tut loudly in disapproval. He hands me another sheet of paper.
Q: What American officials did you meet with in Iraq?
There were those teenage soldiers on the Iraq-Turkey border I talked to with Josh and Shon, but I wouldn’t call them officials. They were sitting, looking bored on their Stryker.
“Where are you from?”
“Mississippi. You?”
“California.”
“California?! What are you doing here?”
“We’re on vacation.”
“Vacation? You came here for a vacation?”
A: None.
More tutting.
Q: Iraqi officials have said that the police warned you not to come near Iran. And an Iraqi newspaper said that you were spies.
The spy part doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been detained for short periods a number of times in the Middle East on suspicion of espionage. It’s the default allegation against any foreigner doing something unusual. In Iraq, each political faction has a newspaper, and newspapers in the Middle East aren’t exactly known for checking their facts. But what is this about the police? Did he make that up, or did the local police department quickly drum up a story to cover its ass?
A: The word Iran was never mentioned to us during our three days in Iraq. Police never warned us about anything.
Q: You were carrying with you a compass, a map, a GPS, and a professional camera. Why?
A: I am a photographer and I carry my camera everywhere I go. I take pictures all the time. I was taking pictures of our hiking trip. Josh had a compass on him from his travels before. I didn’t have a GPS. I think you are talking about my iPod. That is a music player. We didn’t have a map either.
Q: How do you know Josh?
We met six years ago. We were both twenty-one. It was summer, and I had just come back from Yemen, where I had been studying Arabic, and found myself in the backyard of a West Oakland house with tall unkempt grass and fruit trees bursting with figs and lemons. I sat around a picnic table with other people, and we ate pasta with fresh basil and drank cheap wine. Could I park my RV in the driveway of their collective house and live there? Sure, they said.
A few days later, I drove the lumbering thing in. Inside the house, I found some people holding carrots and chatting over a bucket of peanut butter. I grabbed a carrot and dunked it in the bucket. One of those people had a big laugh and a gentle demeanor and sang Bob Dylan under his breath often. He was so obsessed with Gandhi that he would sometimes drink olive oil straight because he read that Gandhi used to do it. In that kitchen the two of us would critique the United Nations and discuss the Middle East and how to manufacture peanut butter. We would go on hikes and camp on the beach. We would trade books and dance crazily.
A year later, he would move away, off to a sustainable living community to live and work at an environmental education center in Oregon and I’d go visit him in what seemed like a paradise after crack dealers started preying on our house in Oakland. We’d pick vegetables from his garden, gather
duck eggs, and talk about our lovers and our projects. As the years passed, we grew and changed. He went deep into the land and his little town, and I spread out into the world, making a modest living by selling stories to newspapers and magazines. I’d try for years to get him to come to the Arab world. Eventually he would and he would like it; then he would end up here, in Iran, in prison.
A: Josh and I lived together when we were in college.
Q: How do you know Sarah?
I think it started with a cup of Turkish coffee. I preferred to add a little sugar before the water boiled up—it brought out the coffee’s sweet notes and I wanted those notes to be delightful, but subtle. I served her the coffee on a little Bosnian tray, in my kitchen, pouring it from a tiny copper pot into a tiny cup. As we drank it that first time we met, we talked about the Middle East and her work with the Zapatista rebels in Mexico. We laughed a lot.
Or maybe it really started when we walked around a Bay Area suburb, along the border region where the city’s growth was checked by swampland. We walked out into the reeds and I pushed her back. She grabbed hold of me and pulled me down with her and we kissed. It wasn’t the first time we kissed, but it was the kind of kiss that makes you know that something is starting that will change you.
A: I met her in my early twenties. We went to antiwar protests together.
Q: What is your e-mail address and password?
A: I’m not giving you my e-mail password.
They put a stack of nine empty, numbered pages in front of me. “Tonight, when you are in your cell, we want you to write your complete biography.”
A guard grabs my arm gently to escort me out. The translator stops us. “I hope this will be cleared up very soon,” he says. “If it is true that you have protested against your government, then we want you to be free. You are a human being like me. I am going home to have dinner with my family and you deserve to do the same. I hope I don’t see you again.” He chuckles softly and puts his hand on my shoulder. The guard leads me away.
9. Sarah
“Sarah, eat this cookie.”
“Not until I see Josh and Shane.”
I’m sitting blindfolded in a school chair. A cookie sits on the desk in front of me. The interrogator is saying something to me—what is it? I have to force myself to focus.
“Do you think we care if you eat, Sarah?”
They do care. I know that much. I’ve been on hunger strike since they split us up two days ago. At first it was difficult, not eating, but I’m learning how to conserve my energy. When I stand up, my heart beats furiously in my chest, so I lie on my back on the floor most of the day, sleeping as much as I can. Terrible thoughts and images occupy my mind—my mom balled up on the floor screaming when she learns I’ve been captured, masked prison guards coming into my cell to rape me—but I’ve found ways to distract myself, like slowly going over multiplication tables in my head. I do this for hours at a time, starting with the twos and going up into the teens until I have to stop and start over again. When it becomes impossible to continue, I sing songs to myself in a whisper.
“Sarah, why did you come to the Middle East to live in Damascus?” the interrogator asks. “Don’t you miss your family? Your country?”
“Yes, of course I do. But it’s only for a couple of years. I can’t believe you’re asking me this—do you realize how scared and worried my family must be? It’s horrible what you’re doing. Why can’t I make a phone call and tell them I’m alive?”
It kills me that I can’t even comfort my mother. When I was six, she put everything we had—my toys, books, clothes, blankets, and the cat—into a small rental car and drove us from Chicago to Los Angeles. My dad loved me and had always been sweet to me, but their marriage was volatile and our home was often an unhealthy place. When bad arguments between my mom and dad began to lead to violence and injuries to my mom, she knew we had to leave. We had to start fresh.
My world exploded on that trip. Snaking through narrow canyons and valleys of wildflowers set me on fire. I remember arriving at the Grand Canyon, jumping out of the car, and running straight up to the edge. As the beauty engulfed me, I could feel my mom’s fear and hesitation tugging at me from behind like an invisible string. She never knew whether to discourage my wildness or not. She wanted to let me run free, to trust me. More than that, she wanted me to trust myself.
I snap back to the present. The interrogators have returned to the room. There are four or five of them, and they come and go so often, I’m only vaguely aware of their presence or absence. One of them—he seems like the boss—is pacing and talking angrily in Farsi. He seems to circle in close, then recede, as he continues ranting. They tell me if I eat their cookie, I can see Shane and Josh.
“Let me see them first—then I’ll eat.”
“Sarah, you say you are a teacher. Have you ever been to the Pentagon?”
“No, I’ve never even been to Washington, DC.”
“Please Sarah, tell the truth. How can you be a teacher, an educated person, and never go to the Pentagon? Describe to us just the lobby.”
“I’ve never been to the Pentagon. Teachers don’t go to the Pentagon!” I want to ask him if he’s ever left Iran, or if he even has a notion of what Iran is like outside this paranoid cabal. At times, their questions are so absurd, I almost have to stop myself from laughing, partially because I’m weak from not eating and partially because I can’t really convince myself this nightmare is real.
“Now, tell us who sent you to Iran. Who do you work for? Who pays you to go on these missions?”
“I never intended to come anywhere near Iran. You know this! We don’t even speak Farsi. Would a female spy be stupid enough to waltz into Iran without a headscarf?”
“Sarah, you crossed our border illegally. We need to know why.”
“The border isn’t even marked. We didn’t know we were near it. Do you even know exactly where it is?”
“Of course we do, Sarah.”
“Then why don’t you show me a map? If the border is the road, then your soldiers called us off that road, into Iran. We didn’t walk in by choice.”
Their story is ridiculous. Spies would have to be suicidal to enter Iran the way we did, without supplies, visas, or even basic knowledge of Farsi. Any suspicion they have will disintegrate once they verify what we’re telling them, right?
The guards always take Shane and me out of our cells to be interrogated at the same time. We’ve spent hours discussing our interrogation strategies. A few days after we were brought here, I discovered a plastic tube sticking out of the ceiling in my bathroom. When I stood up on my sink and spoke into it, the sound traveled to Shane’s cell, emerging from a similar tube that opened into his bathroom. I have to stand on the tips of my toes and cock my head at an almost impossible angle to reach it, but it works far better than the grate at the bottom of our cell doors we used at first. Also, it isn’t as close to the hallway where the guards walk by—so hopefully we won’t be caught.
They ask me to draw a map of our apartment in Damascus. “Sure,” I say. “Good idea. Why don’t you go there? You will find out that everything I’ve been saying is true. You will find a stack of ungraded papers on my desk, bookshelves full of books that criticize the U.S. government’s policies, criticize Israel. I’m sure the Syrian government would have no problem with you searching it.”
I hand over the dozen or so pages I’ve carefully written. Like switching channels, I tune out their conversation and listen to the birds outside the window. I grew up strong, like my mother wanted me to. It was hard to get by on a nurse’s salary and we struggled—but my mom made a good life for us in warm, beautiful California. I went to good schools, had lots of friends—but like any parent, she couldn’t protect me from the world forever. When I was sixteen, I was raped while on a date with a slightly older guy. It took me years to pull myself out of the self-loathing and depression that violation caused. I learned to love myself again, but the trauma of being a rape
survivor follows me everywhere.
Now, in prison, I have a hard time falling asleep because I’m afraid someone will come into my cell and catch me off-guard before I can defend myself. Even on the hike before we were captured, I was preoccupied by the thought of coming across soldiers or lone men on the trail. My fear seemed to contradict my objective knowledge of how safe and popular Iraqi Kurdistan is for tourists. I told myself I was overreacting and I still think I was, but maybe my fear was telling me something, like that we were simply too far from the other people camping by the waterfall, that we hadn’t seen a map detailed enough to tell us exactly where we were. Maybe I should have listened.
The translator stops speaking and there is silence. Then, I hear the slow, deliberate rasp of paper being torn. The interrogator throws the papers in a pile at my feet. I feel myself emotionally detaching from the situation; his angry voice sounds farther and farther away, in the background. In my mind I can see myself from a vantage point, high up on the ceiling, sitting blindfolded in this small wooden chair with four or five angry men circling me like vultures. Maybe every moment of my life, every hardship and challenge, has been in preparation for this. If my mother could talk to me right now, I know what she would say. She would tell me that I’m stronger than these assholes, that they can’t hurt me. All I need to do is believe in myself, in my ability to get through this, and I will.
“He says this is not useful to us, Sarah,” the translator says, almost apologetically. “You will have to write it again.”
10. Josh
“Deplorable means bad.” I answer my interrogator, “When I say Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is deplorable, I am saying Israel treats the Palestinians badly.” I’m acting civilly, but I want to scream at them, “I’m not the enemy you think I am!” Why are they asking me about the Palestinians? We both oppose American support of Israel. But these guys don’t care. To them, I’m an American, and America threatens to attack Iran. America slaps sanctions on them, supports Middle East dictators, bombs their neighbors, and arms the Israelis. To them, I am my government.