A Sliver of Light

by Shane Bauer

  After an intake physical with a nurse, Friend puts me in a cell alone. I take stock of my new surroundings. In some ways, it feels similar to my last cell: same size and same kind of blankets to sleep on. Also, no doorknobs, no light switches, no bed, a small vent in the wall. But unlike my last cell, this one has no bathroom.

  These details feel important. This place feels less well maintained. From the sink’s pipes, plumber’s tape hangs sloppily. Like the cheshbands, here, the carpet is looser. The doors have the same barred, six-by-six-inch window at face level, but here, they leave the window unlocked, allowing me to see the white wall across the corridor. The cell also has an English translation of the Quran. I open it.

  “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. All praise is due to Allah . . . Guide us to the right path. The path of whom thou has bestowed favors . . . not of those who have gone astray.” When I read the words “gone astray,” I think about the hike and put down the book.

  Why did they transfer us here? Is this new prison a temporary holding place before release or a long-term place of detention? I need to know what’s going on. I can’t do another thirty days. I yell into the hallway, “English! I need to speak English with someone.”

  Several different guards show up, but nobody speaks English.

  Finally, a swarthy, stocky man about my age stands before me expectantly. Unlike the other guards, he doesn’t seem impatient or anxious. There is something soothing about his presence.

  “Do you speak English? Where am I? What is happening here? What’s your name?”

  “This is Evin Prison. You arrived today,” he says calmly. “My name is Ehsan.”

  “Ehsan. Yeah, I know I arrived today, but how long do people normally stay here?”

  “Maybe one day.” My heart jumps with excitement as he pauses. His eyes meander along the walls before coming back to mine. “Or maybe one year.”

  20. Sarah

  She makes me take off all my clothes. The light from the hallway outlines her broad shoulders and stocky frame, all but filling the doorway.

  “Off,” she keeps saying in English, “off,” pointing to my hijab, jacket, pants, socks, and underwear.

  “Please,” I beg her, “please help me. I don’t know where I am.”

  “Off, off!” She’s young, probably in her early thirties, but her face is stony and plain as paper, an almost gray color that matches her gray suit.

  “Please,” I say again, beginning to cry, “I’m scared. Where have they taken my friend and my husband?” I’ve taken to calling Shane my husband in prison, in the hope that it will increase our chances of being allowed to see each other. It’s a habit I picked up while living in Syria, where most people don’t recognize long-term dating as a legitimate tie.

  Minutes ago, we thought we were being driven to freedom. When the car stopped in front of a new, much larger building, this woman, who told me her name was Nargess, immediately led me away from Shane and Josh to this cell.

  “No talk, off!” she says again, locking her jaw and making her eyes bulge. She is extremely unattractive, I think. Maybe she got teased a lot when she was growing up and she likes this job because she can take out all her anger on scared, helpless people like me.

  Still, right now, this woman is the only thing I have to cling to. She’s also the first guard I’ve met who speaks any English at all. I have to find a way to make her like me.

  I smile at her obsequiously and begin taking off my clothes. Even though at first glance she has few redeeming qualities, there must be something beautiful about her, I think, and I will find it.

  And then I notice her eyes. They look like the ocean on a cloudy day, gray and green, deep and brooding. Her eyes are stunning.

  “Your eyes,” I say, pointing to my own, then to hers, “so beautiful.”

  For the first time she looks directly at me. The sides of her mouth twitch. Then, without warning, her face melts into an embarrassed smile.

  “Yes,” she says proudly, “I know.” Quickly, she pulls her face back into a cold mask. Still, I caught her off-guard. Despite herself, she betrayed something.

  “Off,” she says again. “Off.”

  I’m now standing in front of this woman, completely naked. After working out every day in my cell for a month, any extra weight I’d gained from the ubiquitous Syrian kinafe (a sugary, cheese-filled pastry) was gone. Intense exercise was one of the only ways I’d found any relief over the last month—and I’m acutely aware of how sexy I must look.

  Nargess points at the floor, motioning for me to get down on it. Holy shit, this bitch is crazy, I think, snapping back into the present. Is she going to hurt me? It suddenly dawns on me what she’s asking me to do. She wants to see if I have anything stuffed up my ass or cunt. I hesitate a second longer, then mimic her obediently.

  As degrading as it is, I feel oddly comforted by knowing this to be standard prison procedure. Satisfied by my squats, she hands me a pile of dark clothes and closes the door, leaving me standing naked and alone in an empty cell. I slowly pull on white cotton underwear so big that it almost slides off me, navy blue pants, a baggy T-shirt, and striped ankle socks. I set the blue plastic sandals neatly by the cell door, fold the small green towel, and arrange my toothbrush, toothpaste, bar of soap, and aluminum plate in a pile on the floor next to the sink.

  There’s nothing else to do, so I curl up in the corner and pull the coarse wool blanket around my shoulders. This cell is smaller than the last. The window is high up, covered in a sheet of perforated metal. I can’t even see the sky. I close my eyes and feel fresh, warm tears running down my cheeks, washing them like a mother washes her baby.

  As my ears adjust, a texture of sound gradually emerges from the silence. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the muted staccato of shoes on linoleum, the gentle crash of running water hitting a metal sink, and even the muffled sound of distant voices. I imagine rows and rows of cells spanning out in every direction, each one with a scared, lonely person inside. I hear a cough in the next cell and instantly think of Shane, remembering how he would cough to alert me every time he was taken out of his cell. I feel an emptiness inside my chest steadily expanding like a balloon slowly filling with water. After a few minutes, I muster the courage to cough back and my neighbor instantly replies in kind.

  I’m still in the land of the living, I think, rocking myself back and forth. There are so many others here. I turn and run my fingers along the wall, pressing my cheek in the direction I imagine Shane and Josh to be. This wall, I think, is touching the floor on the other side of it. That floor is touching another wall connected to another row of cells. I don’t know how many walls and cells are between us, but I know Shane and Josh are out there. This wall I’m touching touches them.

  I see myself standing on a pile of boulders at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea in Beirut. I reach my hand out to Shane but can’t touch him. The sea is as dark and brooding as Nargess’s beautiful eyes. Its sound is deafening, like a thousand faucets crashing into a thousand metal sinks. Shane takes my hand and I realize I’m being pulled into a dream. Part of me holds back, wondering if it’s really safe to dream, if it’s even safe to sleep.

  I will myself back into the room and force myself to open my eyes. Reluctantly, I crawl over to the small pile of things Nargess gave me. I pick up the metal plate and carefully prop it against the door. If someone comes in, at least I’ll wake up.

  21. Sarah

  A few days later, one of the new guards, Leila, opens my cell door, and I spring into action. Leila seems to be the head guard in the women’s section—all the others defer to her authority. She’s a small, devoutly religious woman in her fifties. She and I can communicate a little better because she knows Arabic from her lifelong study of the Quran and I know a little Arabic from my studies in Damascus. She knows I’m innocent. The first time I met her, I told her I wasn’t a spy. She said she knew that I had been in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan “for exercise” an
d that it was “problems between governments” that kept me here. Then, she took my plastic fork and gave me a steel one—a sign of trust.

  I throw on my long-sleeved navy blue overshirt, or manto, buttoning it up frantically as I simultaneously slip on my hard, plastic sandals. I wrap my hijab around my head and tie my blindfold over my eyes. Lastly, I drape myself in a mountain of dark blue cloth, the chador, which I know from the early days after our capture is commonly worn by devout women throughout Iran. I carefully don each item of clothing until nothing but my face peeks out.

  It feels like being shot out of a cannon. This is the first time I’ve been let out of my cell since they brought me here. I don’t know where they’re taking me, but movement feels incredible. My breath expands to fill the space around me, and walking down thirty feet of hallway blindfolded feels like charting a vast new territory. It’s exciting to get even a sliver of a picture of where I am.

  The guard leads me into a small room and my elation quickly evaporates. I take in my surroundings at a glance. The space is ten by ten feet, empty except for a desk and two chairs. There’s a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a dirty, cement floor. The worst part is the foam. The walls, ceiling, and door are covered in thick foam. Soundproofing. The room is designed to muffle our screams.

  They will torture me here. I consciously slow my breathing, feeling fiery ice shoot through my body as my heartbeat increases precipitously. I’ll have to fight them, I think, as Leila closes the door behind me. Shane is no longer here to scream and fight beside me—I have to face this enemy alone. I’ll go straight for the eyes. I’ll use my fingernails to gouge out their eyes.

  I look around the room again, searching for clues. I have read accounts of women being raped in Iranian prisons by their interrogators. This is at the forefront of my mind. Would they slowly build up to it, as a punishment if I didn’t cooperate with their charades, or would it happen immediately as an effort to break me? “I’m made of steel,” I mutter under my breath. “I’m made of steel and I can’t be broken.”

  After about fifteen minutes, the door opens and a man walks in. My hands are white from gripping the sides of the chair and my jaw is clenched so tight, I can feel the blood in my brain. I’m guessing he’s a tall man; all I can see of him under the edge of my blindfold are his legs and pelvis. Next to his beige slacks and black belt, his large, shiny dress shoes are so huge, they look almost clownish. He walks toward me and stops—his groin a foot or so from my face.

  “Hi, Sarah,” he says. His voice is young, with an intentionally forced and controlled civility to it. “How are you?”

  “Very bad.”

  “So sorry,” he says with no emotion in his voice. “Listen, I need you to tell us everything.” He places a stack of lined paper and a pen on my desk. “Write it down, everything.”

  “I’ve already written everything at the last prison,” I say. “Why can’t you read that? There’s nothing more to tell.”

  He takes a step closer to me. “Sarah, the other prison never happened. You need to write everything for us again, everything.”

  “Please step away from me.” I clench my teeth and spit out each word like a small rock. I’m made of steel.

  “Sarah.” He laughs awkwardly, trying to sound unbothered. “Why are you so angry? Don’t you want my help?”

  “You will not come any closer to me than three feet,” I yell. My voice sounds shrill. I fold and refold my hands on the desk. When I get angry, I fear they might betray my emotions, so I try to capture them.

  “Sarah, listen to me. You have two paths, two options. You need to write every detail of your life. Do you want to stay here forever, for years? Or do you want to talk to your mother, to Shane and Josh, to go home?”

  His voice rises and falls with practiced theatricality. “The truth will lead you to good things, Sarah. Lies and bad behavior will take you to hell.”

  This is a game for him, I realize. He’s actually enjoying this. He’s clearly not driven by professionalism, or by a sense of right and wrong. He’s here for sport.

  “I need to see Shane and Josh,” I blurt out. “I need to call my mother. I need a lawyer.”

  He takes a step closer to me. “Sarah . . .”

  “Get away from me!” I yell, pushing my chair back. His voice and presence make my skin crawl.

  He backs off. I hear him sigh and eventually leave the room. For several minutes I sit in silence, trying to regain my composure, terrified that I may have gone too far and really pissed him off.

  Suddenly, a different voice speaks from behind me. “Sarah,” it says, “no one is going to hurt you, I promise.”

  The voice is soft, gentle, disarming. I realize whoever it is must have been sitting there listening the entire time. “Who are you?” I ask. “How do I know you won’t hurt me? I know what happens here.”

  “Believe me, Sarah, I will not let anyone hurt you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, I am assuming this is all a mistake, that you are innocent, but we need you to cooperate. The more you try and help us, the faster this will be over and you will go home.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because it is my job to verify that you are telling the truth. Will you help me do that?”

  “Yes,” I say, “of course I will.” I feel intense relief. This soft-spoken man is the opposite of that threatening oaf. My reaction to his kindness is as visceral as my terror was a few minutes earlier. I’m not going to be tortured or raped, I think. For the first time someone in here actually cares.

  “Sarah, we just want to ask you some questions. Then, if everything is okay, you will go to court and the judge will send you home. Nothing will happen to you here, I promise.” I immediately feel beholden to him. I take the paper from his hands and begin to write.

  22. Josh

  The guard named Ehsan told me I could be here for a year. I better get my bearings. With no bathroom in my cell, I have to walk out in the hallway and pass other cells to get to the toilet and shower. Once, last week, I peeked into a cell occupied by two men in their twenties striding confidently around the room, vibrant and alive, arguing and debating. I hope they’ll transfer me to a cell like that with roommates, vibrancy, life.

  In this prison, guards don’t hide their faces like they did in the last jail. Some even talk to me. One guard, who speaks a little English, taught me the Farsi word for the courtyard we go to, hava khori. He told me that it literally means eating air. I’ve even grown friendly with Friend, the guard who messed with me the day I transferred to this prison. I’ve treated him amiably and he’s responded in kind. He speaks awkward English and tries out colloquial expressions on me. He makes small talk, which can be the most significant event of my day. Friend gave me a bed and mattress, pistachios, bottled water, and crackers. He even gave me a small personal fridge that he put in the hallway in front of my cell. With snacks in front of me, I allowed myself to feel how hungry I’ve been, and how my stomach shrank after eleven days of fasting and four weeks on a prison diet. Relationships like this allow me to believe that though governments are often cruel, everyone has a soft spot, even my prison guards. Friend shows up at my cell to escort me down the hallway to the courtyard, hava khori.

  “Do you know what a honey is?” He smiles goofily. “Do you have a honey?”

  “No,” I say dismissively, “and I don’t want a honey in here.”

  I regret talking to him about English expressions. Why is he asking me about a honey? Why did he give me a bed last week? I push away the thought these questions raise.

  At hava khori, he follows me in. No other guards follow me into the courtyard. Friend whispers; the rest of the guards speak in normal voices. Something is off about him, but I don’t avoid him. I need companionship.

  The courtyard is thirty feet long by thirty feet wide with twenty-foot walls. Hava khori’s ceiling is the blue sky that floats beyond a grid of thin bars above; its eyes are the rotating
security camera; its art is the patterns on the marble walls. Friend stays to chat.

  I’d prefer if he’d chat with me during the twenty-three hours that I’m stuck in my cell than when I’m out here. But, I reason, human interaction is healthier for me than exercise. I tell him that I grew up near Philadelphia.

  “I think that is near New York,” he says. “I’d like to go to New York—I’ve only seen it in the movies.”

  I smile, thinking I too would like to go to New York.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asks. “Do you want to show me around there?”

  “If I get free, sure, I’ll show you around.” I imagine us walking around Times Square, going down to Ground Zero, dining at a Persian restaurant, and having a frank discussion about what it was like to be a prisoner and what it is like to be a guard.

  “What do you think of 9/11?” he asks matter-of-factly.

  “What do I think of it?” I repeat, perplexed. “It was bad. A lot of people died . . . What are you asking?”

  He looks expectant, and I guess at what he is thinking.

  “I don’t think Bush did it,” I tell him. “He might have known about it beforehand. We’re trapped in a cycle of violence. September eleventh was blowback for U.S. operations in the Middle East. I think the CIA even armed Bin Laden in the past. I understand fundamentalists’ anger, but the attack’s not justified. Understanding and justification are very different things.” I look around for a second. “I’m trapped in a cycle of violence.”

  He nods. He seems happy that I’m telling him what I think.

  “It’s just like my situation. My detention is blowback for decades of hostilities dating back to the CIA’s coup in Iran in 1953. I know that. I get that. I understand why people would be pissed that the U.S. overthrew their first democratically elected leader. Just because the prime minister, Mossadegh, said Iranian oil should belong to the Iranians, not British Petroleum.”