A Sliver of Light

by Shane Bauer

  Time here becomes different from anything I’ve ever known. We need events—and events are almost always interactions—to give shape to time. Here, time stops being something that moves me and everything else constantly forward from the past to the present, from the known to the unknown. It stops being a stream and becomes a shallow, fetid pool. I sit in it and wallow. I can’t drain it and I can’t move forward.

  But somehow I always bear it. As torturous as the thought of the future feels, I can endure the present. No matter how tight the vise grips my chest, I always endure this minute. So that’s what I do. I live from one minute to the next. And I try not to look at the light.

  Eventually, I pull myself up and out of bed, determined to shake the ennui that always threatens to overtake me. I bend my step to one end of the cell, then back to the other. There are stretches of days where I live inside a poem by Whitman or Wordsworth or Ferdowsi, exploring and internalizing each stanza. I recently memorized Whitman’s “To the Garden the World,” so I recite it over and over again as I pace, usually jutting my finger into the air at the line: “Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber.” My juices are starting to flow.

  As I walk, my finger taps against my thigh in alternating short and long pulses, each accompanied by high-pitched vocal beeps. I recite the poem in Morse code, tapping out the lines, “By my side or back of me Eve following, / Or in front, and I following her just the same.” I’ve been studying Morse code in the dictionary Sarah convinced the interrogators to give us by saying she wanted to study it like Malcolm X did when he was in prison. Now, we each take turns with it for a week at a time, passing it off to one another through our interrogators. Somehow the study of Morse code seems useful to me. It makes me feel like my life isn’t seeping down the drain for nothing. Maybe I will use it someday. Maybe someday I’ll be stranded somewhere with a flashlight and will be able to code my way to safety. Actually, I know that’s bullshit. I know the only reason I study Morse code is because I need challenges like this to survive. To not do this would be to give up. To give up would be the beginning of the end.

  I slide under my bed on my back and lift the end repeatedly as though it were a bench press. I do sit-ups and pushups. I jog in place on a stack of blankets and do high head kicks back and forth across the cell. I give myself a sponge bath in the sink and look at the wall again. The light is there now—a trickle of diagonal dots. The day has begun. I am hopeful that today my interrogator will come. Then, at least, I will have some human contact, an hour or two of conversation. As I wait, I sit on my bed and read the Quran aloud in Arabic for as long as I can take it. I can hear several other prisoners reading, creating a discordant harmony of chanting voices.

  After lunch, the hours pass blankly until the light is on the long wall. The two large rectangles of ten vertical bars of light have fully gone around the corner. The day is at its midpoint. My afternoon depression is starting to sink in. My interrogator isn’t coming. He never comes after lunch. All that’s left of the day is stagnation. All I can do is wait for sleep. I’ve already juggled oranges and swept the floor clean with my hands. I do make one discovery: the color red is absent from my life, but if I close my eyes and put my face in the patch of sun, I can see it.

  Then, I hear a distant voice. At least I think I hear it—that unique, high and guttural timbre of Ehsan. I press my ear to the window in the door and strain to hear it again. Was it him? I press the button on the wall. This man, the “officer” of the guards, is my savior. I’ve been expecting him to come for days. I want him to give me another one of the books the Swiss gave us. I finished my John Grisham novel too quickly—I couldn’t help but devour it in a handful of hours. Whenever I have any books, and I only started getting books a couple weeks ago, I hide them in my cell because one guard sometimes takes them. Ehsan is the only person who will take a book of mine to Sarah’s or Josh’s cell, trade it with them, and bring a new one back to me. He is the only guard I trust.

  Sometimes he comes by my cell to see how I am doing. Once, he walked in on me playing solitaire with my illegal handmade playing cards and after asking me for them as if to take them away, he paused and handed them back. We talk about his sociology studies in college. I suspect he only stops by to let me vent, to make me feel heard. He hangs his head and shakes it in shame as I tell him, vehemently, how hard it is to live alone. Lately, my message is always the same: “Why are we still in solitary? Our interrogations are over!” He is genuinely concerned about this. I can see it in his eyes. He knows we shouldn’t be kept apart anymore. He has told me several times now that he has tried to get in touch with our interrogators, but they aren’t responding. He tells me he is sorry.

  I ask for him whenever I hear his voice, because he gives me hope. He also challenges my old beliefs. I have been separating the world into two clean-cut groups of people, perpetual enemies who are divided at the cell door. Ehsan makes his side a lot more complicated.

  No one is responding to the bell. I pound on the door. Finally, a guard comes. “Is Ehsan here?” I ask him.

  “Nah,” he spits, tossing his head disdainfully and marching off.

  I don’t totally believe him, but I try to forget about Ehsan. I close my eyes while pacing and try to imagine myself strolling up my grandmother’s driveway, walking through the market in Old Sana’a, or walking down Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. In each place, I feel the air and smell the smells. I look all around me and take everything in.

  Then, still pacing, I start thinking of the books I want. The titles comfort me: The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, The People’s History of the United States. I’m afraid that when the time comes to tell somebody what books I want, I will forget one, so I recite them occasionally to remember. I know that if that opportunity arises, I will only have one chance. I’ve decided to keep a list of ten. Why ten? I don’t know.

  Eventually I realize how quickly I’m bouncing from one end of the cell to the next. I’m not walking so much as striding. And I’m speaking out loud. I stop and look around me. How long have I been doing that, repeating these titles out loud and counting them on my fingers? How long? Something about realizing that I’ve been hearing my own voice—merely hearing it, not commanding it—frightens me.

  31. Josh

  I’ve tried to hide my religious and spiritual life. Once, a guard surprised me while I sat cross-legged, meditating. I felt awkward being seen, but he wasn’t at all uncomfortable with me sitting like the Buddha. He told me I was lucky; he wished he had time to meditate like me. I hated him for saying I was lucky. But from then on, I became less self-conscious with my spiritual practices: meditating, doing yoga and qigong. Still, though, I don’t feel comfortable with the guards’ knowing I’m Jewish even though my interrogators already know. The more attention my Jewishness and my Israeli family gets, I reason, the harder it will be for the Iranian government to release me. I’m sure they don’t want to risk looking soft on Israel.

  A friendly guard takes me to hava khori. This guard taught me the Farsi numbers, the days of the week, and he even told me his name. He’s tall, slim, and probably the youngest guard at twenty-three. Before he locks me in hava khori, he points to me and asks, “Yahudi?”

  He is one of my favorite guards. I don’t want to lie to him. Moreover, I’m tired of hiding who I am. I remind myself that being Jewish is not a crime, and that the interrogators already know.

  “Yes.” I point to myself. “Yahudi.”

  “Yahudi, no problem,” he says, trying to assuage my nervousness. “Israel problem,” he says. Then he leaves me alone to exercise.

  I jog back and forth, questioning why I just told on myself. What if he mentions it casually to the other guards or his family? What if his father works in the media and leaks the story? My mind can’t break free from these fears. I don’t know if the media already knows that I’m Jewish, but I don’t want to take even the slightest risk—not for a relationship with a guard.

  He probably alr
eady knows I’m Jewish; otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked.

  Whatever! It was stupid. I should have played dumb, pretended to not understand him. I need to rescind my statement and sow doubt in his trusting mind. Thirty minutes pass at hava khori and the guard rattles the door open.

  Before he takes me back to my cell, I urge him to pay attention to me. “Buddha,” I say. I sit down in front of him cross-legged. “Yehudi, nah.” I point to myself, shaking my head. “Buddha.” He looks confused and doesn’t say anything.

  As long as there are fair legal proceedings, my religion is nothing to hide. No Iranian official ever told me being Jewish was a crime. Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel. Still, I fear how it’ll be used for propaganda. He said “Israel problem” and my father is Israeli. Paranoid thoughts stir in my head. I think of Daniel Pearl killed on videotape by extremists in Pakistan after confessing his Jewishness. Stuck behind walls of fear, I can think of nothing else.

  In prayer I catch a glimmer of mental freedom. I’ve scratched a few words—truth, justice, freedom, love—with the chalklike prayer ornament, a turbah, onto the surface of the southwestern wall, and I pray toward the wall five times a day or whenever I need solace. In prayer, I listen deeply. The silence of prayer is a good silence, a connected silence. Prayer calms me down. There is something about listening deeply that makes me feel momentarily free—free of the torments of my mind. Paradoxically, by listening to the silence, I feel understood by the world. No longer do I feel ashamed of who I am.

  Prayer helps me believe that I still have control of my own fate: if I pray hard enough and true enough, I’ll be released. It is the most active thing I can do. I kneel and stand, touching my head to the floor, imitating Islamic prayer when the call to prayer sounds over the loudspeakers. In my mind’s eye I can see millions praying with me in unison, and that vision makes me feel less lonely.

  Reading the Quran keeps me focused on the divine. I open to the Repentance Surah, which starts with three letters—three spiritual breaths: “Alif. Lam. Meem.” The book provides no translation for these letters; they seem to me a spiritual invocation. I read the next line, “The Byzantines have been defeated in the nearest land.” What does that have to do with alif, lam, meem?

  My meditation teacher once advised, “Sometimes in a dish there are spices you don’t like. Just remove that small black cardamom seed, then continue eating.” I continue with the Quran. “They denied the signs of Allah . . . These criminals will be in despair.” This is the part that my interrogators probably like. They pick and choose verses just like I do. Mercy is their cardamom seed.

  I choose the Repentance Surah in the Quran today because it’s Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I mix religions, but it makes sense to me. All paths lead to the same source as long as I remove my cardamom seeds. Normally, I barely notice the Jewish holidays. Normally, my family pressures me to remember my religion. I’m guessing about the date for Yom Kippur, but I watched the moon whenever it angled through the window, and I calculated the lunar calendar.

  Yom Kippur is a holiday for reflection, and I’m fasting like an observant Jew. It’s a day to think over the past year and to atone for mistakes. Of course, I think about the hike: I should have taken responsibility and gotten a map. I shouldn’t have blindly trusted Shane and Sarah. I think about my parents: I shouldn’t have let politics interfere with our relationship. I think about how my brother quit school to devote himself to my freedom (a fact I learned from one of his letters). I remember being judgmental of him when I visited his friend’s holiday party. All this repentance makes me feel like crap. It makes me feel blameworthy and that there is a good reason that I’m locked up. I wish I could call them and tell them how much I love them.

  Practicing Judaism is a way to be closer to my family. I can keep kosher. I’ll make the Sabbath holy: from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown I won’t clean the floor, wash my plate, or even tally another day on my wall. I try to remember every holiday I can: Sukkot is coming up. I’ll sing the shema—a prayer that starts with the word listen.

  Suddenly, I’m feeling more Jewish than I’ve ever felt in my life.

  32. Shane

  At the end of each hallway, there’s a small open-air cell. The guards sat me in one of those today. I’ve been sitting here, listening to Sarah wail in a nearby room for a while now. “You have to let me call my mother!” she is shouting. “You can’t do this!” Her cries sound desperate. I am boiling inside. I hate these people. What are they saying to make her wail like that? The interrogators haven’t come to me yet, but these sounds coming from her are making me nervous. We were caught a week ago using illegal pens and secretly exchanging notes by leaving them at hava khori for one another to find. Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for them to come.

  My interrogator enters the room. I know it is him because he stands silently for a while behind me, tapping his foot. He does this when he wants to make me nervous. “Shane,” he says, beginning to pace, “what did I tell you when we first met?”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  “That we were going to be—? That we were going to be—?”

  I won’t say it.

  “Friends. I told you that I wanted us to be friends. But you blew it, Shane. You had your chance, but you blew it. You know what you have done is going to affect your case. The judge is going to consider the fact that you broke prison rules when he makes his decision about you.” What a piece of shit. Our note passing is going to determine our fate? He can’t even lie convincingly.

  He slaps a piece of paper down on my desk. “Write,” he says. Our interrogation has been over for a month now, but he knows the feeling that interrogation evokes. Intimidation. Fear. He knows that the very act of writing is punishment. He leaves.

  Sarah’s interrogator comes in. “How are you?” he asks, then adds, “I myself am not good.” His voice gives an impression of an overworked, spent man, like he’s been up all night, like he has stubble on his face and unkempt hair. “We trusted you,” he says breathlessly. I hate his tone. It’s as if he were hurt, like a father realizing his son has betrayed him. Fuck him.

  Another interrogator comes in. He’s the tall, oafish one with big feet who has been coming around more often lately, the one who took us to meet the Swiss over a month ago, the one I sometimes hear speaking to Sarah while she is being interrogated. He is always telling me not to worry about her, that she is doing wonderfully. “You are stupid, Shane,” he says. “What did you think you were doing?” He comes in close behind me. “Stupid!” he says again, smacking me on the back of the head, not hard, just a humiliating slap that brings alive in me something reminiscent of all those school bullies who slapped, punched, kicked, and choked my younger, smaller, bespectacled self.

  I jump out of my seat, pull my blindfold off, and spin around to face him. He is towering over me, at least a foot taller than I am. “Don’t you ever touch me like that again,” I say, pointing my finger toward his face. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been swept away with such heat.

  His jaw lowers and his square, pale face goes cold. He looks frightened, not frightened that I will hurt him—he’s huge—but frightened that he made some mistake. The slap felt routine, like something he does all the time with people he interrogates. But we are high-value prisoners. He can’t do this with us. He knows that, but until now, I don’t think he knew that I knew that. I’m not quite sure why I do.

  “Okay,” he says, almost placatingly. “I won’t do it again.” I hold his gaze for a second longer than is comfortable, his eyes dripping remorse, mine full of fire.

  Slowly and self-assuredly, I turn around, sit down, and pull my blindfold back down over my eyes. I pick up my pen and write: “I had a pen. I knew it was illegal, but I did it anyway. I needed to communicate with Sarah and Josh. It was a moment of weakness. It was a mistake and I will never do it again. If I do, I accept full punishment. I hope you find it in your he
art to forgive us and to give us another chance.”

  I know that I have no choice but to return to my powerless role. The interrogators can always punish me by punishing Sarah and Josh; I take responsibility for the pen and bow my head because I want to take some of the heat off them.

  Even so, something has shifted. I feel better than I did when I came in. I’m glad he slapped me.

  33. Sarah

  After the interrogators yelled at us for passing notes, I caught a brief glimpse of Josh and Shane in the hallway. Now, it’s been two weeks with no sign of them. I have no idea when I will see them again—when I will see another human being other than the guards who hand me food three times a day.

  Out at hava khori, I fall limp to my knees and press my forehead to the cold, stone floor the second I hear the steel door click shut behind me. The acrid taste of dust in my mouth makes me salivate as I begin to pray.

  Ever since Father Guy left, the voices of uncertainty have gotten louder and louder. I have nothing left to cling to. Every time I start to panic, overcome by a gut impulse to fight or run, I bolt my feet to the ground and I force myself to pray for strength, for acceptance, for peace.

  Still, I’m slowly coming undone. I’ve tried to forget Father Guy, and the hope he represented, but his voice is still in my head. “You are never alone, Sarah,” he said to me on his last visit. “God is always with you.”

  Maybe he’s right. What if God is with me inside these walls? If I embrace God, something so much bigger than my small, insignificant life, maybe I can let go of my futile attachments—to who I used to be, to a future over which I have no influence or control. Is God the answer?

  Slowly, I drag myself to my feet, raising my gaze up to the cold, expressionless sun. “I surrender!” I whisper. The empty, blue sky glares back at me. “Do what you want with me, God!” I yell into the empty void. “I surrender!”