by Shane Bauer
So I make my choice. I bow my head over the desk and I start to cry. “Please let me call her,” I whimper. I’ve submitted. I’ve chosen humiliation.
“Chi?” Father Guy asks the other interrogator softly, again petitioning on my behalf.
The other interrogator says something to Father Guy, and he translates. “Okay, you can go. But only two minutes.” I wipe my face, stand up, and walk toward the phone.
“You must not mess with my colleague,” Father Guy whispers to me genially as we walk down the hall with his hand on my shoulder. “He is very serious.” Despite his seeming friendliness, I despise Father Guy just as much as the others. He made me grovel just as much as that asshole. He just has a different approach. In fact, out of all of them, I think I loathe him the most. I hate him for acting like he has a conscience. I hate him for making Sarah believe he is good, when he just has a different strategy. I hate the way he says, “We are friends,” or the way, months ago, he acted as though I had betrayed him by using an illegal pen—“I trusted you.” I hate the way he acted like he was hurt earlier when Sarah scolded him for not giving a shit about us. All he ever gives us is a soft voice—nothing more. He did show Sarah a few pictures once, but that was just to manipulate her. And it worked. Up till now, she has defended him.
“You guys have to trust me,” she said to us once. “He can help us.” This man who will never show his face will help us? I’ve tried to tell her that—“He is an interrogator in a political prison”—but she has always just looked at me like I didn’t understand him. I had to watch him pull her in. I had to watch her like him. It made me sick and sad.
At least she got angry with him today. She’s become so acquiescent with them, but today she felt like the person I know again, the one who doesn’t take shit from anyone. Now he’s dialing my mom’s number on the phone.
“Hi, Mom, this is Shane.” From the first moment, I know how inadequate this is going to feel. After not speaking to her for more than half a year, how do I greet my mom other than how I always greet her when I call?
“I love you, Shane.” This is the first thing she says.
“Mom, I’m strong physically and mentally. I exercise a lot. We get extra food from the canteen.” Does she believe it? What is she hearing in my voice? “They only gave me two minutes to talk.”
“I want you to know that we are all doing okay,” she says. The strength of her tone uplifts me. “I’m okay. Dad’s okay. The girls are okay. And you have amazing friends, Shane.”
“What’s going on out there? Is our government doing anything?”
“They are, but there is only so much they will do.” In her voice I hear her disappointment in not being able to give me something to be hopeful about. I’ve been saying all along that our government isn’t going to get us out, but now I realize that maybe I was saying those things to keep my hopes down, because when she says this, I can hardly believe it. Deep down, I did believe our government would save us. She talks like they—our families—work alone, apart from the government. “We’re coming up with new ideas all the time, Shane,” she says. So, it’s our families and friends versus the government of Iran. We’re going to be in prison for a very long time.
“Your time is finished,” Father Guy says, holding his finger over the receiver.
“Mom, I have to go. They are going to cut the call. Mom, I love you. I know you won’t stop until we are free. I’m worried about Nicole and Shannon. Tell them I love them.”
“Your sisters are okay. They are just worried about you. Shane, we are doing everything we can. This is going to end. I don’t know when, but I know that you will be free someday. Know that we will not stop until that happens. I love you, Shane.”
“I love you too, Mom. Bye—”
All I feel is loss. My parents have been taken from me all over again. There is no clear path to our freedom. There are no secret negotiations. We are here and no one knows how it will end. How can that be?
“There, I gave you three minutes,” Father Guy says, as if seeking praise. I give him none.
47. Josh
The first name I learned in this prison was Ehsan. The first Farsi sentence I learned was Ehsan mikhaam. I want Ehsan. Ehsan’s dignified voice travels through the prison as if its walls were made of papier-mâché. His voice isn’t that loud, but it’s distinct, and I’ve grown acutely sensitive to it. At any hour, his voice shoots me onto my feet to petition to the nearest guard, Ehsan mikhaam.
In solitary, I’d count down the forty-eight hours until his next shift at 8 p.m. every other night. I like him. I genuinely like him. I tore off www.freethehikers.org from my mother’s letters and insisted he look me up. Once, though most guards were wary of entering a cell, Ehsan sat on my bed. We chatted about his studies and his romance. Another time, he told me he had visited, but I’d been sleeping. “Ehsan,” I remonstrated, “if you visit, wake me up.” He witnessed my deepest desperation and helped me out. Ehsan is the only guard I almost consider a friend. Recently, he gave us pens and paper, items that before now we’ve never been allowed to have. He has even ordered the other guards to keep us supplied.
But Ehsan disappoints me when politics enter into our relationship. I’ve insisted he contact my family, but he does not. He won’t even tell me news. He works for this dungeon, and that pisses me off. He should be held accountable for supporting this corrupt system. I wish he’d be ethical and quit, but, if he quits, he’d wouldn’t be around and I’d miss him.
I’m in the shower located down the hall from my cell when I hear Ehsan’s voice nearby. I’ve not seen or heard him since that phone call a few weeks ago. I dry off and ring the bell for a guard to come.
A guard opens the door. “Ehsan mikhaam,” I say. My cell is to the left, but Ehsan’s voice comes from the right. The guard hesitates. So, without his approval, I stride confidently to the right. I inch my blindfold up and make eye contact with Ehsan seated in a chair. He’s supervising hallway six, yelling at a prisoner to hurry up on his way to the bathroom. Ehsan straightens in his chair, surprised by my approach.
“Why don’t you come to my cell anymore?” I say. “We need someone who speaks English. You’re the only one. You know I miss you when you don’t visit.”
“Josh,” he says, his face immediately slackening in empathy, “I cannot talk to you anymore. I am no longer the guard officer. I’ve been transferred. I’m only working here today as a substitute guard because of the holiday. I’m not allowed to talk to you. It is orders from the prison boss. Your interrogator grew angry when I told them that Sarah should not be in solitary confinement anymore. This is my punishment.” He pauses and looks at me softly as if to say he’s sorry. “Josh, do not tell anyone that I told you this. I can’t talk to you.” Then he turns away.
Tears almost come to my eyes. I lower my blindfold to hide my face. I’ve gotten used to so much, but this doesn’t feel fair. Ehsan’s leaving. I reach out to shake his hand, and we say goodbye.
48. Shane
The three of us are sitting in the corner of a large conference room within the prison grounds. The usual pictures of Khomeini and Khamenei adorn the walls. There are little microphones at each seat at the large table. Dumb Guy has told us we will be meeting with an ambassador “from the region,” but he won’t tell us what country he is from. There is a news camera pointing at us from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) network. The three of us have already discussed how careful we must be in this meeting not to say a single line that can be taken out of context and used on television to sound like we are admitting to spying on Iran or entering illegally. Dumb Guy has suggested we apologize for crossing the border, but Josh and I insist none of us apologize unless we are shown evidence that we did, in fact, cross before we were summoned by the soldier.
I am more nervous about the video camera than I am excited about who we are about to meet. “Just be careful to stick to factual statements,” I whisper to Sarah and Josh. “If we stick to what
we know to be true, we will be fine.”
In walks an entourage of officials. At the front is a man dressed in a flowing white robe and a coffee-colored, smartly tied headdress embroidered with shades of burgundy and brown. As soon as he enters the room, the air becomes redolent with sandalwood, an instantly calming scent that reminds me of the diwans of Yemen. He walks toward us, smiling warmly. His lightly bearded face is gentle but self-possessed and he gives off an aura of power—not the same kind of power his Iranian escorts display, but one that is regal.
He shakes our hands. “My name is Salem al-Ismaily, and I am here to represent His Majesty Sultan Qaboos of Oman,” he says. “He would like to send you his warmest wishes.”
We all sit and the three of us are expectant. This man obviously has a mission. He speaks to us in English that is only slightly accented, further extolling the graciousness of His Majesty the Sultan as well as the generosity of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This goes on for far longer than is comfortable. I’m worried this meeting will be over soon, so I am anxious for this guy to get to the punch line.
“So, why did you come here?” I ask, cutting into his preamble.
“I came to see how you were doing and to connect with you as human beings,” he says. That’s it?
His soliloquies ramble from one topic to the next, none of them having anything to do with us or our detainment. The talking points he runs through are awkwardly out of place. It’s as though he is hitting Play on a tape he runs through whenever he meets with Americans. He keeps telling us that people in the Middle East aren’t a bunch of terrorists, which I find condescending—he does know I speak his language and have lived in the region for years. He condemns the pitfalls of the Oslo Accords. He points out, as people in the region often do, that “Sarah” is an Islamic name. “In fact, did you know that Jews should be called Sarites rather than Semites?” he asks us. Jews take their religion from their mother, he explains, not their father, and Sarah was the wife of Abraham. He bemoans the fact that the Middle East is ruled by regimes that don’t listen to their own people, ironic given that he is representing a sultan. He explains to us that he has been doing this work for a long time, negotiating between countries, trying to bring about peaceable solutions.
The work most dear to his heart, he says, is helping Americans understand the Middle East better. He gives a scholarship every year to Americans to study in Oman. “You know how I got started in this work?” he asks. “I used to live in the U.S. Then, after September eleventh, they start changing things at the airport so that anyone from a Muslim country had to be questioned and fingerprinted. It was humiliating and it made me so angry. I decided I would never go back to America unless it was a life-or-death situation.
“God must have been listening to me, because two weeks after September eleventh, my daughter got a brain tumor. It turned out that the only doctor that could help her was at UCLA. So I had to go back. At the airport, I found myself back in that line, waiting to go through the whole ordeal. A woman came forward and asked if I was Salem al-Ismaily. I thought she was going to take me aside for questioning, but instead, she took my daughter and me to the front of the line. I explained our situation, and a man overheard us and offered to drive us all the way to the hospital. The hospital even gave us halal food. I was amazed by such kindness. I then realized that I had been mistaken, getting trapped in my anger, and I decided to dedicate my life to helping these two cultures understand each other.”
Sarah, Josh, and I keep trying to bring the conversation back to our case, explaining what happened when we were captured, but every time we do, his eyes glaze over.
“You know what?” he asks. “I have never looked at the details of your case, and I don’t want to. I am not concerned with whether you are guilty or innocent.” I’m starting to see a rhythm to his speech. Sometimes he speaks to us. Other times he speaks to the Iranians, through us. “What I am concerned with is bringing an end to this whole situation that works for all sides. This has to be a give-and-take.”
“So what is going on?” I ask him. “What is the give-and-take?”
“I can’t tell you anything about that,” he says. “You just have to be patient. These things take time.”
“Are there negotiations with the U.S.?” I press.
“Look, I don’t want to get your hopes up. Let’s just say I am trying to help you. Okay?” He smiles. We have learned nothing from this man and he doesn’t seem all that interested in the particulars of our situation. Yet there is something comforting about him. Despite myself, I feel the little cavity of trust in my chest opening up.
One of the Iranians motions to Salem that time is up.
“Well,” he says, “I have brought gifts for you from the sultan.” His colleague hands us each a bag with stylized Arabic writing on it. Inside, there are ribboned metal boxes, bound in leather with an ancient map of Oman on the lid behind glass. They are filled with dates, neatly arranged and each stuffed with cashews, pistachios, and dried fruits.
“We know that here, like prisons everywhere, food is not allowed to come in from the outside,” Salem says. “But we have made a special agreement with the government of Iran, and they have promised us that you can have these.”
I pull another, smaller box out of the bag. Inside is a designer Cartier watch embossed with Roman numerals. Sarah’s is pink.
After we do this, the IRIB reporter asks Salem for an interview. The Iranians aren’t rushing us out. They obviously want us in the background, happy with our gifts and chatting with the other kind-faced Omani man who came with Salem. Josh apparently notices this and removes all of the gifts from the table.
The cameraman positions Salem about fifteen feet in front of us. Salem stands with his back to him, facing us, as the cameraman sets up his tripod. He just smiles at us, as if he is imparting a secret. “Don’t worry,” he says, looking at Sarah. “This is going to end.” There is some kind of connection between them. Sarah is clearly hopeful about him. Why is she becoming so trusting of people in power? What happened to her old suspicion of men and authority?
“I know you will help us, sir,” Sarah says to him. “You have God in your heart.” She never used to talk about God like this. Prison is changing her. It’s starting to worry me.
“Please don’t,” he says bashfully. “You are going to make me cry.”
As he begins the interview, his colleague, sitting with us, starts to show Sarah and Josh some pictures of his daughter on his cell phone. I sit off to the side, staring gravely at the camera from behind Salem. The least we can do is appear unhappy for TV.
The reporter takes his position and says to Salem, “Now that they have admitted guilt, what do you think should happen with these Americans?”
Immediately, I flush hot and start shouting. “What did you just say? We have not admitted guilt! We never admitted anything! You lie on camera just like that?” I am shocked by the ease at which truth is flung out the window. All of my rage at the simple farce of our situation pours out. My heart is pounding. Everyone in the room is stunned. The Iranians look dumbfounded as I continue shouting, and no one attempts to stop me or the interview. Sarah has a look of confusion on her face. “What happened? What is going on?” she says to me.
“The reporter lied!” I shout, facing her. “He said we admitted guilt!” We need to make sure the interview is useless. They will never air it with us shouting in the background. Sarah starts yelling. Josh starts shaking his head and waving his hands, aware that our voices probably won’t matter as much as our images, since IRIB rarely ever airs the audio of their interviews. They usually just show them on screen, dubbed over with the newscaster’s own version. Despite our commotion, the interview continues. As we yell, Salem calmly says to the camera that this case needs to be decided in the courts and that it should remain a judicial issue, not a political one.
When it ends, I struggle to show my gratitude to Salem. Our goodbye
is awkward. As Dumb Guy walks us through the prison grounds, back to Section 209, I wonder if I just ruined an opportunity for freedom. What if I scared him off?
“I liked him,” I say somewhat dejectedly to Sarah and Josh.
Dumb Guy takes the gift bags from each of us before we put our blindfolds back on and enter Section 209. “I thought we could keep the dates,” Josh protests. He loves dates.
“We will bring them to you,” Dumb Guy replies. He never does.
49. Josh
I’ve noticed that Shane has been particularly angry lately. When he wakes up groggy, I ask what’s wrong, and all he says is “Prison.” Did a particular guard piss you off? Was there something I did? Something Sarah said? No.
I agree that prison sucks, but daily life now determines my mood. We’ve created a lot of activities and many of them we find fun— especially with our pens and paper. Now, I keep a correspondence with Sarah in Spanish; I create math lessons for her; Shane and I exercise for a few hours every day; we all take turns creating stories with fifteen new vocabulary words to present at hava khori; we study and test one another on Greek mythology and Islamic history; I’m memorizing William Wordsworth’s poem “Character of the Happy Warrior” (“As more exposed to suffering and distress; / Thence, also, more alive to tenderness . . .”) and am now enjoying Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. Sometimes, by the end of the day, I even wish there were more hours to finish all my tasks.
What I look forward to most is hava khori. It’s the time of day when I stop reading, writing, exercising, and being “productive” and just connect with my two friends. Increasingly, though, it doesn’t work out like that. I find that more and more I’m mediating conflict between Shane and Sarah.