A Sliver of Light

by Shane Bauer

  I stand back up. “Josh kujaast?” I say forcefully. Again he pushes me, harder this time. My foot catches on Josh’s mattress on the floor. I fall backward and feel my head smack against the wall, bone on cement. He moves in toward me. I know this is it. This will be when everything becomes a black jumble.

  Suddenly, I hear a voice. “Kfaaya! Kfayaa!” It’s Paper. He has his hand on AK’s shoulder. AK looks back at him and stands upright. They both walk out of the cell.

  I touch the back of my head. A lump is starting to grow.

  Josh

  With AK back upstairs, one of the other violent guards grabs hold of me. The guard smiles at me like a child receiving a handful of candy. It’s an ominous smile. This guard has been a jerk since the day I arrived. He grabs my arm and drags me to an administrator’s office.

  The administrator stands when I enter. The blood is still coursing through my arteries. The administrator sits me down in a chair. Then he sits down and asks, in Farsi, what happened. Using his office as my stage, I reenact the incident for him, pushing myself with my hands in a theatrical display of how AK pushed me. I throw in occasional Farsi words: “Guard! Problem!” I bang my fists together histrionically.

  The administrator shakes his head in disgust, then takes a phone call. He doesn’t understand that I was demanding an apology from AK for an incident a few days ago. He thinks the scuffle was for the tray of food Shane picked up in the hallway. When he hangs up, he orders his assistant to bring me dinner.

  The administrator apologizes profusely. He assures me I can have as much food as I need. He tells me that AK is out of control and that he’ll make sure we won’t ever need to interact with him again. When his assistant hands me a dinner tray, he tops it off with two extra bananas from his desk. I can see his head spinning: How is he going to explain this to his boss? Who else will find out about this?

  He puts a third banana on top of my tray. I can’t wait to tell Shane about this. He ushers me into the hallway and directs me upstairs. Back in the cell, I see Shane. We hug, deeply relieved.

  54. Josh

  One week later on our way to hava khori, I throw off my blindfold and see Shane and Tall Racing Stripe swinging punches wildly. Their feet are jockeying back and forth. Their right fists cock back. I kick off my sandals and race toward them. I’m unclear what I’ll do—I’ve broken up more fights in my life than I’ve been in—but I run directly at them.

  In this momentary boxing ring of a hallway, all are equal. No bars separate us. Repercussions feel irrelevant. Shane and Tall Racing Stripe are well matched. Neither one of them lands a blow. Tall Racing Stripe sees me running at him—it’ll be two against one. The thought comes to me: Now is our moment!

  I charge into the space between them. Tall Racing Stripe turns and swings at me. I dodge him and grab his wrists. We grapple. I hold on, restraining his anger. He writhes and frees his arms.

  Meanwhile a hefty guard races down the hallway. He seizes Shane and locks him in a nearby, empty interrogation cell.

  Tall Racing Stripe continues to swing at me though I’m not swinging at him. His punches are frenzied. I can’t understand his rage. Though his fist comes inches from my face, I still can’t believe he wants to hurt me. What have I done? His fist slams into the metal gate next to me. He pretends that it doesn’t hurt and swings again. I need to get through to him. I’ve never heard this guard speak a word of English, but I shout: “I’M not fighting you! What are you doing? I’m not fighting you!”

  A few other guards emerge from nearby hallways, and they calm Tall Racing Stripe down. I find my blindfold near the trash can and my sandals by the radiator. A guard lets Shane out of the room he’s locked in and we walk down the hallway to hava khori in silence. It is 8:45 a.m.

  This is a mess. Last week it was AK, and now this. After the incident with AK, Dumb Guy apologized and they started giving us two hours together instead of one at hava khori. The extra hour has been fantastic—and uplifting. We had asked Dumb Guy for more time at hava khori for months. After his concession, we concluded that defiance gets results. It’s way more effective than pleading for sympathy.

  But we need to pick our battles and be strategic. We can’t fight every guard who acts like a jerk. My ideal—largely influenced by having read Gandhi years ago—is to be compassionate and defiant at the same time. Anger pervades everything in here, but we’ll be miserable if we’re always seething in anger.

  I can’t be mad at Shane for fighting with Tall Racing Stripe. Even Gandhi wrote that he would choose violent resistance over cowardice. That was what Shane did. Perhaps fighting, yet refusing to gang up on Tall Racing Stripe, was Gandhian. Moreover, even if Shane provoked everything, which I’m sure he didn’t, I’d back him up.

  I need Shane to know that I have his back like he had mine last week with AK. I also want him to know we must find another way to deal with asshole guards. My critique shouldn’t feel like blame, and I’m worried he’ll feel ganged up on if Sarah’s around. So, before she arrives in hava khori, I say as gently as possible, “Shane, we’re not going to fight our way out of here.”

  55. Sarah and Shane

  Sarah comes in and sits down on the blanket.

  “I just got into a fight,” Shane tells her, and explains what happened.

  “Baby, you hit him?” Sarah asks. There’s accusation in her face.

  “Of course I hit him. He swung on me.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to fight back,” Sarah says, her voice rising. “I mean, hitting a guard is serious.”

  “Sarah,” Shane says incredulously, “he hit me. He attacked me. That is what is really serious. I never said I wasn’t going to fight back.”

  “Shane, we all decided months ago that we’d discuss things that affect all of us. Look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t stand up for ourselves, but you can’t just start fighting the guards!”

  “Think? Discuss? Did you want me to ask him, ‘Please wait until I can consult with Sarah so we can make a decision about this’?! I didn’t ask him to hit me!” Shane shouts. “There was no decision or planning here. A guard attacked, and I defended myself. You are supposed to be on my side—to stand by me against them no matter what. What the hell is this?”

  Josh is sitting alongside them, watching silently with that defeated yet attentive look he sometimes gets when things between Sarah and Shane escalate.

  “I am on your side,” Sarah says. “I just want to know that you’re on my side! Why is this different from when AK attacked you a few days ago? Why didn’t you fight back then? I need to know that you’ll control your impulses!”

  “What impulses are you talking about?!” She thinks I am a loose cannon, Shane thinks. She is blind, mired in her own suffering. Doesn’t she see that with AK, we won? We put them on the defensive.

  “I’m talking about the impulse to get out your rage by fighting the guards. Shane, the situation we’re in is bad enough. I can’t stand any worse. What if they stop letting us see each other? What if they hurt you even more? Nothing is worth taking that risk. Nothing!”

  “It’s easy for you to sit here and say these things when you don’t have to deal with this shit,” Shane says. “Women guards don’t beat prisoners. Male guards do. When I told you about this, you should have shown me that you stood by me, that you had my back no matter what. That should always come first.”

  “Shane, you know I never want you to get hurt! Look, the guards will be coming to take us back to our cells any minute. I need to know this won’t happen again before we can talk about it. Can you at least promise me that?”

  Shane’s head is spinning. Things have never been this bad between us, he thinks. Just thirty minutes ago he felt strong. Now he feels weak and defeated. I don’t know if I can count on Sarah to be there for me anymore, he thinks. I feel trapped—outside and inside.

  “Okay, I won’t hit back,” Shane says blankly. I just want this to end. “I won’t do anything.”

  But i
t’s not okay, Sarah thinks. A huge abyss has opened up between us. Is Shane right? Do I care more about myself than I care about my own partner, my future husband? Perhaps my fear is blinding me to his suffering. But what if Shane really is losing control? What if I can’t trust him to make the right decisions for us? The one thing I’m certain of is I can’t live without seeing Shane and Josh; I will lose my mind and may never recover. I have to put that before everything else right now. Even Shane.

  56. Sarah

  A few weeks after my argument with Shane, I’m admiring a vibrant green grasshopper I just found languishing in hava khori. He’s big and meaty, sitting in the palm of my hand like an elegant, armored tank. The door opens and Shane and Josh appear. They admire the grasshopper and tell me they have a special treat—a plastic cup full of sauerkraut they made themselves. They requested cabbage as one of our extra weekly vegetables, crushed up its leaves, added salt and water, waited a few weeks, and came out with sauerkraut.

  “There was a ticker on the news,” I say as we sit down, “about a British woman converting to Islam in Iran.”

  “Really? That’s interesting,” Shane says distractedly, laying out some food he’s brought to eat with the sauerkraut.

  I decide to be more explicit. “I’m thinking about converting myself,” I say. “I mean, I believe in God, I have respect for Islam. If we all do it, it might help us get out.”

  “Baby, you know I can’t do that,” Shane says, looking up at me with worry in his eyes, “but if this is something you really feel . . .”

  “I knew you would say that,” I snap. Josh hasn’t said anything. “Do you think I’m wrong? Josh? Tell me the truth.”

  “No, you’re not wrong—it’s just a big decision,” Josh offers.

  “And you have no idea how you’ll feel about this later, when we get out,” Shane adds.

  “I—I don’t really know if it’s real or not. In many ways, Islam seems like the obvious path right now. My connection to God has helped me so much in here, but I don’t want to do this for the wrong reason. If I do, God will know . . . I don’t want to turn a beautiful thing into some kind of self-serving strategy.”

  “I doubt they would release you,” Shane says, and then adds, “Well, maybe.”

  “What if I test the water, see what the interrogators say, would you two consider doing it with me?”

  “I don’t think I could,” Josh says. “My family would freak out—I really don’t even think I could fake it if I tried.” Shane nods in agreement.

  “Well, we need to try something. This is feeling like it could go on for years and I can’t take it that long. I’m worried about my mom, about everyone. I’m worried about who I’m going to be when I finally get out of here. What if I’m so fucked-up, the rest of my life is destroyed? Converting, or something like it, could give Iran a way out, a reason to release us without looking weak.”

  There’s silence as we eat our sauerkraut, bread, and beans. “We have to be ready to do something,” I say, “especially if things get worse, something we may not be comfortable with.” I’m building toward my next suggestion.

  “What if I try to get pregnant?”

  “What!?” Shane says. I’ve finally gotten their attention.

  “Well, for sure they’d let me out of solitary.”

  “How would we have sex?”

  “Out here, on a date night, under the camera where they can’t see us.”

  “That’s crazy, Sarah. We don’t know what they’d do. Do you want to raise a baby in solitary?” Shane asks.

  “No, Shane, I don’t. I truly believe they would take me out of solitary or release me. Maybe I’m crazy, but I can’t just sit here passively anymore. They are charging us with espionage! We all know what that could mean. We have to treat this situation like what it is.”

  Shane and Josh don’t say much after that. They’re simply not feeling as desperate as I am. There must be a way, I tell myself back in my cell. The little attention the lump in my breast got from the interrogators seems to have faded. Anyway, we have to think of a strategy that will get all of us out.

  57. Josh

  Soon after being brought to Tehran, I figured we’d be released by Day 30. When thirty days passed, I still believed freedom was just around the corner—usually at the next holiday: the autumn equinox, Thanksgiving, then the winter solstice. Underneath these hopes lay my theory that if the Iranian government really wanted to show the firmness of its resolve, it would wait six months to release us. After half a year in prison, I added another two months to my theory.

  When we reached the eight-month mark at the end of March, I finally reckoned with how indeterminate our incarceration would be. I promised myself I’d stop clinging to dates. Freedom will come when it will come, I now tell myself.

  On July 13, more than eleven months after our capture, Iranian TV reported that the United States had released an Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri. Iranian state media reports that he was kidnapped by the CIA in Saudi Arabia and interrogated in the United States. Then one day, he magically showed up at the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington, DC, and flew back to Iran. For our purposes, the most notable thing about this story is that Iranian TV treats it as a national victory over the United States. Characterizing Amiri’s release in this way might give the government cover to release us.

  At hava khori, our usual dynamic plays out. If someone takes a hopeful stance, then someone else takes the opposite outlook. Today, Sarah expresses cautious hope, divining that “something will happen within two months.” The more hopeful she is, the more skeptical Shane is. I’m wary of both of them jumping to conclusions too quickly. Eventually, I chime in, saying something about how we don’t have enough information, that we can’t trust the news, and that we’re just guessing in the dark. Freedom will come when it will come.

  It’s now July 27, almost a year since we hiked in Kurdistan. Civilian life feels very far away. Oddly though, when I look back at all the uneventful weeks and months of languishing in the cell, the time just disappears. Though it felt like the longest year of my life, in retrospect this year of detainment seems to have flown by. I can only vaguely remember tidbits from the months of blankness. All that happened in March was that we called home. In all of April, we met the Swiss ambassador. In May, we met the Omani envoy and our mothers. In early June the interrogators delivered a load of books. In July, Amiri was released.

  Today at hava khori, Sarah tells of another significant event.

  “They let me make a phone call,” she says.

  “And?” I say, engrossed.

  “You don’t feel jealous? Do you?”

  “No! What happened?” I say, relieved that she now has a privilege that I don’t have.

  “I spoke to my mom. They’re planning big things for the one-year anniversary—vigils in thirty different cities. You had suggested to our moms they focus the campaign internationally, and they did. My mom sounds great.” Her voice becomes more sober. “The interrogators told me that they wouldn’t let you guys make phone calls, just me.”

  Why did they let Sarah call home? Everything they do is calculated, so there must be a reason. None of us speculate out loud what this could mean. In my mind, I can’t help but feel optimistic.

  58. Shane

  Food Guy is at our door, taking our order for the canteen. He comes every two to four weeks and unlike other prisoners, we don’t pay for these orders because we aren’t allowed to have money, which I assume is a precaution taken to prevent us from bribing guards. Because we aren’t limited by money, we get whipped into a frenzy whenever he arrives. We struggle to get in as much as we can.

  “We want apples and oranges and walnuts and four boxes of dates and chocolate and twenty packets of cookies and cabbage and ketchup and make sure you get enough for us and Sarah . . .” Shit! My stream of thoughts gets interrupted. I was saying all this in a halting stream of Farsi, but I start reaching the limit of my vo
cabulary, so I stumble and pause. He might leave. He’s still jotting the words down at our door. He hasn’t gotten down everything I’ve listed so far. Josh picks it up.

  “And greens and, and peaches and milk and pomegranate juice and apricot juice—”

  “And coffee,” I cut in. “Nescafé. And walnuts, did we say walnuts? A half kilo of walnuts. And almonds.” He starts taking steps back, still writing. “And cherries!” It’s August. Everything is in season. “And pomegranates. And—”

  “Besseh,” he says abruptly, putting his hand up. Enough.

  “And cake!” I shout. He steps back toward us.

  “Cake?”

  “Yes, cake. You know the little ones?” I am imagining the little cakes our old neighbor Hamid tossed into our cell so long ago. Sometimes I see big bags of those Twinkie-like cakes sitting outside some people’s cells after the canteen order is delivered.

  “Sarah’s birthday is tomorrow,” I say. Today is August 9. “We need cake.” He is jotting it down.

  “Like a birthday cake?” he says, holding his hands out in the shape of a full-sized cake.

  “Yes,” I say, not skipping a beat, “a birthday cake. We need a birthday cake.” He nods, closes our door, and leaves.