A Sliver of Light

by Shane Bauer

  “Really, I can say that?”

  The next day, I’m walking across an ocean of beige and pink on Oprah’s stage. Trying to ignore the bright lights, applause, and rows of smiling faces, I find Oprah’s eyes, anchor myself to them, and sit down. Oprah’s direct, confident gaze puts me at ease. She feels like a pillar of strength that I can draw from.

  “Sarah, how do you feel?” she asks.

  “Honestly, Oprah, I feel numb. This is all so shocking, I can’t really feel anything.”

  I’m not used to the heavy makeup on my face. I’m not used to the hundreds of eyes fixed on me. Yet, as I begin to speak, something about this situation feels familiar and almost second nature. I know the millions of people listening have no idea who I am and no real conception of what I’ve been through, but I’m used to that. I’m used to trying to translate my experience to guards and interrogators with only modest success. I’m used to being misunderstood.

  I tell her that Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous zone, practically its own country. Unlike most of Iraq, Kurdistan is not a war zone, and no Americans have been killed or kidnapped there in recent decades.

  “Tell us about Shane and Josh,” she says. “Are they okay?”

  “They’re very isolated,” I say. “This has taken a heavy toll on them. I don’t even know when I’ll be allowed to talk to them again . . . This is the worst separation yet.” I pause and weigh my words, thinking that Salem, even President Ahmadinejad, must be listening. I decide on a lighter version of what I want to say: “We’re being used.”

  During the break, Oprah takes off her colossal heels so we can pose for a photo at the same height. She jokes to the audience about the importance of lip gloss, referring to the story I divulged during the show about putting strawberry jelly on my lips before my “date nights” with Shane. I tell her I need to talk with her privately after the show and she agrees. An hour later, in the Green Room, Oprah walks in with her entourage. Framed by the doorway, she towers over me. I look up and tell her that I’ve always admired her, that we even read The Color Purple in prison (she was in the film version). Then I get down to business.

  “I need you to help me get a meeting with President Obama,” I say.

  “I don’t do that,” she replies with iron certainty.

  “I need you to make an exception,” I say, standing up straight and locking my eyes on hers.

  “What do you need him to know? Perhaps I can pass on a message.”

  “No,” I say, “what I have to say is confidential . . . and important.”

  “Okay,” she replies, weighing her response, “I can appreciate that. I’ll make an exception this time. I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll see what I can do.” I realize that holding my ground, something I had to master in prison, is also going to prove important on the outside.

  The next morning, I’m back in New York. It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’m being ushered into a black car for the first of a dozen interviews we have lined up all day. Shane’s mom, Cindy, is sitting next to me in the back seat. My hand is clasped in hers like an iron bolt.

  I walk through the day in a haze. Between interviews, strangers come up to me on the street with tears in their eyes, asking me to pose with them for pictures. When I walk into BBC’s studio, the entire room stands up behind their desks to applaud me. Having my pain, which has for so long been so private, publicly recognized feels good—but the attention is hard to process. Sustaining eye contact is difficult, almost painful, and having all these people I don’t know constantly touching and hugging me makes me want to retreat into a hole. I’m finally back in the world of people—but after 410 days alone in a cell, what I crave the most is solitude.

  It’s also confusing when I find out how little people seem to know about us, how we are often portrayed as “young hikers,”’ with pictures of Josh and Shane as children flashing on the screens behind me. One media outlet after another asks me about my romance with Shane in prison. How did he propose to you? Can we see the ring he wove out of string? Talking about Shane hurts—it doesn’t feel good to have our relationship condensed to a sound bite and, to be honest, it feels cheap and almost disrespectful for so much attention to be focused on our engagement when Shane and Josh are still in prison, with no guarantee of an end in sight.

  Again and again, journalists ask me if I’ll go back to Iran for the trial. “I’m not ruling anything out,” I say. “I’d go back to prove that none of us have done anything wrong.” We came up with those lines in strategy meetings, keeping in mind that the last thing we want is for the Iranian government to get into this even deeper by having a trial, which would inevitably lead to a conviction. The answer I give again and again is strategic, circumspect. If I’m actually forced to make that choice, I honestly can’t say what I’ll do.

  It’s crucial I don’t say anything in these interviews that will piss off the Iranian or the U.S. government, which leaves very little left to say. I can’t talk about my breakdowns in solitary confinement, I can’t talk about Shane being beaten by the guards, and I definitely can’t talk about how disappointed we are by our own government’s inaction on our behalf. So what can I say?

  “I want to ask everyone in the world who believes in our innocence to redouble their efforts.” I tell CNN, ABC, VOA, MSNBC, Democracy Now!, Fox, CBS, AP, Radio Farda, BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, and CBS that “I’m only one-third free.”

  69. Sarah

  Later, in a taxi, Alex gets a phone call, says something to the driver, and we’re suddenly speeding off in the opposite direction. President Ahmadinejad has agreed to meet with my mother and me for a few minutes in the hotel before he returns to Iran. Cindy, Laura, and Alex will meet with one of his close aides. We’d already dismissed the possibility that he’d see us. We didn’t think he’d risk looking “soft” back home right after his usual, inflammatory speech at the UN. Now we’re getting rushed in to see him just hours before he leaves the country.

  I lock hands with my mom and Shane’s mom, Cindy, on each side of me in the back seat of the cab. Anchored between these two women, I feel like a part of Shane is physically with me. My impression is that Cindy’s calm, inner strength is the backbone that holds the “Hiker campaign” together. She can make rational decisions under tremendous pressure and fight like a bulldog when she needs to.

  At this moment, the contrast between her and my mom is striking. My mom has been fighting so hard for so long, she looks like she’s finally ready to collapse. She recently confessed to me that she’s been sick and needs surgery. Every time I look at her, my heart is filled with a rush of protective love. I want her to rest, but I know she can’t bear to leave my side.

  We all get out of the taxi. Cindy, Laura, my mom, and I decided to wear headscarves—I guess the idea is to show cultural sensitivity, but I think the truth is we just want the Iranian president to like us. It’s the same urge I felt in prison, to please my captors, and I now realize our families feel it too. With one hand, I adjust my mom’s headscarf before we go in, tightly gripping the small manila folder I’m carrying under my other arm. I stayed up late with Alex compiling a thick packet of “evidence” that Ahmadinejad asked for in an interview he did yesterday on American TV, proving that we didn’t have any intention to enter or harm Iran. I had letters from all our employers, from noteworthy figures that Iran’s government respects such as Noam Chomsky, all of Shane’s and my own articles printed out, along with anything I could think of to prove we weren’t spies.

  As we approach the building, I see a bearded Iranian man in a suit that I know I’ve met before in prison. I of course don’t know his name or position, but I still get shivers at the sight of him. “Sarah,” he exclaims, “so nice to see you in your own country.”

  I rush up to him. “How are Shane and Josh? When are you going to let them go?” The words spill out like fire.

  “They are fine, Sarah, don’t worry. Just be happy that you are with your mother now,” he answers smugly.

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sp; “Will you . . . Will you please tell them you saw me? That I miss them?” I grip my mom’s hand tighter.

  “Yes, Sarah, I will tell them. Now, you must go—the president is waiting for you.”

  We pass through security and are led upstairs. Someone had the brilliant idea that we should bring him flowers. When I walk into the room, I immediately feel sick and somehow ashamed to be holding this bouquet. These aren’t my friends or relatives; they are the people who held me hostage. I hastily hand the flowers to one of his guards and sit down across from the most volatile and polarizing president in Iran’s history.

  On the surface he is small and unassuming. He directs his attention immediately toward my mother, refusing to acknowledge or make eye contact with me. I listen politely while he congratulates my mother on my release and inquires about her health problems, which have been in the media. When he tells her she should “drink cranberry juice” to help with her gallbladder, I decide the pleasantries have gone on long enough.

  “Mr. President,” I say, “I’ve brought you the evidence you asked for.” I push the folder across the table.

  “What is this?” he asks, looking at me for the first time.

  “You told the news two days ago that you wanted evidence that Josh and Shane are not spies. Well, here it is. The three of us are very critical of our government’s foreign policy. We are all against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I even helped organize a protest against bombing Iran when I was in my twenties. Will you tell this to the judiciary?” He takes the folder and begins to rustle through it in silence.

  “Do you think we are spies?” I ask.

  “Sarah.” He pauses. “I know about your activism. You are friends with this American man that was killed by the Israeli military.”

  “Tristan Anderson. He wasn’t killed—he survived.”

  “You are good kids. I hope you will be married soon and have many children, fifteen perhaps.” He smiles and directs his gaze back to my mom.

  “Sir,” I say, drawing him back, “how am I supposed to get married when my fiancé is in your prison?”

  “Sarah, don’t worry,” he says, “you are home now, in your country. We’re not going to take you again.” The president turns to smile at the man sitting next to him, as if sharing a joke, but instead of returning the smile, the president’s aide looks at him sternly and whispers in his ear.

  “I mean,” the president corrects himself, “we’re not going to take you. You are free now.” He pauses, scanning the room, seeming to gather his thoughts. “I will give my recommendation to the judiciary for the release of your friends,” he continues. “Sarah, maybe you can help improve the relationship between Iran and the U.S. This might be a good job for you.”

  The president stands and bows slightly with his hand over his heart. As always, he is the picture of humility. I’m stunned by how sloppy the president is with his speech. “Take” sounds a lot like “kidnap” to me. What is our incarceration if not an “institutional kidnapping”? They knew from the first day that we weren’t spies and that we did not even willingly cross the border, yet they decided to hold us anyway.

  70. Shane

  There’s a new man on our hall. They put him here a couple weeks ago, not long after Sarah left. I’ve never seen him, only heard him, and he barely sounds human. When he walks, he makes a whiny, pulsating sound that repeats as if it were coming from a motor. It has high notes mixed with a deep guttural groan and shallow but heavy breathing. His feet drag when he walks and if a guard speaks, his drone becomes more rapid and nervous. I have never heard him use words. At first, when guards came to his cell to give him food at mealtime, he would scream in terror, similar to the way monkeys scream in cages. Now, he only screams when they try to take him out to hava khori.

  Sometimes he flings himself against his door. The sound it makes is hard and shrill, more like a head against metal than a shoulder. He does this until the guards come, but when they do, he screams again. When I hear him, I picture him naked in a corner with his arms curled around himself, his body turned toward the wall.

  When he walks down the hall, the guards kick him and laugh like boys tormenting a cowering dog. It seems that something about him, about how pathetic he is, makes them angry. I think they hate him because he is making plain to them what it is they are party to, even if they themselves aren’t the torturers. Or maybe they see him as a traitor, someone who diminished the stature of humankind by letting himself deteriorate in such a way. Maybe his imbecility shames them and their shame emerges as anger.

  He makes me angry too. I hate it when he screams. I hate hearing his drone. When Josh and I used to hear someone crying out in desperation, we would put our books down and abide in awkward silence, giving him at least the decency of quiet empathy. Now, we just keep reading. At least I try to, but I can’t help being distracted.

  Something has been quickly changing in us since Sarah left. She kept us gentle, but now we are hardening. We speak to each other less, and an amorphous tension lingers in the air between us. Sometimes we focus this tension on each other. Other times, we target something outside our cell. Now, as this man groans, a part of me wants to tell him to shut up. He takes me out of my world of books. I rarely leave that world anymore except for food and exercise. I don’t want to leave it to hear someone’s torment. I want to be far away from that. He sends me into a cycle of self-loathing because I hate that I just want to close out his agony.

  One day, a guard tries to take him out of his cell, but he only screams. He won’t go. A half-hour later, a group of them comes down the hall. I hear metal clinking against itself as they walk, like chains or shackles. I look over at Josh. He hears it too. Seconds later, we hear the sound of a shower. He is screaming in pure panic. A guard yells angrily, almost in a frenzy. Josh and I jump up and pound on the door. We pound and pound and pound. This pounding makes me feel alive again, like running hot water over a frozen hand. The screaming stops. A guard comes to the door with rage in his eyes and asks what we want.

  “In chee-eh, Guantánamo?” I say. Nothing angers them more than comparing Evin to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay.

  He looks at us with surprise. “What do you care?” his eyes say. “Karetun neest!” he snaps. None of your business! He marches off. The water stops. They take the man out of his cell and put him in the small open-air cell in our hall. It is dark and cold outside. They leave him there. He rams against the door over and over again. Eventually the ramming stops. When it does, I sleep.

  71. Sarah

  I’m in DC. We have half a dozen meetings lined up with officials at various embassies, the State Department, and the White House. I get a call from Salem in Oman and he tells me that he has just gotten off the phone with Ahmadinejad. “He’s very happy, Sarah. He likes the media you’ve done. He says it is helping him. He wants to free Shane and Josh—he just needs an excuse to do it, something to calm down the judiciary.”

  “What, Salem?” I ask. “What specifically should we be asking for?”

  “Anything will do, any return gesture from the United States to Iran. Iran has already given the U.S. something by releasing you.”

  I tell him we have a meeting with Secretary Clinton in a few hours.

  “Very good,” he says, “we need engagement. The internal situation in Iran is very bad—the president is getting all kinds of criticism for letting you go. A member of parliament recently said that releasing you was a gift to ‘Quran burners.’” Salem’s referring to a recent scandal that erupted when a Christian pastor in the United States threatened to publicly set fire to two hundred Qurans. “The president can’t put his neck out again without something to show—maybe your Secretary Clinton can send her husband to Iran, or let a few Iranian students out of prison who overstayed their visas. Anything will work.”

  “Okay, Salem, but the truth is,” I say, thinking about the upcoming midterm elections, “Obama’s position doesn’t look much better. He can’t afford to look w
eak on Iran.”

  Walking into the State Department, I feel truly nervous for the first time since my release. Am I thawing out, I wonder, starting to feel more? The truth is I feel deeply conflicted about Hillary Clinton. Josh’s mom, Laura, tells me Clinton has been one of our biggest advocates. She gave our moms an award on Mother’s Day and she’s made more public statements about us than any other high-level official. “Okay,” I reply, “but what has she done to help get us out?”

  I can’t shake the belief that statements from Clinton only make our situation worse. After all, she’s one of the most demonized U.S. officials on Iranian TV, particularly since she publicly stated that the United States would “obliterate Iran” if it ever attacked Israel. IRINN and other state-run news channels in Iran usually show pictures of her with her face contorted in anger, her eyes vacant, as if she were the very face of “the Great Satan.” A part of me has begun to believe the Iranian government has been taking out its anger with her directly on us.

  The woman who greets me in front of her office, with her round cherub cheeks, does not bring any of the sinister images to mind that haunted me in my solitary cell. We shake hands and she leads Cindy, Laura, Nora, Alex, and me into one of the State Department’s many lavish reception rooms.

  I was planning on being stern with Clinton, but somehow she disarms me with a combination of sweetness and authority that immediately sends me into internal conflict. Am I wrong to blame her? Is she really at fault?

  Clinton reaches out and gently touches my knee. “Sarah, I want you to know how much I admire your bravery,” she says. Don’t cry, I tell myself, goddammit! “You are a very strong person.”

  “Thank you, Madame Secretary,” I manage to say evenly.

  “How are you?” she asks.

  “Not good. I have no way of knowing when I’ll see them again, or if they’re in more danger because I’m not there. The guards and interrogators were more civil with us, I believe, because one of us was a woman.”