by Shane Bauer
At least she was not damaged by her time in here. Her pictures—her eyes—reassure me of at least that.
I ask the guards for tape and stick Sarah’s pictures to the wall by my bed. I stare into her eyes before I fall asleep and gaze at her when I wake. But as the days pass, she becomes more and more two-dimensional again. My feelings become harder to reach beneath a thickening layer of numbness. I can look and I can appreciate and I can know that there is love and yearning somewhere inside me, but I can’t access it. And I don’t try to. It is better like this, like the way people freeze themselves in science fiction movies to come back to life later when the world has improved. I can live with the regular sadness that I wake to every day. I don’t need more emotion than that.
74. Sarah
In the front seat, Alex is rapping Dead Prez: “The White House is the rock house.” He leans toward the cabdriver, moving his hands to mark the beats. “You’re a musician?” the driver asks, prompting Alex to launch into one of his long Dylan renditions, reminding me of Josh in a way that both stings and comforts. Laura’s talking nonstop to no one in particular and Cindy is grumbling under her breath. It’s already mid-December and it’s my fourth trip to DC. Everyone else says they’ve lost count, but it’s probably close to their thirteenth. I know in a sense it’s a rare privilege to get this much face time with the U.S. government, but I’m starting to wonder just how much face time it will take to get actual results. We’re here to ask the United States again to extend some kind of good gesture toward Iran and this time we have ideas straight from Iran.
“You’re going to like Dennis Ross,” Laura tells me. “He’s been wonderful.”
Laura Fattal is a proud mother. She’s somehow managed to keep a sunny disposition and optimistic outlook on life even with her younger son being held hostage. I’m amazed by how resilient she is, how skillfully she lets the stresses of the campaign roll off her shoulders. Still, from what I’ve read about Dennis Ross, I can’t imagine I’m going to find him to be “wonderful.”
The more I read online about him, the less I understand why he, of all people, has been appointed to our case. Ross has a long history of siding with war hawks—and Israel—on almost every issue. In the 1980s he cofounded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank widely viewed as an offshoot of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the group at the heart of America’s Israel lobby. This morning I found an article online about the first paper Ross published with WINEP, in which he argues for the appointment of a “non-Arabist special Middle East envoy” who won’t “feel guilty about our relationship with Israel.” Just a few years later President Clinton appointed Ross as his special Middle East coordinator, a position from which Ross could happily take his own advice.
Ross has held top positions ever since—playing a key role in Israel-Palestine negotiations, supporting war in Iraq—and he has now been appointed President Obama’s advisor on Iran. “It means flying to Tehran by the connecting flight vis-à-vis Tel Aviv,” said Sadegh Karrazi, one of Iran’s top negotiators, when Obama brought Ross from the State Department to the National Security Council last year. He’s one of the White House’s most vocal proponents of crippling sanctions against Iran—guiding the Obama administration down the path of dramatically increasing sanctions before less aggressive means of diplomacy even had a chance. Walking up the White House steps, I struggle to put my feelings aside. Though I’m clearly at odds with Ross’s politics, everyone—from Salem to Secretary Clinton—has been stressing the power this man has over our situation. “The buck stops with Ross,” Salem told me while we were strolling on the beach in Oman. Just feel him out, I tell myself. Whatever you do, make a good impression.
We’re escorted into the room, and Ross motions for us to sit down across from him and two other representatives from the National Security Council—Puneet Talwar, the senior director for the region, and Mustafa M. Popal, the director for Iran. The room is so staid and formal, a part of me expects one of them to take out a cigar and begin puffing away. I look at Ross’s weary, beleaguered face, searching for clues. My initial impression is that he hates this part of his job—meeting with bereaved and traumatized families—that he doesn’t want to be in this room.
“Dr. Ismaily’s heard back from Ahmadinejad and they have a proposal,” I begin. “They understand that you won’t release any Iranian prisoners, so they have come up with something else. Salem says a letter, from President Obama to his Iranian counterpart, is all it will take to get Josh and Shane out. It doesn’t have to contain any concrete promises, not even a hint of the possibility of engagement, just a few innocuous platitudes about peace and cooperation between nations. Salem has taken the liberty of drafting that letter. I have a copy here,” I say, pushing the letter across the table.
Ross and Puneet Talwar exchange a heavy glance. It’s not the reaction I expected. “We think we can do better,” Ross says after a long pause, reaching over to take the letter. “We’re going to designate Jundullah, the Iranian dissident group, a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It’s something this administration has been meaning to do—something we honestly should have done a long time ago. Hopefully it will be just the good gesture we need to get them to make up their minds and release Shane and Josh.”
“Putting Jundullah on the list sounds like the right thing to do, but how do we know it will work?” Alex asks.
“Is this something the Iranian government specifically asked for?” I add cautiously. Jundullah is the organization responsible for a suicide bombing in 2009 that killed fifteen Revolutionary Guards in southeast Iran. It’s grossly hypocritical that, two years later, the United States still hasn’t put them on the list. It’s also an example of how politics trump everything else in the United States’ War on Terror.
“No, but we’ll let Salem know, of course. Anyway, it will be public soon enough,” Puneet says.
“We’re still asking you to write the letter,” Cindy says, then adds, “We trust Salem when he says it will work.”
I understand a letter is more than a letter, and we have to expect Iran would go public with it, but I’m still shocked by Ross’s resistance. They should be willing to do something a little outside their comfort zone by now. After all, the safety of two American citizens is at stake.
“What about the positive statements recently made by Iran’s chief of human rights, Mohammad-Javad Larijani?” Laura cuts in, changing the subject. “Isn’t that a good sign?”
“Yes, we hope so,” Ross answers, “but you can never tell from these statements if there’s actually any consensus behind him.”
During a recent visit to New York, Mohammad Javad Larijani took credit for my release in an interview on NBC, stating that he was able to convince the judiciary that I was “incapable of espionage.” He also blamed Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence for “overreacting” to our case and said he hoped this issue could be settled outside of court. “Let us assume that these people are innocent, that they were really hikers,” he added.
Larijani’s two brothers control Iran’s judiciary and parliament. Some experts speculate that the three are our biggest obstacles, because the Larijani family members are the president’s rivals (Ali Larijani lost to Ahmadinejad in 2005). Salem has told me that Ahmadinejad’s original plan was to pardon all three of us last September—he was even planning on publicly presenting us with gifts before flying us to New York on his personal plane—but the judiciary stepped in to block him. The last thing the Larijanis want is for Ahmadinejad to get all the “compassion points” from another release.
Outside the White House, I immediately call Salem and tell him the news. “Sarah dear,” he says, “this is good news and it might work, but I must consult the Iranians first. They have to approve this before I can go back. I can’t just spring it on them.”
75. Josh
The evening call to prayer blares from the loudspeakers. That’s my signal to grab my little book on Buddhist
wisdom and read today’s quote. Shane grabs his copy and also reads silently. We agreed with Sarah to do this every evening during the call to prayer. She would buy a copy and read too. It’d be a way to connect to each other and to the world outside Section 209 in general. Tonight, as usual, the Buddhist quote encourages me to live in the present moment and to have courage to face the unknown.
The three of us used to read these quotes together at hava khori, but now we read separately. Shane and I have been taking more space from each other. We do this especially when small disagreements arise. There’s no need to get angry and dispute where Saddam Hussein was born or what floor of the prison our cell is on or whether two books can legally have the same title.
Shane and I are slipping into an intimacy that only couples know. I wish I could tell Sarah that I understand her perspective more every day and that I think about her so much. But I’ve wondered if she thinks about me and not just Shane. I wonder if she spends time with my family too. I bet it has gotten harder for her to include me the way she used to when she was in prison.
For over two months we’ve not heard a word from Sarah besides that short TV clip at the press conference. I think Dumb Guy is trying to break us down with neglect. He’s only given me a selection of my mother’s letters, though she writes every day. And he hasn’t given me anything from Alex in many months.
The Buddhist quotes help counteract the daily humiliations of taking orders, wearing a blindfold, and having the door slam shut after they deliver meals. I’ve gotten used to it all, but still, it wears on me over time.
A new guard stops by to chat, as new guards often do. He listens to our spiel: no trial, no lawyer, only five minutes on the telephone. He leaves our cell, clearly appalled at our conditions. Minutes later he returns with another guard and asks again:
“Only five minutes on the telephone?”
“Only five minutes,” I say soberly in my rudimentary Farsi. “We’ve been here for sixteen months.”
Two days later, it’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving and the interrogators allow us to call home. My interrogator takes me to the pay phone and I dial my parents’ landline. My mother picks up.
“Josh! It’s you! How are you? Are you okay?”
I reassure her about my health and safety. I tell her I’m now reading Moby Dick, and she says she’ll get herself a copy immediately.
“Wait a minute.” I stop myself. “Is anyone else home?”
She yells, “Alex! Jacob!”
She never calls my dad Jacob. She always calls him his Hebrew name, Yaakov, but she’s being cautious, downplaying his heritage while on the phone with Iran.
They pick up and we all gush for a moment.
Alex speaks up. “We’re doing everything we can. How are you?”
“Alex, ‘My heart is not weary. It’s light and it’s free,’” I reply.
He immediately fills in the rest of Bob Dylan’s verse: “‘I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me.’”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Alex’s voice. He didn’t used to sound so similar to my father—who chimes in: “Josh, we’re going to get you home somehow.”
“Baruch Hashem,” I respond into the receiver, using one of the few Hebrew phrases I know. God willing. I want to signal to them that I’m not scared of the Iranians’ knowing I’m Jewish. That they’ll do what they want with me, but I’m not going to hide my heritage. Using Hebrew is also a message to my father; it’s another way of telling him that I love him.
Alex chimes in again. He always knows what I want. He reads me messages from my friends. Jenny sent me another message. She still thinks of me. Alex then tells me that he and Sarah may go to my ten-year high school reunion tonight.
“Wait a minute!” I say. “Sarah’s there too? Put her on!”
She’s visiting my parents’ house! She might go to my high school reunion! And I was worried she wouldn’t engage with my family and would de-emphasize my plight.
Sarah doesn’t have a chance to say much. But I can feel her and my whole family—unwavering and supportive. Dumb Guy hoped to break me with neglect, but he lost.
76. Sarah
For the last two weeks I’ve heard very little from Salem. Every time I text him, I get a reply that he’s “in Romania” or “in Geneva.” “I promise to call when I get back to Muscat,” he texts. When I finally get him on the phone, the news is bad. Salem went to Iran, but he had to return, obviously, without Shane and Josh—or even a timeline for their release. As he predicted, when the United States put Jundullah on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list without consulting the Iranian officials in charge of our case, they took offense and refused to connect the gesture to Josh and Shane.
Salem sat in on a meeting in Tehran about Shane and Josh, and none of the authorities could agree on what should be done. He tells me one of the Iranian officials present suggested that either Josh or Shane should be released first—in an effort to increase the pressure on the United States to give something in return for the release of the last one.
“Salem,” I say, “you can’t leave one of them there alone. Shane and Josh would never want that.” I am almost shouting. “None of us would want that, under any circumstances. Please, you have to promise me that—”
“I already refused their offer,” he interjects. “If one was released, it would be impossible to get the last one out. Try to stay calm, my dear. I swear to you I will never let that happen.”
“Sarah,” Salem continues, “the president asked me to tell you that it’s not a matter of if they are going to get out—it’s a matter of when.”
Some comfort. All the work we’ve done for the last four months has amounted to nothing. A part of me feels like I’ve let myself be used, agreeing to be so diplomatic and even handed in the media. Now that Ahmadinejad is back in Iran, having basked in the attention that releasing me garnered, there’s no real incentive for him to stick his neck out again. The Iranian government, as usual, plays by its own rules.
I’ve been living out of my suitcase and have been amped up on adrenaline for four months straight. The campaign will basically shut down for the holidays. This is the perfect opportunity for me to do my own research to try to put together some of the pieces of this puzzle on my own. I call my sister and ask if she knows of a private spot where I can hole up for a few days. She does.
The next day my sister picks me up at the bus station in Athens, Georgia. We’re heading to her pastor’s house, which I’ll have to myself for a week, when my cell phone rings. It’s a DC number.
“Sarah, it’s Qubad Talabani. I’m so sorry to be calling you so close to Christmas.”
Qubad Talabani is the second son of the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani. Before he was elected president in 2005, his father was the head of one of the main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Qubad is Iraqi Kurdistan’s representative in the United States. That means that when we were captured on July 31, 2009, in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, we were on his watch.
I first met Qubad at the Hilton in DC a few weeks ago. He told me that he was in Iraqi Kurdistan at the time we were captured. “I got a call from our security services,” he explained, “and they told me that three of my people had been taken by the Iranians. I knew right away it would be bad.”
“Your people?” I asked.
“Yes, Americans.” He smiled. “You know, my peeps.” We both smiled.
Qubad went on to say that thus far, every time his father raised our case, the Iranian authorities told him it was “going to take some time.” Now that the one-year mark has passed, he felt he could ask his father to try again. I nodded and smiled politely but had no expectation that anything would come out of that meeting. Now, two weeks later, his tone is entirely different.
“Sarah, my father met with Ahmadinejad in Turkey and showed him your letter. The president told him that Shane and Josh will be released to my father.”
�
�So . . . ” I falter, suddenly at a loss for words. “Did your father get this in writing?”
“No, he didn’t, but there will be a follow-up meeting soon. We need to stay grounded, Sarah. There is no timeline yet. You never know how long they might drag it out, but this is much, much better than what we’ve heard in the past.”
I get off the phone and immediately call my mom at my sister’s place. “Mom, Qubad Talabani just called me,” I say excitedly. “They’ve gotten some positive signs and have decided to get involved.”
“Talabani!’” my mom shouts over the kitchen noise. “Sarah, that’s great! They were so hesitant in the past.”
“What did you say, Mimi?” I can hear my nephew Graham in the background. “Was Aunt Sarah talking to the Taliban?”
“No.” My mom laughs. “Talabani, not the Taliban. This is great, Sarah.”
The biggest flaw in our campaign strategy up to this point has been that it depends too heavily on action from the United States. The U.S. government didn’t get me out of prison, and they aren’t going to get Josh and Shane out either. In my conversation with Qubad, he made it clear that his father plans to negotiate directly with Iran and cut the United States out of the conversation. An independent third party like Iraq may be exactly the kind of diplomatic pressure we need.
Winter 2010/2011
77. Shane
Our wing of Section 209 is dusty and barren. It has always felt to me as though our hall, the eleventh and last corridor in the ward, isn’t supposed to exist. It has the feeling of a storage area. Big air ducts run along the ceiling so low that you have to duck at one point to avoid hitting your head. It is also darker than other halls. It feels industrial. Sometimes, when the windows are open, the air becomes coated with the smell of truck exhaust. When it’s bad, Josh and I lie on the ground—the fumes seem thinner at the bottom of the cell. In this hall, the cells have none of the ventilation slots with fans that suck the heat and condensation out of the rest of the ward. The cells here feel older and more dungeonlike than they do in the rest of the prison. The locks are the bolt kind that clang as they are driven home, not the quiet key locks used in other halls. The cells here are smaller too. Ours, at nine by fourteen feet, is the largest. The others are built for solitary confinement.