A Sliver of Light

by Shane Bauer

  A few days later, the Iranian prosecutor Dolatabadi issues a direct response to the media I’ve been doing. “Sarah Shourd,” he says, “has left the path of fairness.” Hours later, we receive a frenzied call from the State Department’s Iran Desk requesting a family conference call. Both sides feel threatened. We have their attention.

  Summer 2011

  94. Josh

  It’s June 4—my birthday—and I’m trying not to feel sad. I can’t help thinking how nice it would be to celebrate with friends and family. Almost every day in April and May, I asked a guard or an interrogator for birthday presents. I told them that I want bed sheets, a pen, a phone call, and a tour of the city. Listening to my requests, Shane always smirks. Then, he usually tacks on items that he thinks are more realistic: a chessboard, a cake—or perhaps pizza. Months of requests have amounted to nothing.

  I make one request to Shane: that for my birthday we eat dinner at a table. When our meal arrives, Shane helps me disassemble the bed frame and lay its metal sheet on two stacks of blankets. Shane then covers the metal tabletop with a colorful shawl that my brother sent us. I sit on our plastic chair, and Shane sits on a stack of blankets facing me.

  Shane makes the day special. He cooks apples in a plastic bag in a thermos of hot water to make apple pie for dessert. He makes a delicious carrot-cheese concoction. Normally, we chop carrots for ourselves by chewing them up and spitting them out, but today, Shane takes special care to chop them with plastic spoons, breaking several utensils in the process.

  This dinner is beautiful—the loveliest thing we’ve done in a long time. I take the sprouting onion down from the windowsill and place it proudly on our table. We laugh at ourselves for wearing our button-down prisoner shirts—the ones they make us wear to interrogations—as our way of dressing up for the occasion. Shane drives me nuts sometimes, but anybody would in this circumstance. I’m grateful he puts up with me. It is a sweet gift to hear him say, “If I had to be stuck in a cell like this with somebody, it would be you.” I look at him, and without hesitating, I tell him the same thing.

  95. Shane

  A few days after Josh’s birthday, a guard stands at the door of hava khori with a bird in his hand. Actually, he has a newspaper in his hand with a bird lying on top of it. This man displays it to us like a boy would show his friends: Look!

  The bird is not yet a fledgling and it appears to be barely alive. One little wing moves its body slowly around the paper. Its eyes are still closed. I know its mother. She has been in a state for days, screaming at us whenever we’re in hava khori, angry that we are too close to the nest, which I imagine sits just up over the wall. This little one must have fallen out of it.

  There used to be a little bird inside, just down the stairs from hava khori. This one wasn’t wild, but a yellow finch. It lived in a cage, hanging from the ceiling next to a security camera, above where the guards sat and read their newspapers. Whenever we came to hava khori, I always tilted my head back to look at it. For some reason, the guards never scolded me for doing this. Some of them took delight in it. “Parandeh?” they would say sweetly. All day long, it would watch its reflection in the mirror and flit around in the cage, creating a pleasant tinkling noise against the wire frame.

  Now, back at our cell, the guard holds the newspaper and the bird forward. “Mikhay?” he says. He makes little feeding motions with his free hand, stretching his head up into the air and chopping his beak at his hand like a hungry nestling. “Mother,” he says, pointing to Josh and me. He is asking if we want to be the bird’s mother. Josh looks bewildered. I say yes.

  “Soak bread in water and feed it to him,” the guard tells me with authority. I know that a diet of bread kills birds, but I nod in assent.

  When he leaves, I place the newspaper on the ground. We stare at it. Its little body is breathing in quick, shallow breaths. Josh still looks bewildered. “Let’s make a nest for it,” I say. We take the one little metal bowl we have and we fill it with shredded newspaper. I gently put the bird in it. It barely moves.

  As a kid in rural Minnesota, I was rescuing fallen baby animals all the time. There were several birds I tried to wean and once, a chipmunk. I would set my alarm every two hours at night, wake, and feed it. But we had syringes then. Baby birds won’t eat out of your hand.

  I start mashing up some bread and soak it with tahini, figuring that ground-up sesame is the closest we will get to birdseed.

  Then the door opens. Food Guy, the one who takes our canteen order, sticks his head in. “Where is the bird?” he asks peremptorily in Farsi. I am sure that word spread and the higher-ups scolded someone for being foolish enough to give us a pet. I carry the bird-in-a-bowl over to him and make to hand it over. He smiles at the sight of it and hands me a syringe. “For water,” he says.

  I make a little mixture of water and tahini in a plastic cup and fill up the syringe. The bird won’t open its mouth, so I gently pry its beak open and slowly squirt the mixture in. It swallows some and some flows out of its mouth. Suddenly, it comes to life, flapping its wings in the bowl. It does this intermittently for hours.

  “If this bird lives, I say we let it go as soon as it can fly,” I propose to Josh. He agrees.

  Like everything, we have to decide together how to deal with this animal. Our power dynamic is delicate. If I try to assert control over the bird, I’m afraid Josh will take offense and assert control himself. Everything that enters this cell belongs to us equally unless agreed otherwise. But I don’t want to hand this little life over to Josh. The only animals he grew up feeding were some fish in a fish tank. I know his intentions are good, but I want this bird to live. Still, I know the worst thing to do is to act like I know better, even when I do.

  These kinds of calculations are starting to wear on me. There are so many things building that I want to tell Josh but don’t. I want to tell him he has too many vocabulary lists hidden under the carpet. They are forming a lump and someone might see them. I also want to point out that I don’t like the way he sloppily puts pieces of writing—all of which are contraband—under his blanket and leaves them there, rather than returning them to their proper hiding place under the carpet. I want to tell him it bothers me the way he sits across from me at lunch and stares down at his food, not saying a word, and that I don’t like it that when I wake up in the morning to go to the bathroom, he just lies there staring at his book when I pass, not even saying good morning or acknowledging my existence. And I don’t like how much he’s been banging on the door lately when the guards don’t come quickly enough. What is the hurry? Why work yourself up over a bar of soap or toothpaste?

  But I know most of these things are petty, so I don’t mention them. I just feel the frustration rise day in and day out, constantly pushing it down in the interest of keeping the peace. Somehow, it feels like this bird has come at the perfect time, giving us another being to focus on, something to care for when we are losing our ability to care for each other.

  “Do you want to feed it?” I ask, holding the bird out to him.

  He does, but he looks to me for guidance. “Just hold it in your hand and stick the syringe in its mouth. You will have to push it in, but just be careful.” He picks it up. “Softer!” I say. He is gripping it too tight. “Keep your grip loose.” He loosens his grip and slowly shoots the liquid down its throat. “How was that?” he asks.

  “That was great,” I say.

  We go back to our beds and take up our books. “Shane, I want you to take the lead on this,” he says. “Just tell me if I can help.” I’m relieved. Maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about. Or maybe Josh is being intentionally generous to ease the tension.

  I think the bird will make it. It is almost flapping itself out of its nest. I give it a light bath with the corner of a towel, wiping the tahini oil off its chest. I change the old newspaper out of its nest. There are some wet feces in the bowl. A good sign.

  I feed it at midnight and go to sleep, waking once before dawn
to feed it again. I hear it flapping on and off throughout the night.

  When I open my eyes in the morning, the bird is still. I get up to look at it. There are scraps of newspaper outside of the bowl, pushed out of the nest by all its movement. In the bowl, half-covered in newspaper strips, the bird is stiff.

  We wrap it in newspaper. To its little coffin, Josh adds a plastic bottle cap full of halva. It is our favorite treat, sweet and made of sesame. We set the bundle gently in our trash can.

  A couple days later, Food Guy comes back. “Where is the bird?” he asks in Farsi.

  “Dead,” I tell him.

  “Dead? Where is it? What did you do with it?”

  “We put it in the trash.”

  “In the trash! You just threw it away like garbage?” He looks at us like we are uncouth and insensitive.

  I look around us, making sure he sees me scan the cement that encapsulates us. Then I look at him, amazed. What did he expect us to do with it?

  96. Josh

  It’s ten days after my birthday. The black asphalt is hot at high noon. I’m in the short-sleeve collared shirt that I wore while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan twenty-two and a half months ago. Instead of the dusty jeans that I also wore on my last day of freedom, I now wear tight Euro-style jeans given to me last year by the Swiss ambassador. It’s my first time wearing “real” clothes in a long while. A van pulls up, and Shane and I climb in.

  We curve around the Evin Prison compound, winding past an eight-story prison hospital and the administrative building where we once met the Swiss ambassador.

  Dumb Guy sits in the passenger seat and Father Guy sits in the back row. A soldier stops the van. Another checks the driver’s paperwork. Another does a routine check of the underside of the car. Then, the large, white steel gate—that last barricade between Evin Prison and the civilian world—opens wide.

  The interrogators are taking us to eat pizza in a park—a belated treat for my birthday. Before entering the stream of street traffic, the van accelerates directly toward a gaggle of civilians on the road’s edge. The driver slams on the brakes in front of the crowd, and the side door slides open. A man enters carrying a professional video camera. As the door closes and the van careens into the flow of traffic, I hear Shane’s voice from behind me. He speaks quietly, just above a whisper. “Josh, do you recognize this guy?”

  “Who?”

  “The cameraman.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t recognize him at all?”

  “No.”

  “I think he was filming at court.”

  Shane thinks the cameraman works for a TV station that will air our trip to the park. Dumb Guy promises it won’t be televised. Shane wants to head back to Evin so this event is not used for propaganda, but he leaves the final decision up to me. Dumb Guy hears us discussing our options, and he interrupts from the passenger seat. “This is your last chance. I worked hard to make this happen,” he says. “I promise this will not be on TV. If it is on TV, you will see it. You will know if I am lying, and you will not trust me in the future.”

  Dumb Guy doesn’t want us to turn around. He’s arguing with us but giving us the choice. He never gives us choices like this. He also never puts his trust on the line like this. Oddly, I believe him.

  And I just feel like going outside. Can’t that be a good enough reason? Yet I know, as with everything, I need a thorough rationale for every decision I make so that I can explain myself to Shane and to the interrogators. My head spins with more reasons to continue the trip. Nelson Mandela toured with his captors at the end of his imprisonment. Why shouldn’t I? Maybe this is the end of ours. Why should I refuse better treatment just so they cannot say that they treat me better? I would never turn down books to show they deprive me of literature. I would never refuse a roommate in order to proclaim that they keep me in solitary.

  I open the window wider to help me decide. The air rushes onto my face. I see images that remind me of a past life: yellow taxis honking and swerving around each other, huge flowering trees lining the streets, fruit vendors on the sidewalk, and businessmen walking past high-rise buildings. There are children playing in a playground, old people sitting and reading the newspaper.

  There is no way to know whether Dumb Guy is lying or not, whether our experience will be aired on the nightly news or not. It’s a question of faith, but normally—in the cell—everything is calculated. Shane and I chart our exercises, count our books, measure our storage space, and mark the days on the wall. Whether to hunger-strike, to write a letter to the interrogators, or to ask for Iranian DVDs instead of films from Hollywood requires a rational, mental debate of the pros and cons.

  I feel my heart stir. Then I do something I feared I had forgotten how to do: I make my decision based on intuition—a trusting intuition. “We want to go.” I project my voice to make sure Dumb Guy hears me in the van’s passenger seat. “We don’t want to turn around.”

  I stick my head far out the window. The unconfined air streams around my face and neck. I close my eyes and enjoy the sensation of movement. The air currents against my eyelids slow down as the car decelerates. I sense the warm summery stillness and open my eyes to a traffic jam.

  Now would be the perfect time to run. We’re already wearing street clothes and sneakers. This thought makes me feel even freer.

  Eventually, we drive partway up the giant mountain overlooking Tehran. We pull over by a park and cross the street to enter.

  Subtropical trees arch overhead; junipers, tulips, and roses beckon from beyond the trail. Thick, moist air fills my lungs. Dragonflies, squirrels, and bees welcome me. My shoulders relax into my back and my knees bend more than normal as I pace through the canopied walkway. The uneven terrain underfoot contrasts to the flat hallways of Section 209, and I sense the earth’s complexity through my shoes. I look left and look right into the lush landscape, but my body keeps walking forward, unaccustomed to lateral movement.

  My mind wanders. I imagine hiking with my brother and friends near my old home in Oregon. A warm, dank gust of air fills my nose with the sweet smell of flowers. I look over at Shane, who is mesmerized by the trees. Our eyes meet. He seems to read my mind and nods in agreement. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten what this feels like. Freedom seems magical, far beyond words. I can barely express to Shane how much this contrasts with the cell and hava khori.

  Yet, the guards and interrogators trail behind us and the cameraman jogs ahead. He signals for us to look forward. I don’t submit to his request, nor do I rebel and avert my eyes. I’m committed to making him as irrelevant to my experience as possible. It’s my way of practicing being free.

  The cameraman is backpedaling and filming. The forested path widens into the open sky and plaza. There are some benches nearby, a kiosk in the distance, and a pond right behind the cameraman. Splash! He falls backward directly into the pool of water. The guards run to help.

  The cameraman hobbles over to a bench with his arms around the shoulders of two guards. Blood slowly seeps down his leg. One guard cleans his wound; another carries the camera awkwardly. I turn away and suppress a smile. He’s done for the day. We no longer have to worry about footage being used as propaganda. I look at the trees and silently thank them, as if, somehow, their spirits contrived the cameraman’s fall.

  We’re told to order ice cream at the kiosk. I remember they gave Sarah ice cream in the days before they released her. I want pistachio ice cream, but they have only chocolate and vanilla. There are a couple young men watching us as we eat. “Welcome,” one of them says in English. Do they recognize us from television or is this Middle Eastern hospitality? “Man zendooniam. Amreekaaii.” I’m a prisoner. American. I speak to the civilian in the same way I’d whisper to a neighboring prisoner down the hall. Likewise, a guard silences me and stands between us.

  After devouring the ice cream, I ask for permission to hike. The guards and interrogators have trained us to ask for permission for nearly everything. The g
uard waves his arm. “Go ahead,” he answers, surprised that I asked. We spring from our seats and trek uphill. The guards lazily lag behind. We arrive at another pond. Around its edge, I see clusters of brightly clothed people of all ages sitting and lying on picnic blankets, smoking hookahs, eating lunch, and just relaxing.

  We ramble uphill and gaze down at the guards huffing and puffing some distance below. The landscape changes dramatically at this higher elevation—there are no more trees. Shane and I take in a bird’s-eye view of the city. High rises and highways mark the landscape. Glass buildings and domed mosques reflect the sunlight to our aerie. I stare silently at the stunning panorama. The world has never felt so vast.

  When Father Guy arrives, I ask him where the prison is. He points beyond a protruding ridge and says we can’t see it from here. This view is beautiful, but Shane and I don’t want to linger. We want to run.

  This time we don’t ask permission nor do we calculate how much time we have left. Shane and I follow our momentum down a narrow trail. The hillside steepens downward and I zigzag through the trees. I abandon the trail; we’re no longer confined to the linearity of prison hallways. I speed up and Shane follows. The guards must be behind us, but they don’t feel near. I pick up the pace even more, and the cool, moist air brushes against my sun-warmed skin. This is the meaning of hava khori, literally eating air: the free world is my sustenance. I feel alive and fresh and fully present. I feel at one with the magical trees with their rustling leaves cheering me on. Suddenly, I hear a guard’s voice. He approaches in his muddied dress shoes with beads of sweat dripping from his forehead. He tells us to slow down and follow him back up the hill.