by Shane Bauer
“Can you step outside, please?” Ehsan says to me.
My heart jumps. “Just me?” I say, and look at Josh. Is this where I retreat deep into the cell and cling to the bedpost? Where they try to pull me out and leave Josh in here alone? Is this where they ruin our lives even further?
“Yes,” he says. “Just you.” I think he sees concern in my eyes. “Don’t worry. You will come right back.”
I exhale. I believe him. He is the one and only person who works here that I trust. I slip on my blindfold and step out. I see another pair of feet from under the blindfold. I tilt my head back to look. It’s AK. I pull my blindfold up and look at Ehsan with a what-the-hell-is-going-on look.
“My friend would like to say something to you,” Ehsan says. “He would like to apologize for what happened.”
Apologize? For pummeling me a year ago?
AK looks at me sheepishly with his hands in his pockets, his head slightly hung. “I am sorry,” he says in English, extending his hand. I take it. “Please excuse me.”
I can’t decide whether someone put him up to this or he decided to clear his conscience. I do know that it means we are going to be freed. The three of us stand there, staring at one another. Why isn’t Ehsan saying anything? Why hasn’t he told us we are getting out soon? Why was it a guard we dislike that slipped us the news? Ehsan has been so tightlipped. Actually, now that I think of it, he has never given us any information from the outside. And we’ve asked him for it dozens of times. I feel a little hurt at the thought that, when it comes down to it, Ehsan is more concerned with his position as a guard at a political prison than he is about its inmates. He is still one of them.
AK shakes my hand again. I can’t help but smile a little. He smiles a little too. I am starting to feel betrayed by Ehsan, but in this moment, I forgive AK.
107. Sarah
I’m deep asleep when my cell phone rings.
“We are almost there, Sarah,” Salem says. “It is time to make your move.” Since the verdict was announced and the appeal filed, I’ve done nothing but wait for this call.
“Salem,” I say, “I owe you my life and all my happiness forever.”
“Your happiness is mine,” he replies warmly.
Salem tells me the families and I should all get on the next flight to Oman. I ask him when he’ll be leaving for Tehran. He laughs at my impatience, then tells me he’s already en route and will be there in an hour.
“Now get your butt over here!” he says, laughing.
I hang up the phone and start laughing myself. It’s still the middle of the night. Without thinking, I run into the bathroom. “You’re going to Oman!” I mouth at my reflection in the mirror. I look into my own shocked, almost frightened eyes and begin to laugh again. “I’m going to Oman!” I shout.
I dial Cindy’s number as I start throwing clothes into my huge, beat-up suitcase, with which I’ve crisscrossed the country dozens of times over the last year.
“Sarah?” she says, answering the phone. Even though it’s 4 a.m. in Minnesota, Cindy sounds alert. I hear in her voice a readiness for anything that I might say.
“Salem asked us to come to Oman, Cindy. He’s on his way to get them.”
Ten hours later I’m in the Omani airport, waiting as Shane’s and Josh’s family members trickle in from different flights. It’s been exactly one year and one day since my release into this sparkling world of turquoise and white, and now I’m back. Al is all smiles and Laura is chatty as usual. Cindy looks weary but strong, Alex is giddy, and Nicole and Shannon are nervous and tired.
We all pile into a van and are driven to the ambassador’s residence, where Richard Schmierer and his wife greet us at the same mansion I stayed at last year. Everyone disperses into their rooms, but I know I’m not going to sleep, so I wander downstairs to the kitchen. The same, sweet maid from last year greets me with a warm hug and hands me a plate of apple pie. I wander outside the embassy walls and find the beefy former marine at his post. He offers to accompany me on a jog, setting his pace to my own and hanging back at a respectful distance.
My feet rhythmically pound the warm sand. Nothing here seems to have changed, but I feel deeply changed. In my mind’s eye, I can see Salem walking through the gates of Evin Prison in his long robes and headdress, carrying a suitcase full of cash with which he will pay the million-dollar bail. This last year has been one of the most difficult, yet empowering, years of my life, and I feel proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish. No experience, I realize, could have shown me better who I am.
We spend the next week tiptoeing around one another. With eight family members in one house, we’re lucky the residence is spacious and the ocean is right out the door. Shane’s dad, Al, and I often spend the morning sitting and talking under a palm tree on the beach until the sun gets too hot and we have to go inside. One afternoon, all eight of us take a special tour of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, by far the most gorgeous building I’ve ever seen. It’s built of Indian sandstone, with a huge golden dome in the center and four flanking minarets surrounded by fountains and lush, green gardens. We eat out every chance we get, go shopping, watch the news, and wait for Salem’s coded texts.
“I almost have all the ingredients and inshallah tomorrow I will bake an apple pie for you. Keep a pot of hot coffee ready.”
Everything is playing out almost exactly like it did for my release last year, except this time there are even more complications. Every time the president makes a move, the judiciary seems to find a way to block it. As soon as Ahmadinejad publicly announces his intention to release Shane and Josh, the judiciary predictably counters by demanding a million dollars in bail. Then, they throw in a new twist. When Salem shows up with the cash, he is told that the bail can’t be accepted until a mysteriously missing judge gets back from vacation. A day later, the judge is still missing.
Then, on September 21, 2011, at 8:42 p.m., the text we’ve been waiting for finally arrives:
Salem: We are coming home.
Ambassador: Confusion abounds. Released?
Salem: No confusion. Inshallah we will be back tonight. See you at 10:30 p.m.
Shortly after the exchange, we read in the news that the missing judge has surfaced, the bail money has been accepted, and the release has been signed. Then, we get a call from Josh and Shane, about to board Salem’s plane at Tehran Airport. I turn on the news to look for footage of their departure, knowing that our friends, family, and supporters around the world are doing the same. At that moment, all the news channels are covering President Obama’s United Nations address. Below the president’s face on the screen a ticker reads:
“Breaking News: After two years in prison, Americans Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal are released from Iranian prison on grounds of compassion after being sentenced to eight years for illegal entry and espionage.”
Suddenly, the cameras cut away from Obama, standing at the podium in front of the United Nations Assembly, and zero in on a balcony on the other side of the room. President Ahmadinejad himself is standing there, flanked by his entourage, smiling and waving to the audience.
“I’m the good guy here,” President Ahmadinejad seems to be saying with his innocent smile. “I let Josh, Shane, and Sarah go. Why does everyone demonize me?” The Iranian president must have planned to interrupt Obama’s speech just as Shane and Josh are being flown out of Iranian airspace, but why?
No Iranian or American president has attended his counterpart’s speech at the UN in recent history. As Shane and Josh mark the end of twenty-six months in prison, President Ahmadinejad has boldly placed himself in the same room as President Obama, the closest these two men will ever be.
The moment seems largely lost on the media. The camera lingers on the Iranian president for only a few seconds before returning to Obama, who hasn’t even deemed it necessary to pause in his speech. I hear footsteps on the stairs. An embassy official rushes in to tell me the van is waiting outside.
108. Shane
As Josh and I walk to our cell from hava khori, someone redirects us into the doctor’s office. We take off our blindfolds. The doctor smiles. “Please sit,” he says.
He takes our blood pressure.
“What is this?” Josh asks.
“It’s your annual checkup,” the doctor says in his lilting English. “To make sure you are healthy.”
He puts us on the scale. I am twenty pounds lighter than I was when we got here.
Josh keeps eyeing me and I keep avoiding his gaze. I’m not ready to acknowledge what I know he is trying to suggest. We’ll know it when the time comes. Let’s not jump the gun.
When we leave the doctor’s office, we aren’t taken back to our cell. Two guards whisk us down the stairs and out the front door of Section 209. Dumb Guy is there, looking frazzled. One of the high-level administrators steps out of the building behind us, grabs the books we happened to be reading at hava khori, and disappears back inside the building.
Dumb Guy rushes us into the storage room across from Section 209—the same place where we change into our street clothes whenever they take us outside. As soon as we enter, I see all of our bags spread across the floor. Finally, it starts to sink in.
“Guys, take your things,” Dumb Guy says. “Make sure everything is there and sign this paper. Quickly! The Swiss have been waiting for a very long time.”
Josh and I dig through our bags. I search for my camera and money. It’s all there. In fact, there’s much more here than we came with. There are bags full of the dates—now rotting—that Salem brought us over the months, brand-new clothes we never received, razors, shaving cream, shampoo, and a dozen little battery-powered fans, surely sent by Josh’s mom. Suddenly, I fear that we’re going to lose everything. None of our books are here. We tried to donate them to the prison library for other prisoners to read, but they wouldn’t allow it. They should be here. There should be hundreds. Not only have these books been our lifeline, but our secret journals are tucked in their spines. We can’t let them go.
“What about everything in our cell?” I ask. “Where are the books? You have to give us the books.”
“We will mail them to you.”
“No, we need them now,” I say.
“Books?!” he snaps. “Are the books important right now?”
I have hated this man, but I don’t think hate is what I feel anymore. I haven’t quite felt that in a while, as much as I have wanted to. He has been the face of the regime holding us captive for so long. He has messed with us and made us suffer. He has neglected us. But he has also been the one to bring us things, to ask if we have any problems, to make sure we aren’t being abused by guards, to give us birthday cakes, to take us out to a park. Now, it feels like we are a bickering couple about to sign divorce papers on terms I expected to be amicable, but aren’t.
He looks me in the eye. “You have no idea how much I have done for you, Shane. You are being released right now because of me.” He seems to really believe that.
We pile all of our things into the trunk of a car. Guards shake our hands and give us hearty goodbyes. When we get in the back seat, Josh grips my knee, smiling. Today is September 21, our 781st day in Iran.
109. Josh
Dumb Guy eventually takes us to another building within the prison compound. I’m wearing a brand-new collared shirt and the fancy watch that Salem gave me on his first visit more than a year ago. I notice that the second hand isn’t ticking.
A gaggle of people crowds the doorway of this building. I catch the familiar scent of sandalwood. I know that smell. I rise to my tiptoes to look above the crowd. I see Salem al-Ismaily up ahead in a dark turban. I weave through the stagnant mass and make my way to him. He’s dressed in a white, full-length traditional Omani robe.
He grabs my arm and pulls me to his warm body. He speaks the words I’ve been longing to hear—“Let’s go home.”
The next thing I know, I’m sitting in the adjacent room at a table with candies, a mini Iranian flag, and a microphone in my face. Shane sits by my side, and a video camera with the IRIB logo points at us. A dozen people are standing around and the interviewer starts the questions:
“How were you treated?”
“Not well,” Shane says. “We have been isolated for twenty-six months. We haven’t been allowed to meet with our lawyer. And we are innocent. We should have never been held here.”
“Were you tortured?”
“We were held without any rights and extremely isolated,” I say.
“Are you grateful to President Ahmadinejad or Ayatollah Khamenei?”
“Nope,” Shane says.
“Don’t you appreciate the compassion of the Iranian government for releasing you before your eight-year sentence is up?”
“No. This isn’t compassion! This is a political prison and you held us for your political ends. You know we’re innocent,” I say, getting worked up.
The crowd is getting worked up too. One guy storms out. Others start whispering to one another. The interviewer’s tone grows frustrated.
“How was the food? Don’t you like Iranian food?” he asks, grasping for an innocuous topic.
I stammer a moment, thinking of the delicious lamb and dates. But I don’t want to flatter them. “It was so-so.”
“Did you learn any Farsi?”
“Yes!” I say with a smile for the camera. “I learned a little bit of Farsi.” The interviewer takes a hopeful step toward me. I look around the room and say, “The guards taught me: Sari! Vaisa! Boro! Cheshband paa’iin! and Fardo!” Faster! Stop! Go! Bring your blindfold down! and Tomorrow!”
The interviewer sets down the microphone and turns off the camera. As I exit the room, I see Dumb Guy in the corner shaking his head, looking embarrassed.
110. Shane
We get into a black car with tinted windows. The gates open and the gates close. We float past all the people waiting outside, in the dark, hoping to see, or find, their loved ones. As we roll down the highway, Josh and I talk and laugh. The driver, his brow furrowed, stares at us in the rearview mirror. We look back and smile.
An hour later, we board a huge passenger plane where we and our four Omani escorts are the only passengers. After takeoff, we are feted with gourmet Arabic food. Salem tells me he has a priest waiting to marry Sarah and me. He boasts to us about his villa on the beach, which is waiting for us. Then, as though he is telling me of a dying friend, he says that Syria is at war with itself. Our old home, the place where I spent one of the happiest years of my life, is now being ripped to shreds by bombings and sniping.
I dig a razor out of one of our bags and go into the lavatory to shave. I don’t want to come out of prison looking haggard. The act of running the razor over my skin is gratifying. My face hasn’t been this smooth and clean in more than two years. I spray on the airplane cologne. I try to picture Sarah and our families, but the lens is cloudy. I wonder what the Iranians will do with our secret journals once they find them. I wonder how they will react when they discover all the brewing wine in our bathroom. I wonder what will happen when we land.
The airplane touches down in Muscat. A group emerges from the airport and walks toward the plane. Josh and I strain to pick out faces we know. Everyone is so small. I think I see them, walking from the little airport in front of a row of cameramen and soldiers. They’re waving. They must see our faces framed in the little windows. My heart leaps. This is for real.
111. Sarah
A small crowd has assembled on the tarmac at Muscat Airport. Salem’s private plane has just landed and parked twenty feet in front of us. I can barely make out a shadowy figure behind one of its small windows. I don’t dare open my mouth or move my eyes from that window. Suddenly, the figure waves and a cry escapes from my mouth. It must be one of them. I know it’s them.
“Where’s Sarah?” I hear someone ask, and I’m pushed to the front of the crowd. There are dozens of people—family, reporters, and Omani government representatives standi
ng all around me. I look at them, but I don’t see them. Someone wheels the stairs up to the door of the plane. Seconds pass and nothing happens. Then the door opens, forming an arc of bright light.
Two bodies appear backlit at the top of the stairs.
112. Shane
As we arrive at the door, I don’t know if I am entering a dream or leaving one.
The crowd at the bottom of the stairs sways and distorts in front of me. As I descend, running, I search for Sarah. At the bottom of the stairs, we collide. She is in my arms and I am kissing her. “You are my hero!” I whisper into her ear, turning her in circles. I see Mom smiling, standing back quietly. I go to her, give her a flower I picked from a bouquet on the plane, and hug her tightly, laughing from deep inside. Everyone is gushing emotion like I have never seen. Dad is weeping so hard, it is convulsing his large body. Shannon is smiling as if possessed. Nicole’s sobs contort her face with relief so enormous that she couldn’t have known she was carrying it. I hear Laura screaming, but I can’t see her. I go from one person to the next, embracing each. Sarah is always in front of me, looking at me with eyes big and beautiful. She is not like she was. She is alive again. I hand her a flower, then scoop my sisters into my arms.
113. Josh
Alex squeezes me tight. My momentum pushes him backward into Mom and Dad. All of their arms surround me at once. I grab my father and pull him closer—tears streaming down his face. My mother’s lips are on my cheek, then my forehead, and I hear her screaming, “You made it! You made it!”