Mittie

I can’t believe it took me 8 months, but finally I took a step on my own—not a click, not an appropriation of somebody else’s words—I finally found my own words. Below is the email I sent out yesterday to everybody in my address book at both my email addresses. So now I’m putting it out to a larger circle of friends. We do what we can do when we can do it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll buy a T-shirt.

Dear Friends,

I have never sent an email to everybody in my email address book. I can’t imagine doing it again, but today I received an update from FreetheHikers that will not let me go, and I’m writing to ask you to do whatever you can find in your heart to do.

At the time that my daughter Stella was a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara, we were in the midst of a normal, everyday conversation when it was interrupted briefly by a knock at her dorm door. She returned to the phone laughing with joyful appreciation of the visitor, a male student several years younger than she, who lived on her floor. A group of friends were going out and he’d dropped by to tell her when they’d be leaving. “He’s just such a nice guy!” she said. Just a friend, not a romantic connection, just a nice young man, pursuing a course of studies he hoped would help make the world better, living in a Co-Op house where they practiced some of the social changes they hoped to make.

It is the memory of the giggle in my daughter’s voice that prompts this letter. A special, delighted giggle for a special, delightful friend, much like my own special, delightful children.

Horror is not too strong a word to describe my reaction upon learning from her last July that this young man, Josh Fattal, is one of the three hikers detained by the Iranian government for crossing over the Iraq/Iran border in a wilderness area where the border is poorly marked.

Since that time I’ve followed updates on FreetheHikers.com, emailed the Iranian government, and posted to my Facebook page, insofar as I’m technically able. Today I wrote a letter to each detainee, to mail to the address in Duluth, MN at the bottom of the email.

I don’t know what you’ll decide to do, but I hope you will at least, if you haven’t already, become a fan of FreetheHikers (that’s Facebook-speak, for the uninitiated) and sign the petition.

You are all special and delightful, and I’m happy to call you friends —Mittie