Nora
Mother of Hiker, Sarah Shourd
Posts by Nora
“We Will Not Stop” ~ Nora Shourd
May 26th
Today I begin to hunger strike in solidarity with Shane and Josh. We all live in a culture of addiction and even the best of us habitually drink coffee, eat sugar,eat a little too much food or over indulge ourselves in some way. We learned recently that Shane and Josh were on hunger strike for 17 days. 
With so little to give up in prison in that cell, they had the strength it took to give up their food for that long and we can certainly and proudly do the same. The family members of Shane and Josh, my daughter, Sarah, many of their incredible friends and supporters joined by some well known people are all joining the hunger strike and we will not stop until they come home… we will not stop…
*Update Friday May 27, 2011*: I started wednesday at noon and will continue for several more days.
NB: Join Sarah, Shane, Josh, their families, friends and people around the world in fasting for their FREEDOM! http://bit.ly/SSJfast
DEAREST DAUGHTER: #1YR & 2 DAYS, BY @TRENORA
Aug 3rd
Dearest Daughter (One Year and Two Days):
Today as I write, as I have written to you every day for the past year and two days, I look at a picture of you. I am lucky that I have favorite ones of you over the years of your life.
You will remember this story: We were together in Guatemala. Your skin is brown in the picture and your eyes look right at me. There are trees behind you and a lake whose name I can’t recall…doesn’t matter.
I am remembering this story as something strange and exciting that happened to us that day, actually that night. We had gone to a small village nearby to eat, on foot of course. There was a huge rainstorm so we couldn’t walk back right away. By the time the storm had stopped, and we had started to walk; it was dark, very dark, no moon, no lights at all. It was the darkest night ever.
We had no flashlight and could not even see in front of us or the road beneath our feet. We held hands and sometimes a bike would whoosh by us in the dark, but we kept walking. It was more by instinct than anything that we knew when we had walked far enough because WE COULD NOT SEE.
When we thought we had gone far enough, you asked in Spanish: “Are we at _____ hotel?” of a passing stranger…and we were! We had walked in total darkness together for a mile, at least.
I am so proud to be your mother thinking of this silly story. You have so much courage and I know you will stay strong there in that prison cell. You are not alone Sarah. I am holding your hand and you are holding mine and walking thru the darkness together…and we will find our way home…
All my love and more,
Mom
“IT ALL FEELS TOO MUCH” BY @TRENORA MOTHER OF JAILED #USHIKER
Jul 19th
Today things feel like too much.
My head is spinning with details large and small..
The task at hand feels impossible although the steps to get there are not.
What can I count on here?
There are financial concerns, there are strategic concerns, there are logistical concerns.
I must rely on so many people, but the foundation is crumbling within me today.
I am pushing through the days like slogging through mud in the dark.
I want to comfort Sarah, give her strength, but right now, at this moment, I feel depleted ..
But there is no other choice but to go on.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Nora Shourd’s daughter, Sarah, has been held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison, Iran, since July 31st 2009 and has not been charged with any crime.
Nora, arrived in the UK last week as part of an awareness raising tour about her daughter’s continued imprisonment in Iran. She was in the UK for three days where she had several media interviews.
She then took the boat to Paris where she had 5 more interviews. Yesterday she travelled back to the UK. She has many more interviews and meetings over the next 5 days before flying home.
Since her daughter’s arrest a year ago, this has been Nora’s life.
REPUBLISHED FROM A SAFE WORLD FOR WOMEN
FREEDOM = GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD – by Nora Shourd
May 28th
Sarah and I talked about planting an imaginary garden when i saw her last week in a dreamed up place..I have the vegetables and she grows the flowers.
So, I begin with Milpa,the Three Sisters…In this garden,the soil is deep and rich and brown and loamy from years of attentive gardeners who have enriched it adding layers of nutrients…I sit and dig my hands in it, its warmth, its life, its smell. it’s good enough to eat. It’s like holding life in your hands. It’s what we all become. I think about Sarah years ago at an ecology camp in the southern California desert singing a song about about how dirt made her lunch, her dinner and her brunch. I think about her planting a garden in the front yard of her West Oakland apt with friends helping doing the double digging method.
So, we begin. I want the corn to grow in a half moon shape, pointing down, no straight rows, with 12 stalks in the back arc, then 10, then 8. It will be Zapatista corn from Chiapas. I will build up mounds and flatten the tops like mesas with a kind of scooped up place on the top. Then 2 or 3 corn kernels go there pushed in with a finger. I use my hands so i can feel the dirt and see the seeds disappear into the earth. On the sides of the mounds, I plant beans, some scarlett runners for their beauty and some snappy greens and french greens, 4 seed around each corn 
and these will grow and twirl around the stalks and the stalks will hold them up perfectly. On the ground around the stalks I plant squash, different kinds; zucchini, summer, blossom to cover the ground around the corn and beans, keep in the moisture and keep out the weeds. In a matter of weeks, the Three Sisters grow together, all caretaking one another, like Sarah, Shane and Josh are, a food jungle yielding and yielding. And we will look forward to zucchini bread and fritters and bean salad and corn, corn, corn. The sun warms my back and I scoop water from a barrel of rainwater and give each seed its first drink. They start to grow—free.
VIDEO: PLEASE FREE THE HIKERS
Mar 25th
INTERNATIONAL CALL TO FREE THE HIKERS
People all over the world have uploaded videos asking for the release. We collected some of those responses to make this video, in the hope that Iran will allow them to return home soon. Please share this with your friends and loved ones.
About Sarah
Sep 15th
by Nora Shourd, her mother.
Sarah’s was one of those fast births. Eighteen minutes from start to finish. She hit the ground running. She has always been so in love with life, eager and engaged in it, gobbling it up. As a child, she created worlds in her mind. She would tell me about her dreams and I was astonished at the complexity of them, the wonder of them. Now she’s out there in those worlds every minute.
She made beautiful art for me all the time and loved to be close, snuggling and cuddling. I remember the feeling of holding her close and wanting to keep her safe always. Those strong feelings don’t dim. When she was a young teen, she went to a school dance and discovered the joy of dancing, endlessly dancing and expressing her joy at being alive in her body. She had a few sullen teen years but she told me once she decided not to be shy anymore and became more and more like the woman she is today: all about eye contact, being very present with people, feeling deeply, not wary of intimacy and deep connection with others.
She will call you on your s–t. She has a curiousity about things, a need to understand, and she moves in the world that way. On my 40th birthday, she secretly made me a birthday book, pages and pages of art, poetry, and silliness, so much love. As soon as she got out of high school she put on a backpack to go hike in Alaska. She and her friend got lost near a glacier but it took her years to tell me the story because she didn’t want to worry me.
She loves her nephews, Carl, Graham, and Nate, and when she visits it’s like the circus coming. She takes them swimming in the river, they go to “the pit” and swing across on a big rope, they have adventures. Going to the Middle East was a big adventure for her.
Home in the East Bay, she took life full on. She cherishes her family and friends, and strives always to be a good friend herself. As an activist, she has worked on many projects: organizing against the femicides in Juarez; anti-war street theatre; sustainability projects; writing for local papers; tutoring high school kids; anti-racism training; volunteer coordinator for Just Cause Oakland.
She graduated from UC Berkeley with an English degree, then got her teaching certificate and taught ESL in Alameda for two years. She sought out purposeful work, work that she felt made a difference in people’s lives. She was in Damascus learning Arabic and teaching English there.
She loves being outside. In the East Bay she rode her bike everywhere, citified but hankering for that connection with the earth. I know she’s missing the sky, the rain, the wind, the stars being locked up there, and all the amazing people on the planet she loves so strongly.
Birthdays
Sep 15th
Sarah was in Syria for my last birthday. She was in prison in Iran for her birthday and now it’s my birthday again. This was her “present” for me last year…
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Sarah Shourd
Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 4:03 AM
Subject: Don’t open before Sept.18th
To: Nora Shourd
If I wake up today with someone I love in my arms it’s because someone
once taught me how to love and be loved.
If I yell when I’m angry, cry when I’m sad and laugh uncontrollably
for no reason at all it’s because someone has shown me that’s it’s
alright to feel and when we feel we should listen.
If I know right from wrong and live my life accordingly it is because
I have never been alone in my convictions, year after year I’ve
observed someone close to me with the courage to do the same.
If I can enjoy the good things in life, the fresh vegetables and
books, the sweet simplicity of the desert, the good, hard, climb, it
is you I have to thank for sharing them with me.
You let me run free, trusted me with your deepest secrets, you didn’t
try to hide the wisdom and the pain of the world from me, you showed
me how to carry a burden gracefully, how to stop listening when people
have nothing good to say, how to goof off, how to say sorry, how to
forgive, how to change.
Somethings in life don’t come easy, we have to struggle very hard. But
other things were given to us as gifts we didn’t have to earn, someone
else worked for them, provided for them, safeguarded them from the
world around. Thar person is you.
I’ll never forget that that person is you.
Happy 60th, Mom.
From Mom: Day 40
Sep 8th
by Nora Shourd
Hand and pen on paper. Today I’m looking at a picture of you in Damascus up on the hill to the cain and Abel Mosque.
M___ came by yesterday and sneaked a bunch of money to me that people have collected; I don’t know who. Acceptance of help from others…that’s been new for me.
Picked bags of little yellow and red tomatoes from the garden. K___ and I bartered some for a dish from Taste of Africa.
Waiting for the finished webpage about you with a story from me and journal entries to share. One tool in the toolbox.
My early morning is your early evening. Dreams of you last noche. May your dreams be what you need…dreams of walking out the door into your life again.
Everything has changed for all of us, the world has slowed down, way down, nearly stopped. We wait, you wait. Nothing is taken for granted; we’re all frozen in the moment waiting.
From Mom: Day 29
Aug 28th
by Nora Shourd
Slept a long time last noche. No dreams. Want to dream you home on a wooden boat over smooth water with a gaudy umbrella, you and your fella. Monday will be one month…we wait to hear your voices now to know you’re alright. We know so little and you, in turn, know nothing. You must feel the same and have no one to share that darkness with. The not knowing… We don’t know the basic stuff. Course I can sit here and drink my coffee and look our the window, awash in freedoms simple yet profound…
From Mom: Day 22
Aug 22nd
by Nora Shourd
I chose a favorite picture of you today, these change. I have so many but my favorite-favorites are ones where you’re looking straight at me with that straight-in-the-eye look that lets me feel like you’re close.
In the last days we did the TV shows: Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, and The Wires. Talking about you hopefully in a way that will illicit compassion. It was hard never having been before the cameras and you know how I hate makeup, but everything is worth it and all of us keep looking for new angles.
22 days…long time for us, but much longer for you. We keep talking about holding the story for you cause I know you’ll want to know. Now that it’s 22 days, perhaps I can find a little more time to write.
Web site up today; it took so many hits it went down! Thousands of Twitter hits, Facebook hits. You are on so many people’s minds, you’d think it would be enough to get you out, but it’s not. We don’t know what it will take , that’s unknown. Perhaps just time but we don’t want to give you that.
I read your last email to me on Anderson Cooper last night. There are sad moments, there are scary moments, there are sometimes even funny ones. It will be hard to describe to you someday. An enormous swell of love and support is carrying us. I hope it reaches you a little each day…mom
