Sarah Shourd
Before her detainment in Iran, Sarah Shourd had been living with Shane in Damascus, where she taught English and was learning Arabic. She previously taught as part of the Iraqi Student Project, a program which gives Iraqi students living in Damascus the skills to continue their education in US schools. She was on a break from her teaching responsibilities for a week, and she and Shane decided to take a hiking trip with their friends Josh and Shon. Sarah has written articles on travel and social issues reflecting her time in Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen and Mexico. Sarah, who has an older brother and sister, was born in Oak Park, Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles, California. She attended UC Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lived after graduating until moving to Damascus with Shane. Sarah was released from Evin prison after 410 days of detention on September 14, 2010.
Homepage: http://blog.freethehikers.org/
Posts by Sarah Shourd
Lines of Hope: The Freedom of Dreams ~ Sarah Shourd
Sep 7th
Locked in a cell, your dreams are one of the only places you can go to feel free. There is a place in your subconscious where the countless restrictions placed on your body and spirit are temporarily lifted, where you can soar.
Wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket with a shirt wrapped around my eyes to block out the flourescent lights, my lonely cot at Evin Prison was a small comfort, a reminder that I had made it through yet another day. In our dreams, Shane, Josh and I could travel across the world, revisit the past and even venture into the future. I used to dream up adventures in the streets and markets of Tehran, I would talk to imaginary Iranian people and assure them of our innocence. I dreamed that I was finally allowed a cell mate; she was sad like me but we were together and she promised to teach me Farsi. I once dreamed that I was able to hide a kitten under my chador and sneak it into my cell, another time I received a surprise phone call from President Obama and yet another time my sweet mother came to visit me (which later came true) in a garden inside the prison. Those dreams were the only way that Shane, Josh and I could see the faces of our loved ones, hear their words and stay connected to the world we love.
Since I’ve been free, many of you have told me about your dreams about Shane, Josh and I over the last 2 years. Dreams are powerful connectors, so I’d like to ask you all to share yours here now, anonymously if you like, just like Shane, Josh and I did so many times during the brief time we had together in the prison’s open-air room. I’ll start with my own, one that I had while I was still detained:
I dreamed that I woke up in the middle of the night and the door of my cell was wide open. Somehow, I got a hold of some giant crayons. I walked down all the corridors, upstairs and downstairs. The bright lights were all on as usual but everyone was sleeping, even the guards, and there wasn’t a sound. Wearing a long white dress, I began to draw lines across the walls and cell doors. I drew a line across the whole prison, crossing it out and connecting all of us inside at the same time. The next day (in my dream), the investigators called me into the interrogation room and accused me of being the one who graffitied the walls. “How could I have done it when I was locked in my cell and I have no crayons?” I asked. “Anyway,” I said, “those marks are lines of hope. There are a lot of people trying to help us on the outside. It could have been any one of them that drew those lines. It’s art,” I told them, “it’s not a crime for them to give us hope.”
More than any other topic, Josh, Shane and I dreamed about the day we would all be freed. All 3 of us dreamed dozens of times about a big homecoming party, with everyone we had ever known in attendance. We called these “Temporary Freedom Dreams” and they helped us keep our hope alive, knowing that every day we were that much closer to the real thing.
Until Freedom, Sarah Shourd
![Shane-Bauer-Sarah-Shourd-Josh-Fattal[1]](http://fthblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Shane-Bauer-Sarah-Shourd-Josh-Fattal1-64x64.jpg "Shane-Bauer-Sarah-Shourd-Josh-Fattal[1]")
We NEED you tomorrow NYC! ~ Sarah Shourd
Jul 28th
Dear Friends,
Tomorrow is Friday, the big day already! I am writing because I noticed on Facebook that there are quite a few people that have signed up as “maybes” for the protest tomorrow for Shane and Josh in NYC. I just want to say, if there’s ANY doubt in your mind as to whether your presence will make a difference, let me reassure you it will make a HUGE difference to me, to Shane and Josh’s families, supporters and to the large entourage of media outlets from around the world that we expect to be there tomorrow!
Having a big group of supportive people standing by us tomorrow will turn what is bound to be a very difficult day at the end of a long, stressful week (at the end of two arduous, unbelievable years!) into a very difficult but BEAUTIFUL experience. Please, please try and come out! Hopefully, we’ll be telling Shane and Josh all about it very soon!
RSVP to and share our event blog post and facebook event listing! Thank you!
Big Love! Sarah
“Their love got me through prison and our love will bring them home” ~ Sarah Shourd
May 21st
Dearest Family, Friends and Supporters,
I began my fast today in solidarity with Shane and Josh. It makes me think of all the selfless things they both did for me while I was in prison. Once, I mentioned to Josh that I had been wearing the same shirt for 11 months and it had holes in it. I was angry that the guards hadn’t given me a new shirt. The next day, Josh came out with his extra shirt and gave it to me. He had two shirts and he gave me the blue one, his favorite. Another time, for Valentine’s Day, Shane used the last two pieces of chocolate that he had been saving for months and made me “prison pie” out of crushed cookies, butter, dates and chocolate. It was delicious. These acts of love defended us against the constant pain of separation from our families and the extreme physical and mental restriction of being imprisoned.
Now that I’m free, all I want is to give back to Shane and Josh for what they did for me. Their love got me through prison and it’s our love that will bring them home.
All my gratitude for your support,
NB: Join Sarah, Shane, Josh, their families, friends and people around the world in fasting for their FREEDOM! http://bit.ly/SSJfast
Innocence Conference ~ Sarah Shourd
Apr 20th
Dear friends,
Cincinnati was a very good place for me to spend a few days. Though I felt out of place at first at the conference, once I started talking to some of the exonerees I realized how important it is for people who have been wrongfully detained and imprisoned to share their experiences. I met a man named Chris Turner from DC who was falsely imprisoned for 27 years for a murder he didn’t commit. Thanks to new, more advanced DNA testing he was finally proven innocent and given a second chance. Chris has a magnanimous spirit; he and I talked a lot about the psychological effects of prison and PTSD symptoms we are both dealing with. Shane and Josh now have some news friends waiting to coach them through the aftermath of their experience when the time comes.
Some of our country’s best lawyers were at the conference; and countless others committed to building a global network for innocence work. Of course there’s not much that these good people can do to help Shane and Josh, since they’ve been so blatantly denied legal recourse, but we did generate some new ideas and they promised to spread the word through their network.
I’ll end with a picture that I took at the conference with a a group of wrongfully detained people from Ireland, Japan, Canada, Nicaragua and Mexico. We left two empty spaces in the photograph for where Josh and Shane should be standing. It’s not hard to picture them there.
To the Obstinacy of Truth,
Sarah Shourd
New Things to Come: A Testimony to the Innocence of Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer by Sarah Shourd
Feb 6th
Josh, Sarah and Shane in Iraqi Kurdistan
During the last four and a half months of heart-wrenching separation from Shane and Josh, my mind often goes back to memories of prison. I see the three of us coming out bleary-eyed into the courtyard after three months of complete isolation, laying out a ‘feast’ of whatever food we had been able to store up to mark a holiday, or huddled under a blanket on the cold, stone floor marveling at the sight of snow falling around us.
Sometimes I see Shane and Josh’s eyes in my mind flashing with fear or strained with anxiety; other times I see them brimming with tears or beaming with love. I remember the day of our arrest when we linked arms and begged the border police not to tear us apart. “Please,” we begged, “let us stay together.”
Those of you that have been following my writing and appearances in the media since my release have heard me say a lot about how much I admire Shane and Josh as professionals, peace activists and global citizens. You have heard me say again and again that Shane and Josh don’t deserve to be in prison one minute longer that I was and never deserved to be there in the first place. When we went hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan we didn’t know that we were near an unmarked border with Iran. We were living, working and traveling in the region in order to increase our knowledge of its diverse cultures, lend a hand through our humanitarian work and promote more understanding in our communities back home.
Our misfortune on that fateful day of July 31st, 2009, has resulted in a huge misunderstanding. This is the antithesis of what Shane, Josh and I came to the Middle East to do. Josh and Shane agree with me that Iran is a great country with an ancient culture to be admired and learned from. In the arc of history Persia, dating back to 4000 BC, has demonstrated incredible resilience and strength. Iranian people have a reason to be proud as the progenitors of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.
Shane, Josh and I never intended to go anywhere near Iran and we certainly meant no harm to its people or their leaders or by hiking near its northwestern border with Iraq. None of us had ever studied Persian history, politics or Farsi until we found ourselves in prison. Shane and I both decided to study Arabic as part of a commitment to engage constructively with Middle Eastern peoples, in hopes of countering the destructive toll taken by a decade of war led by our country. Josh shares these values; that’s why he traveled thousands of miles to visit us in Damascus, Syria.
Sometimes my mind finds its way back to even more distant memories. The first time I visited Josh in Oregon we went hiking in the woods behind the environmental school, Aprovecho, where he taught and ran internships. A simple hike turned out to be a gauntlet of trials. First, I sank knee-deep into the mud and Josh pulled me out. Then, I was terrified to find that a tick had bored its way into the skin on my arm. Josh calmly and patiently instructed me how to burn it off. I also remember Josh arriving wind-blown at our apartment in Damascus after six months of teaching and traveling. He was so eager to immerse himself in our new world, he even signed up for an Arabic class at Damascus University that he was going to start upon our return from Kurdistan!
Then there was the time in Yemen that I suddenly got ill. Shane went to hail a taxi while the hotel manager and some guests wrapped me in wool blankets to try to stop my shivering. A few minutes later we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and the cab couldn’t move an inch. Shane got out of the car and started yelling at the top of his lungs in Arabic, “Oh people. My dear fiancée is sick! Please my people, move to the side of the road so that we can pass and deliver her safely to the hospital! Thank you so much, oh people!” All of the cars moved to the side of the road. Even though my teeth were chattering and I was shaking with fever I couldn’t help smiling and thanking God for bringing this incredible man into my life!
Sarah talks to media at one year protest in San Francisco
I’ve never wanted anything as badly as I want Shane and Josh to be free. I want it even more than I wanted my own freedom those 14 long months at Evin. I want to see Shane walk off into the sunset with his arms wrapped around his younger sisters. I want to see their fathers’ smiles light up the room and tears of joy stream down their mothers’ faces. I want Josh’s brother to get his heart back. I want their grandparents to rest assured that their children’s children are finally free.
The problems of our world today are much bigger than we are as individuals. Shane, Josh and I will never blame any one individual for what is happening to us or for the toll it has taken on our families. The political problems that divide our countries are structural and have been accumulating for decades. I believe that each and every one of us has the opportunity to make a small dent in the formidable odds working against global peace. I want to beseech Iran’s religious and political leaders to set Shane and Josh free so that they can help make a difference. Give them a chance to do the good work in the world that they were destined to do.
I remember the moment in the prison courtyard when Josh asked me if he could call me his ‘sister’ and the moment that Shane asked me to be his partner for life. Last week, the engagement ring that Shane wove for me in prison from a shirt thread finally snapped. At first I was upset and angry at the loss, but then I told myself it was a sign of new things to come.
This is what solidarity looks like! ~ Sarah Shourd
Jan 29th
Hey Friends and Supporters,
I’m writing to let you know that I will be saying a few words and performing a few songs that I wrote in prison at the Art Auction this Saturday. I’m an in L.A. right now working on the songs with three incredible musicians that dropped from the sky into my life soon after I got out of prison: Bobby Field, Nic Flynt and Jennifer Argenti. Shane and Josh asked me to try and use my songs to bring our experience out into the free world, this will be my first ‘live’ attempt!
The organizers have put in a ton of work into this really important Art Auction to FREE ALL THREE and so please show up with friends in tow! There will be something for everyone here: food, drinks, music, talking and ART! This event will honor the beauty and humanity of Josh and Shane in so many ways, with particular focus on Shane’s award-winning work as a photojournalist. Many incredible photographers have donated their work (as well as artists using other mediums) and all purchases over 100$ will be tax-deductible.
This is what solidarity looks like!
Your Friend In Hard Times and Better Times to Come,
Sarah Shourd
All Good Things Come in Threes ~ Sarah Shourd
Jan 3rd
Dear Friends and Supporters,
I will spend the first weeks of 2011 struggling for Josh and Shane’s freedom on the East Coast with renewed fortitude. I’ve been busy doing research and outreach for the last two weeks, first from my temporary home with good friends in Oakland, Ca and then from my sweet sister’s home in Athens, Georgia surrounded by family.
It’s done me a lot of good after 3 months of almost non-stop action to take the time to draw from my deepest reserves and continue to thaw-out. I feel better prepared to start the New Year with optimism, clarity and faith that the highest good will guide us to the end of this ordeal.
Every step away from prison is a step away from something wrong towards something right. The longer I am free without Shane and Josh the more clear it becomes to me how unnatural and dehumanizing it is to try and lock up the human soul. It’s difficult to justify harsh punishment even when a person has done something terribly wrong; it’s unconscionable when they haven’t.
“We live in a world where there is considerable suffering; we cannot always prevent it, but we can alleviate it, and we can try to turn it around.” TERRY WAITE
My hope is that I never hear another supporter of Shane, Josh or myself say that they “haven’t done enough.” Everyday is a little bit lighter for Shane, Josh, and all of us on the front lines of this particular tragedy, because we know that we are never alone. Everyday of what felt like an interminable stretch of days in prison was bearable simply because of that fact.
The cards, banners, donations, altars, pictures, poems, songs, vigils, events, press releases, research, introductions, phone calls, writing, thinking, organizing, planning, interviewing, listening, contacting, comments, emails, prayers, shawls, couches, omelets, smiles, hot dishes, tears, days, hours and months of support that you’ve all offered have made a difference from the very first minute and will until the last.
Almost a year and a half of Shane and Josh’s lives have been taken from them, the first year of which we only saw the world outside prison walls 4 times. I used to picture a path in my mind leading out of prison. There were lanterns hung alongside the path up to a certain point and where the lanterns ended there was only darkness.
Let’s bring in the light. As the saying goes, “All good things come in threes.”
Thank you,
Sarah
CALL TO ACTION BY SARAH SHOURD: INTERNATIONAL BANNER WEEK #IBW
Oct 27th
SARAH SHOURD, RECENTLY FREED FROM EVIN PRISON IN IRAN, CALLS FOR:
INTERNATIONAL BANNER DAY FOR SHANE & JOSH—STILL IMPRISONED
Dear Friends & Supporters:
As you all know, I was freed on Sept 14th. Sadly, my fiancé Shane Bauer and my good friend Josh Fattal are still in Evin Prison. They are going to trial on Nov 6th. These are two innocent and courageous young men, held in Evin since July 31st, 2009, who did nothing wrong but hike near a border.
In the week leading up to the trial, Nov 1st thru Nov 6th, we call on our supporters worldwide to design, create and proudly display banners to FREE ALL THREE NOW. These banners, both large and small, will voice the message that they are innocent of all charges and will call for their immediate release.
We will be gathering photos of each and every banner in order to display them on the FREE THE HIKERS website and on Facebook. In addition, we ask that people post their images to Twitpic, using the hashtag: #IBW, which will identify it as being part of INTERNATIONAL BANNER WEEK on twitter. The idea is to create a groundswell of support that is visible from every corner of the real and virtual worlds.
A banner can be a bridge that can reach across social, cultural and geographical barriers. Let your banner reach past the walls of Evin Prison to Shane and Josh to bring them a message of hope and freedom.
THE CALL: Join us for International Banner Week in our plea for Iran to “FREE ALL THREE NOW”
THE WHAT:
- Design, create a banner of any size, with messages of support for Shane & Josh.
- Display, hang and/or drop your banners in the most visible place possible.
- Take a picture and document it.
- Email your photos to IBW@freethehikers.org.
THE WHEN: The first week in November, the week leading up to Shane and Josh’s unjust trial.
THE WHY: To let your message of support for these innocent young men be loud and clear and seen by the world.
THE MESSAGE:
- Shane and Josh are innocent.
- Free all three Now.
- The charges against them are outrageous.
We will be posting updates and tips here as the week goes on. Thank you again for all your support. I look forward to seeing all the creative ways you express your support for Shane and Josh.
Sincerely,
Sarah Shourd.
Here are some of our submissions so far:
LETTER FROM SARAH SHOURD TO SUPPORTERS
Oct 21st
Dear Friends & Supporters:
I came out of prison feeling frozen. I put up walls inside walls because if I stayed tender for 13 months in prison I would have exposed myself to too much pain; because there wasn’t enough beauty in a day to ward off the long, spiritual winter; because I needed them to stay sane.
More than anything I’m grateful to finally be sitting here writing about prison in the past tense.
Yet, for Shane and Josh, prison is still locked in the eternal present.
Sarah Shourd with her mother, Nora
I am one of the only people in the world that has their voices still fresh in mind. They were truly joyful to see me go free. Tightly grasping my hands in theirs they said “we believe in you, Sarah, no one is more ready and capable of jumping into the free world and fighting for us than you are.”
Free-life offers new challenges and very different obstacles than I faced in prison. I have reentered a world of fear and uncertainty…and also of great hope. Now I know first-hand what our families and all of you have been experiencing all along.
I learned patience and perseverance those long months and it’s those lessons more than anything that are serving me now.
The most important thing that I can offer you are the words of Shane and Josh. What they want to say to you, more than anything else, is “thank you.” Not even a message as basic as that has been able to fly from their lips, suspended by tender air currents and carried into your ears, for all these months.
“Thank you.”
Since the day I stepped off that plane into Muscat, Oman I’ve met with three presidents, numerous foreign ministers and ambassadors. Not one of them means any more or less to me than one of you.
I fervently believe that everyone’s efforts led to my freedom, everyone’s belief that the world contains as much goodness, and as much justice, as we create and put into motion. Not an ounce more or an ounce less.
I want this freedom, this justice for Shane and Josh, with every morsel of my being. Every breath I take, every time I open my eyes in the morning and every time I close them at night, I see them. I know them and I love them.
I want to ask you to please, look to the positive, feel the power and the strength of what you’ve done. Help us give one, last, huge push!!!
Sarah Shourd & Friends Reunite
I’ve asked the world to redouble its efforts. But what does that mean? It means do what you do best, whatever it may be. Do what you do best for Shane and Josh. We need funds for legal expenses, translation and travel. We need people to buy FREE THE HIKERS t-shirts and jewelry. We need prayers and we need action. We need more people to visit the website and sign the new petition. Make a “Free All Three” banner and hang it up in the most visible spot you can find. We need you to mobilize and be ready for the next step when it comes.
We have all been changed and continue to be changed by this experience. Thanks to all the love and support I’ve felt in the last month I’m slowing thawing out, but sometimes it feels like a glacier in there, waiting for thousands of years for just enough sun. When Josh and Shane get out they will help me figure it out. No one knows me as well as they do. When the three of us are together and free, I know we will heal.
Prison is not heaven or hell. Nothing in life made us ready for this experience, but Shane and Josh are coping. They are as strong as they need to be. They will walk out unbroken.
One of my students once said to me, “A part of me is yours forever” because I was there to help him get through a difficult time in his life. I want to say the same to all of you on behalf of myself, Shane and Josh, “A part of us is yours, forever.”
“Thank you.”
When Josh and Shane are free we will all be able to exhale collectively, pause and then ask, “Who’s next?” There are millions more lined up, waiting to get free. “What’s next?” There are countless changes that devoted, committed people like ourselves can band together and fight for. I’m looking forward to the day. I’m hoping that Shane and Josh will soon be standing with us, asking these questions and finding answers.
Sarah Shourd
