But i suspect that you have made a noble bargain for your self. So they had contest at the boundaries going back to 1682. So france said we are selling you louisiana and the french understanding of that was broad and so jefferson adopted that. The spanish understanding was much narrower and they adopted that. Have a good evening. Tell their story of being captured and imprisoned by the iranians after hiking on the border of iran and iraq in 2009 while they were charged with spying and entering illegally. This is about one hour and 20 minutes. I would like to begin by congratulating shane, josh and sarah on the release of their memoir a sliver of light three americans and imprisoned in iran. The story begins on a warm summer day in july of 2009. The Three Friends that met as students decided to go for a hike in the mountains of iraq. Shane and sarah were living together in serious teaching and writing and josh was visiting from the u. S. Sarah shared recently on cbs morning edition that there are very few moments in life where everything changes forever. And this was one of those moments. This hike was one of those moments. The capture was the beginning of a 26 month long experience of living in captivity. Sarah shane were cut off from the world from everything they do including one another. After more than a year in solitary confinement, sarah was free in september of 2010 just one year later almost to the day the shane and the josh were free and begin the process of hearing. Today shane and sarah who are very focused on prisoners rights in the u. S. And around the world. Shane is an investigative journalist and recipient of the guggenheim award for criminal justice reporting. Sarah is a writer, educator and contributing editor at solitary watch. Her work as an advocate for president rights have been featured in the New York Times covered the San Francisco chronicle and cnn. Josh is a historian with a background in environmental sustainability and a doctoral candidate at the new York State University and a new dad. At the end of tonights program there will be the time to ask questions. We will have a microphone right there in the center. Please make sure that you are asking a question. We know that there are great statements to share but we want to keep this cup size. The show is being recorded is to just be aware of the lighting in the room and at the end we will go into the book signing and have it located at the table in the back and we will have additional books for sale as well. Thanks and please join me in welcoming shane josh and sarah. Im just going to kind of tell a few stories im not going to try to tell our whole story. Im going to start with a story that a lot of you probably want to hear or are wondering about which is how this has happened. We were living in damascus and the serious working and josh was traveling and teaching in Different Countries around the world, and then another friend was in europe. Josh and our other friend came to visit us and ask us and we decided to take a trip and we chose rocky turkestan. I worked in baghdad before which was a war zone in 2009 and it really never happened throughout the war. It is an autonomous region within iraq. No one had been killed or kidnapped in there and it had an industry about 2 Million People visit iraq e. Kurdistan every year and in 2011 it was one of the top places to visit in the world. We went there for a few days and visited some capsules and museums and we wanted to get out of the city so we asked people where we could go in our Hotel Manager and a taxi driver told us the same place. This place where there was a waterfall. It wasnt a big waterfall but, you know theres not a lot of waterfalls in the region so it was kind of an attraction and there were hundreds of people there. We went there and we asked for a trail to hike and we slept near the bottom of the trail and we hiked for quite a long time and when we got near the top of this kind of mountain, we stopped and had lunch and then we were deciding where to keep going or turn back and we thought lets just go up there. So we saw a couple soldiers and they waved us to them and when we got to vent we saw that they were iranian and we didnt know we were close to the border and so we were really shocked and asked for a passport was found out that we were american and they took us into the next town. We managed to call our friend who wasnt with us and we called the embassy and it went from there. We went from western iran and we didnt know what was going to happen. We thought we were going to be taken back relatively soon, and we were taken into one city in an Apartment Building we were interrogated and then a nice tht time they were put in a car and driven out of the town into the countryside which im going to read a little passage. We were leaving the city. He has a gun, hes had startled. He put it on that. A pistol falls and goes across the floor. My heart stops and my mouth goes dry. A man picks it up and sets it on his lap. The city lights fade behind us. Where are we going, she asked in a sweet voice. It turned around to face us the headlights of the trail reviewing his cold eyes he turns back to face the front. The solitary light are like little meteorite and the car falls silent again. He picks up the gun in his right hand. With a note of desperation she says good obama bad. The pistol is resting on his lap and he turns to face us again with his palms facing each other. Iran, he says the holding her head towards one hand, america left in the other. Problem committees have become the stretching of the difference. He checked their faces to make sure nothing is registered and drops at arms. Sarah turns to meet and says what does she see, her eyes were penetrating. Do you think that hes going to hurt us i dont know whether to respond or stare at her. I am terrified. It seems s seemed so different i had imagined it. I see us pulling over to the side of the road. I will be holding her hand and maybe josh, to back that i will be gone already walking with no spirit. We wont case in our final moments with the trigger polls, we wont scream or run or other fabulous words of defiance. We will be like mice paralyzed by fear limp in the slackjawed. We will stand there and each of us will fall one by one the shooting the earth. We were not taken out of the car in the middle of the countrysi countryside. We were held for a few days and then we were driven across the country to tehran and we were blindfolded and put on a van and put in prison. We didnt know we were in a prison for several months but we were all separated immediately in the solitary cells and for two months we were interrogated. It was the time i watched my mind slowdown where i felt like i was kind of becoming more of an animal and i wasnt thinking because i didnt have much to reflect back on myself but i hoped for them to come every day so that i would have someone to come to. I would hide them in my room so that i could have some connection to the outside. And i thought about escaping a lot. I thought maybe i could take something from the back of the toilet and pick the lock with that. I thought maybe i could use it to get out. But be they left a spot of my door open. I reached through and i felt the key in my door. I waited for a long time, peeked out and then i saw the guard sitting down there so i waited until late at night. When i didnt hear anybody anymore i reached through the door and came out and i went across the hall to another and i opened up the door which was sarahs. We hadnt seen each other for a few weeks, so we spent about 20 to 30 minutes to get her and i wont commit to the details of what happened because i am not im a little more shy speaking than writing but the next morning i found out that i was wearing sarahs pants. So, there were a lot of kind of surprising things that happened throughout that time. There were guard to death would bring us pins that were in a Legal Committee would make it so that we could see each other. I had a strange relationship with my interrogators who had so much power over me if i wanted to like me because i thought maybe i would extend feel bad and try to get me out. I had to deal with their bizarre questions like what newspapers are controlled by the cia, questions i wanted to find out what they were after. One time they asked me about an email like a car at my grandmother sent me that had a turkey flapping its wings. It was ridiculous, but it was kind of scary ridiculous because there is no the truth didnt matter. But after two months my interrogator told me i asked do you think that im a spy and he told me i know youre not despite i know that none of you are but the situation has become political and its going to be between the politicians in my government and politicians in your government and your going to have to wait. And then we were later told that they wanted to do in exchange and that kind of gave us power. It allowed us when we heard prisoners being beaten and we wouldvwewouldve bang on the dd we could actually get them to stop. They wouldve to beat us at the they beat them. One surprising thing that happened was after josh and i were put together for four months and sarah stayed in solitary confinement for a year and was released in after her release after she was let out in september and josh had to get a haircut and so when this happened we would ask for days to get a razor and eventually the guard brought us to this little south was next to a bathroom, and the cells in this prison we were in for most of the time didnt have bathrooms combathrooms,so the prisoners wo go to hi this other bathroom, so cutting joshs hair and the razor was really bad is taking forever and i heard the shower turned on in the cell next to me. So we knocked on the window that connected the room and a prisoner came to the door and he said are you the guy that is married to sarah and i said im engaged to her. I propose to her in prison. He saw this on tv apparently. And he said is she out and i said yes shes out. I said, you know, why are you here and he said im al qaeda very matteroffactly. And he said, you know, whats your religion. And i said christian, which isnt really true but when asked what his religion and josh said im jewish and he said okay all people loved the book, thats good. [laughter] and he said islam is the best. And he said if you become one you will sleep better at night, which is a pretty soft attempt at conversion. [laughter] and he said, you know Everybody Knows that you are innocent and that you shouldnt be here. And i hope that you get free. And this was kind of this dynamic where in the present we were all just prisoners and there is a sense of connection between everyone because we were visitors in the guard and all of these other identities were stripped away in that context. He said i hope he will be freed soon and i said you too. One of the things that occupied my energy in the prison was not becoming a prisoner. I never really wanted to accept that i was of that place. Never really wanted to call it home. Solitary confinement is like a slow death. I was in solitary for 410 days. The world gets further and further away. Everything that you know, everything that you are becomes smaller as you become smaller and you shrink. The ways i try to find and counter the dehumanization of those white walls were really important to me. Being after months in solitary confinement you get reduced to an animal like state where you are basing your so compulsively. I would crouch down by the door listening to a sound. There were times i completely lost by grasp on reality and i heard screaming and i thought that it was from another prisoner in another cell or corridor and i just wanted it to stop and put my hands over my ears and it went on and on independent burst open and they started shaking me and i realized i had been screaming. This is a few months into my imprisonment. Interrogation was over. We had already been told we dont know whats going to happen to you. And things have been pretty quiet. I was in the womens section. One day all of a sudden the cards were frantic. There was a Connecticut Energy everywhere. It was december 27, 2009 about 5 into our captivity. Crouched down i watched as a procession of new inmates are bypassed myself. One woman has a bandage round her and another with her hair streaming out of her headscarf. All they wanted to know what was happening behind the walls into doubt the streets were being brought to me. So, a few months before we were captured the movement directed after the president was named president of second time there were monumental protest, millions of people all over saying that it was stolen. That he was an illegitimate president , and all of the people around us were Political Prisoners and human rights lawyers, student activists oppositions of all kind. In the beginning i didnt know that and i assumed they would hate me and believe the lies the government was telling about me but i found out that was not the case. I suddenly heard a soft whisper. The voice was close almost as if it were in cellblock. I was looking for the source. Was i imagining it . It was louder now. It seems to be coming from the corner near the door. Above the sink is a vent and as soon as the thought crosses my mind im compelled by a force and i climb onto the sink and prespressed my mouth to the eve. Who are you i asked the voice. How do you know my name . I know you. You know me . Yes. I saw your mother on tv. Im so sorry. I am a mother, too. Did you talk to my mother i almost yelled and remembered to hush my voice. As soon as the question is kickeiscaitlin aalpha i realiza rational it is. No but i saw pictures of you. You are a small girl. I know it must be easy for you to stand on the sink but for me it is difficult. [laughter] sorry i didnt mean for that to come across as funny. For me its difficult. They beat me. They kicked me into tortured me. My hips hurt and its difficult for me to stand. Her english is almost perfect with an accent with a starchy quality. I feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Its a miracle. We can talk to each other to get how is it possible that they do not know about this . I try to imagine her being taken out every day for interrogations and put back in the cages separated from her children, her life i and her country. So much likely get as bad as my situation is, hers is worse. Why did they arrest you . She was at the protest. Shortly my door burst open and a guard named llima had her hands on her hips and she must have heard us talking and crept down the hallway so we wouldnt hear her footsteps and pounced on us in the middle of our further than conversation. It felt like being caught masterbating and then being exposed and humiliated. This time my pleas had no affect on her. Her face slammed shut like a steel door. She said she would tell my interrogators but i have done. The prisoners immediately transferred into doubt when she comes to myself there are no more smiles and conversations. She hands me my food with a stare and then leads me to the courtyard. I no longer her sister. Im a plan ti may plan to she go keep alive. So these kind of interactions with other women in the prison even though i was caught that time and it was frightening and i didnt know what would happen, it only fueled my desire to connect with them more and it gave me the taste of who other women were and why they were there. In solitary confinement i couldnt resist reaching out. The resistance permeated the political of the section 209. Once id been caught several times i just wanted to get smarter and smarter how i could make contact. One of the conversations we would have him off when he eventually i got worse and worse and my mental state disintegrated they would likely have periods with shane and josh every day in and open itself. We would talk about things that would have philosophical conversations. As brief as the time was i would store up my ideas all day and then the spell them out. We would talk about what makes us feel most human. And its still a question that i pondered to this day. Is it the ability to write, to have a complex conversation with another human being in the exchange of language . Is it a human touch, being able to feel a physical connection . Is it making choices about what youre going to have for breakfast or for lunch, is that having a role in your community or your family. When you are in prison all of these things are taken away from you and you realize how valuable they are. So, as i hadnt at least interact with prisoners, the woman i read the excerpt from was taken away after that and they transferred her but there were many women i interacted with. Some of them would push back the throw their arms around me and told me that they loved me. We devised a calculated way of passing messages to each other. We would knock three times on the wall and that meant that there was a note waiting. We had a shared bathroom and i would write a note and i would wait until the day that the leave the guard was working and i knew she wasnt going to be catching me and i had a little piece of metal. I didnt have a pen. I had a piece of metal from the edge of a bottle i got from a doctor and it made a mark almost like a pencil so i would write my little notes and i would talk them inside of a maxi pad that i would make soiled by saving a little bit of beef stew and dipping it in the beef stew or then i would memorize the footsteps so that i knew where they were i in that prison in tf that at this time she would go into the bathroom the guard i didnt like would be nearby. So thats how smart prisoners get. Thats how detailed they get. Thats how important it is to find a way to connect to another human being. The way that that ive resisted dehumanization is by finding ways to be creative and to feel alive. And by using that sell to the maximum i possibly could, i would challenge my thoughts to see how many parallax i could do across the room without falling. Eventually it was 16. I would walk on my hands backwards like a bridge back and forth so that when the guards came in they would be impressed. I would recite poetry to an invisible audience, and i would knock on the wall with other prisoners and there was one other prisoner that really got into it and it went on for weeks and weeks. It was difficult. I remember the first time was going down to the clinic. Happened to pass by shanes all worry was held. And a song for the first time walking down this hallway blindfolded stumbling and carrying a bag of trash. For me to see someone that is the most free and beautiful environment, that kind of senseless, very painful. Its amazing to see people fight back. Always push the limit. Josh would never wear is plentiful properly. And sometimes it kind of annoyed me. Just do it. Whenever. To be have to have this conversation with the guards again and again, but ultimately i admired it that he never accepted that it was a could be blindfolded walking down a hallway. At that, the main message was that we love each other. Please dont hate us. We are