Held captive in Iran, Sarah Shourd found solace in a Seal song

Sarah Shourd [00:00:02] I spent a lot of time in a state of terror, pacing back and forth all day long in my cell, begging, praying, screaming. At times it seemed like I was going crazy. 

Sophie Bearman [00:00:26] You're listening to Life in Seven Songs. From the San Francisco Standard, I'm Sophie Bearman. In late 2024, a federal court ruled that Iran is liable for intentional infliction of severe emotional distress and the false imprisonment of three American hikers. Sarah Shord was one of them. All told, she was imprisoned in Iran and kept in solitary confinement as a political hostage for 410 days. This was back in 2009. After her release, she drew on her experience, returning home and becoming a playwright and anti -prison theater activist, resisting the use of solitary in U .S. prisons. Sarah Shourd, thanks for being here. 

Sarah Shourd [00:01:09] Yeah, it's good to be here. I was surprised that I was feeling a little emotional hearing you introduce me that way. It's interesting when people bring up my imprisonment I have a different reaction every single time and just the way that you brought it up, it landed as like, oh man, yeah, I really went through that. 

Sophie Bearman [00:01:26] Well, I'm really glad that you're willing to be here to talk about it, but before we get into Iran, I want to trace how you got there. So tell me a little bit about your childhood. 

Sarah Shourd [00:01:35] Early childhood was extremely intense and a very, very difficult trying time for myself, but especially for my mother. My mom is a powerful and in many ways understated human being. She was very young when she got married the first time and she actually kind of ran off with my dad from her first husband. and it turned out that my dad was a very troubled human being and very unsafe. So there was, in those early years, there was violence in the household, but my mom got away and left my dad through the help of some incredible people she met, actually next door neighbors that are still in our lives. We were in extreme poverty. My mom had never worked before. She'd been a housewife since she was 17, and she was 32 and she was figuring out how to live on her own and raising me at the same time. And she was working as a waitress, going to nursing school. So if it wasn't for the kindness of strangers that became family, I don't know that we would have made it through those years.  

Sophie Bearman [00:02:53] She sounds incredibly brave, because that, as we know, is one of the hardest things you can do. How did the neighbors help?

Sarah Shourd [00:02:57] Oh, this is a wild story. So the neighbors were in the Communist Party and the wife, Aline Stein, she started to come and have tea with my mom and talk politics. They were trying to get my mom involved in the Communist Party in Chicago at the time. And they were doing a lot of anti -imperialist work, protesting. My mom was interested, but Aline picked up on what was happening and could see that my mom. I mean, it was obvious to everyone what was happening. So Aline, I think was one of the first people that told my mom that if you don't leave, you might not make it through this. This is not a tenable situation for you and your child. 

Sophie Bearman [00:03:42] How old were you when your mom finally made that decision to get away and also just describe that? I mean, did you fly? Did you drive? How did you get away? 

Sarah Shourd [00:03:52] Well, so they helped us leave, Bob and Aline, and they had a little boy, Murphy, who later became like a brother to me for many years. And they helped us find places where, you know, underground where we would be safe. Eventually they moved to California and mom saved up the money. She got custody of me. We packed up the car with a couple boxes. That actually wasn't even our car. It was somebody else's car and yeah, it was like a few boxes and Fluffy Muffin, my cat. 

Sophie Bearman [00:04:28] Fluffy Muffin. 

Sarah Shourd [00:04:29] Yeah. 

Sophie Bearman [00:04:30] Very cute. 

Sarah Shourd [00:04:31] Perfect name for a fluffy cat, yeah, that looks a lot like a muffin. So we, I mean that trip, like the world exploded for me. I remember it in like vibrant color, like almost as if there wasn't a lot of color before that trip in my world. Just seeing the Grand Canyon, just how beautiful and big this country is and the freedom that we felt. And the adventure, the two of us on the road together. 

Sophie Bearman [00:05:04] Is there a song that makes you think of that car trip, your mom being brave enough to leave and take you to California? 

Sarah Shourd [00:05:13] Yeah, that's definitely Tracy Chapman's "She's Got Her Ticket." I mean, that line from the song is, no one should try to stop her or persuade her from her power. When my mom knows, when her mind is made up about something, nothing can stop her from doing it. I've seen that multiple times in my life. 

Sarah Shourd [00:05:51] We really just left and never looked back and started a new life in California. And I remember coming into California, seeing palm trees for the first time and just feeling like, oh yeah, I'm going to be a California girl. Like this is for real. This is happening. 

Sophie Bearman [00:06:10] Starting over. 

Sarah Shourd [00:06:09] Yeah, starting over. 

Sophie Bearman [00:06:11] So who was California Sarah? 

Sarah Shourd [00:06:13] So California Sarah was very much a mama's girl. We had our own little reality. My mom and I were both very, you know, political. We were radical feminists. We were anti-racist. We were anti-imperialist. Those values, like politics, personal and political, were always aligned in my life. They weren't two separate things. And I didn't find people at school that I. related to or that I felt understood by, and I was pretty chronically shy because I didn't feel like I fit in or belonged. But then when puberty came around and kind of pre-teen years, I started kind of just feeling myself more. I think that my rebellion was actually trying to be normal. So I liked wearing cute clothes. I liked flirting with boys. In sixth grade, dated the most popular kid in the class. I actually used to shoplift because I wanted like the designer clothes and I wanted to fit in that badly. I liked the power of being popular, of being seen. I didn't want to be invisible. But in high school, I was harboring a lot of loneliness and shame. I just knew that I felt uncomfortable in my skin and I didn't know how to be myself authentically, yet.

Sophie Bearman [00:07:39] In your teenage years, is there anything that you are listening to that you turn to? 

Sarah Shourd [00:07:45] Yeah, I turned to Rage Against the Machine.

Sophie Bearman [00:07:50] Ha ha ha! 

Sarah Shourd [00:07:52] I would see Raging Against the Machine every time they were in town. And I would go to the concerts and just like lose my mind in the best possible way. I think I just felt my power, like the rawness. I mean, it's very empowering to be pushing people around in the mosh pit, screaming at the top of your lungs. You know, if a guy grabbed me or was inappropriate, I used to just like slap him in the face or punch him in the stomach. I mean, it was like literally just like learning that like people can't fuck with me and I needed to learn that. 

Sophie Bearman [00:08:25] What song in particular? 

Sarah Shourd [00:08:27] "Killing in the Name Of."

Sophie Bearman [00:08:50] It brings you back. 

Sarah Shourd [00:08:51] It definitely stands up to the test of time. It's such a good song and I don't remember now how much I realized that it was a song about white supremacy. You know, listening to it now, I'm just like really glad that I had that influence in my life at that age. You know, it's a song, it's like fuck you to white supremacists and to police that hold up those values. 

Sophie Bearman [00:09:16] I imagine it also kind of allowed you to channel your anger. 

Sarah Shourd [00:09:20] Yeah, I was angry at the system. I was angry at men. Society did not feel to me like a healthy place. And it felt very toxic on many, many levels and very unsafe and disempowering to me as a young woman. And I started to make that connection, I think between my own oppression and greater oppression around me at the time of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. That was a very, very defining thing. And I remember sitting in a class at school and it was obvious to me how completely horrific and unjust what happened to Rodney King was being, you know, brutalized by the police. And it was like a question of debate in my classroom. And that was one of those moments where I was like, I do not fit in here. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:15] Where did you find a place of belonging? Did that happen in college?

Sarah Shourd [00:10:19] Yeah, yeah, I mean college, so I didn't go to college right away. I moved up to the Bay and started just living and waitressing. I wasn't a very good student in high school, so I had to get my grades up. And I went to junior college and transferred to Berkeley. And as soon as I transferred to Berkeley, like literally three months later, 9/11 happened. And so that was like, bam, like, Whoa, still to this day, one of the most important days of my life. To me, there's like a before and after 9/11. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:53] How did it change you personally? 

Sarah Shourd [00:10:55] Yeah, for me, it was like, kind of like drawing a line in the sand. Like, like, okay, so who are you? Like, what do you believe in? And what are you going to do? Before 9/11 I was partying a lot, but 9/11 brought something out of me that made me ready to take a stand. So I just, I joined the antiwar movement, like really full force. 

Sophie Bearman [00:11:18] And you met a man named Shane Bauer in the anti-war movement. The two of you started dating. You traveled across Ethiopia, Yemen, a bunch of places. How did you end up settling in Syria? 

Sarah Shourd [00:11:29] Yeah, I was starting out as a journalist and publishing online and also publishing some travel writing. And I was also teaching Iraqi refugees that were trying to get into college in the US. So that was an extension of the anti -war work that I wanted to do there and studying Arabic at Damascus University. We lived in Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp. It was at the time a place where a lot of internationals lived. People from Europe, people from South America, a lot of artists and journalists, and we had a really thriving, exciting life there. 

Sophie Bearman [00:12:08] So how did you find yourself then in Iraq with Shane and a friend and then all three of you political hostages in Iran? 

Sarah Shourd [00:12:18] You can imagine how many times I asked myself that same question while I was in prison. So our friend Josh was visiting us in Damascus, and northern Iraq is a semi-autonomous part of Iraq. It's Kurdistan. It's Kurdish. So it has its own semi-autonomous borders, its own language, its own culture, and it's not a war zone. I mean, now it is, but then it wasn't. Now ISIS is there, and it's completely unsafe. But then no American had been captured there. 

Sophie Bearman [00:12:46] And then we're talking 2009. 

Sarah Shourd [00:12:49] Yeah, 2009, yeah. And so when we were there, our guards were down to a degree. We were on vacation and Northern Kurdistan has green mountains, beautiful waterfalls. So we kept seeing these posters and we asked someone, Ahmadawa, what is this place? And the hotel gave us directions. When we got there, there were hundreds of people camped there, Kurdish families. vendors, people, you know, cooking kebab, and a lot of people camp near the waterfall and we wanted a little more privacy, so we went, we asked someone to point at a trail and they pointed at the trail and we slept a little ways down the trail and then got up the next morning and continued down the trail. We hiked and when we arrived at the top of the mountain, we saw a soldier in the on top of a ridge and he had a large rifle and he motioned for us to meet him and ordered us off the trail. We assumed he was Kurdish, Peshmerga and he wanted to like chat with us more, drink some tea. We were nervous but not scared at that point. We later found out that the top of that ridge is an unmarked border with the Islamic Republic of Iran. So we didn't cross the border voluntarily. We were ordered at gunpoint across the border. 

Sophie Bearman [00:14:17] When we come back, Sarah walks us through what life was like as a political prisoner. Stay with us. \. 

Sophie Bearman [00:14:40] When did you start to understand what was happening? I mean, obviously you knew something wasn't right, but I'm sure there's days, maybe even weeks, where you think this is ending soon, this is ending soon. I guess describe those next few days and weeks. 

Sarah Shourd [00:14:54] I mean it didn't make any sense. One of the things I liken it to is the beginning of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" when he wakes up a cockroach. And so you don't believe you're a cockroach. Like this can't be happening to me. This is all going to be over and we're going to be back in our apartment. Your brain tries to convince you of the story that you want to believe, but it's also telling you the opposite at the same time. 

Sophie Bearman [00:15:20] Sarah, where do they take you? 

Sarah Shourd [00:15:22] Well, the first couple of days, it was driving and being passed to different groups. We were in a jail in the middle of nowhere one night. We were in apartment buildings. There was one point that they marched us into the desert at gunpoint, and we didn't know if we were gonna be executed. 

Sophie Bearman [00:15:41] So for many days, this sort of psychological terror continues, and then they take you to a prison in Iran. 

Sarah Shourd [00:15:50] Yeah, which I would later find out it's called Evin Prison and notorious for holding political dissidents, protesters, human rights activists for torturing them, for executing them. They immediately tore us apart and put us in our own solitary cells. In the beginning, it was 24 hours a day just being taken out to be interrogated and nothing in the cell, just a blanket, that's all. I spent a lot of time, many months in a state of terror, just pacing back and forth all day long in my cell, begging, praying, screaming. I beat at the walls.  At times it seemed like I was going crazy, and I was, and I was terrified of crazy. But I would like, I would wake up from a from a dream with like a message in my mind. Like, you're not done. This life is not over. There's so much more for you to learn. Just crystal clear and like this booming voice in my head. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:06] Is there music that you turn to either screaming it out loud or just playing refrains in your head while you were in isolation?

Sarah Shourd [00:17:14] Yes. Many songs. I sang in my cell very loudly. That was like this wildness coming through and the rebellious. I mean, I danced. Once I started to let my guard down and realized that the women guards were not going to hurt me and that we weren't in a section where the male guards couldn't come, I danced naked. I made music on the walls, and I would sing so loud that the guards would barge in and tell me to be quiet, and I would just sing louder. So I sang "Gracias a la Vida" by Mercedes Sosa a lot, and I sang Seal's "Crazy."

Sophie Bearman [00:18:09] We're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy. What does that mean? How did that show up for you? 

Sarah Shourd [00:18:16] Absolutely. Yeah. Like how are we going to get through all of this, these compounded crises that we face? It takes a tremendous amount of imagination and wildness and it's crazy. It's crazy, crazy making being in this world. So you got to let that out. I also saying this, so I did eventually get to see Shane and Josh. There was a place that they would let us spend time together, especially when I started to get worse and they were worried about me harming myself. It was a place called Habahori, which is a place where you eat air. And it's the same as what prisoners get in this country. It's an open air cell with bars on the ceiling, so you can actually see the sky and we would sing together and hold hands. And that's one of the songs that we would sing. 

Sophie Bearman [00:19:04] You mentioned that you started not doing as well. What do you mean by that? 

Sarah Shourd [00:19:08] Yeah, the interrogators came back. They were worried about me because I had been screaming, just screaming and uncontrollably. And the way I remember it is that it was the closest I've ever gotten to like the edge of sanity. And it wasn't clear to me if I was screaming. I didn't, I wasn't in my body. I had heard the screaming and I wanted it to stop. And I didn't know that I was beating at the wall until the guards came into my cell and they were shaking me. So, so that is why the interrogators came back and they said, you know, they gave me a television and they said I could start seeing Shane and Josh. Miracles happen in those little visits and it sustained me those visits. They really, really did. 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:02] So after 410 days, how did you finally get out? 

Sarah Shourd [00:20:07] I was released before ever being indicted with any crime. So I was held as a political pawn. And I was released, they said, for humanitarian reasons because I was in solitary confinement. And they used as an excuse, they said that I had a precancerous condition in my breast, that I had a breast lump. And they actually knew that it wasn't pre-cancerous because they took me to a doctor, but they used it as a way to save face, as a way to say, oh, she's sick, we're letting her go for humanitarian reasons. So it doesn't look like they're giving in to the great Satan, the US government. So they let me out earlier than Shane and Josh. And I knew I just had to get them out. It's all I lived for. I mean, I had so much survivor's guilt. And I needed to see them. They were the only people in the world that understood me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:21:00] So what was the time lapse between when you got out and when Shane and Josh got out? 

Sarah Shourd [00:21:05] It was a year. Immediately the Etta James song came into my head "At Last."

Sarah Shourd [00:21:32] I just remember like, singing at the top of my lungs and calling my friend Bessa and she came right away and drove me to the airport. And like, it was actually like the first time I'd felt joy in so long. It was almost like I couldn't give myself permission to feel joy until they were free, if that makes sense. And I just knew that I could have a life again. 

Sophie Bearman [00:21:55] So after you got home and then Shane and Josh got home, what did recovery look like for you? 

Sarah Shourd [00:22:01] I mean, I was healing, I was doing my work. I knew that healing was gonna be a long journey, that it's impossible not to internalize that level of control and punishment and, you know, harsh, harsh, harsh, and fear that being, you know, stuck in that for 410 days, it becomes part of your tissues, right? It's in your nervous system. It's not just gonna go away. But the way that I think my PTSD manifested, was that I felt an incredible amount of power and a sense of like, nothing can stop me. I came out of prison 30 years old and it makes sense that I was at that time in my life where I'd gone through the dark night of the soul and now it was time for me to really shine. The way that that looked for me was connecting everything that I'd been through to what was happening in this country. you know, the reason I chose this Kendrick Lamar song for the next one is I think that it's this feeling that like this didn't break me and nothing can. And I can confront the system of mass incarceration in this country. 

Sophie Bearman [00:23:15] Let's take a listen, Kendrick Lamar, "Element."

Sarah Shourd [00:23:29] The thing I love about Kendrick Lamar's song is like, I want to slap the prison system in the face, but I'm going to do it with art. We're going to make it look sexy, you know, not take no for an answer. When someone told me I couldn't write a play and, you know, tour the country or make a graphic novel or make a podcast, raise a million dollars, I just kind of had this feeling of like, yeah, whatever needs to get done, it's going to get done. 

Sophie Bearman [00:23:56] And when you refer to making art, are you talking about your play, "The Box?" 

Sarah Shourd [00:24:01] Yeah, absolutely. I was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and I traveled to 13 prison facilities around the country and met with the people that I'd been writing, corresponding with in solitary confinement. So I started writing people, in the beginning it was because I didn't understand, really, what had happened to me and I didn't know where to move, where to go from there. How do you heal a wound that you hold that deep that other people can't even see it? I mean, everywhere I went, people were like, you look great, you're so amazing, you're fine. And it's like, I don't even know how to describe to you how not fine I am. And I had to learn that language. And it was a process of talking to other people, other survivors. And then those stories blew me away so much. They were so incredible. And the play was my artistic interpretation of my own experience and a lot of these events. 

Sophie Bearman [00:24:56] And what was it about? 

Sarah Shourd [00:24:57] The play is about a young man, Rocky, coming into a solitary confinement pod and slowly losing his mind. And the other prisoners begin to reach out to Rocky. There's clandestine ways of communicating through notes and taps, exactly through the pipes, through the vents. And Rocky, he doesn't make it. He takes his own life. And this radicalizes the guys in the pod. There's been talk of a hunger strike for a long time, and this is the catalyst. And the hunger strike spreads all over the state, which is what happened in California in 2013. The largest hunger strike in prison history in this country, which led to sweeping reforms around solitary confinement in this state. I wanted people to have the visceral, real experience of walking through the shoes of someone who had not only lived through solitary confinement, but resisted it. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:54] So we've spoken a bunch about this burning desire you had to really create and make change after you were released, but your next song is actually about stepping back. I'm curious, how come? 

Sarah Shourd [00:26:07] Um, this mode, the certain shape of being in being strong, being tough. I started to see myself projecting onto others, like a kind of disdain for weakness that I felt in myself and it wasn't going away. So every time I feel myself snapping back into this feeling in my body of hardening emotionally, not, you know, not being receptive to other people. I think of this song by Danika Smith called "Suit of Armor," it really captures it for me. 

Sarah Shourd [00:27:03] I mean, yeah, sometimes I... need to take off that armor several times a day, you know? It's real. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:10] As important as wearing it and that strength is taking it off, in other words. 

Sarah Shourd [00:27:15] Yeah, I mean, for me, that's real strength. The real strength that has come out of this for me is being able to soften back into who I am.

Sophie Bearman [00:27:26] We have to talk about your last song then, which is the chorus of voices. What did you choose? 

Sarah Shourd [00:27:31] I chose "This Joy" by The Resistance Revival Chorus because none of us heals in isolation. None of us survives in isolation. And it kind of, it has that surrender to it and also the agency and the power that I think it's the balance that I've been looking for for a long time and that I'm closer to than I've ever been. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:23] You mentioned that we're not meant to live in isolation, and it's really moving to hear so many female voices in this case, just imagining all those women embracing each other. I just find that very moving. 

Sarah Shourd [00:28:36] Yeah, I would say that I am always really just recognizing more and more what it means to really belong and what community means. We're at a hard moment politically. There's so much suffering. And I think that more people are also healing and open to healing than I've ever been. And we really. might surprise ourselves in how we respond to what's being thrown at us. I think that we are evolving and I'm excited about what our next song might be. 

Sophie Bearman [00:29:18] Sarah Shourd, thank you so much for joining us.

Sarah Shourd [00:29:21] Absolutely. 

Sophie Bearman [00:29:47] Life in Seven Songs is a production from The San Francisco Standard. This episode was produced by me, Sophie Bearman, and our senior producer, Jasmyn Morris. Our executive producers are Griffin Gaffney and Jon Steinberg. This episode was mixed by Michelle Lanz. Our theme music is by Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler, and Clark Miller created our show art. Our music consultant is Sarah Tembeckjian. Special thanks to Sean McKenna at PureMind Studios. You can find this guest full playlist at sf.news/spotify. Thanks for listening and see you next time.