Joshua Fat­tal, Shane Bauer, and Sarah Shourd were impris­oned in Iran in 2009. Shourd was released one year lat­er and worked to secure Bauer and Fattal’s return in 2011. Since then, the three have pur­sued careers as writ­ers. Their mem­oir, A Sliv­er of Light: Three Amer­i­cans Impris­oned in Iran, will be pub­lished on March 18th by Houghton Mif­flin Har­court. This week, Joshua will be writ­ing for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing about his expe­ri­ences as a Jew held in cap­tiv­i­ty in Iran.

In Iran­ian prison I didn’t hear the anti-Semi­tism that I antic­i­pat­ed. For months, I feared reveal­ing my reli­gion to guards. When I final­ly let on, I found that some guards were igno­rant about Judaism: ​“Oh, Jews don’t cel­e­brate Christ­mas.” Oth­ers were excit­ed to con­nect our com­mon monothe­ism. A guard would point to me approv­ing­ly and said, ​“Moses” and point to my gen­tile friends and said, ​“Jesus.” Then they’d point to them­selves smil­ing­ly, ​“Muham­mad.” I’d nod awk­ward­ly at the attempt to find com­mon ground. 

That’s not to say there was noth­ing to be offend­ed by – espe­cial­ly on Iran­ian gov­ern­ment-run tele­vi­sion. How­ev­er, the most per­ni­cious stereo­type occurred at my hear­ing when the judge sen­tenced me to eight years. He equat­ed Jew­ish­ness with Israelis, and Israelis with mor­tal ene­mies. Hence, by asso­ci­a­tion, I was guilty of espi­onage. The pros­e­cu­tor and the judge con­tra­dict­ed the con­sen­sus among the guards: ​“Jew – no prob­lem. Israel – problem.”

…

One day, when I was eleven years old, I was play­ing roller hock­ey in the park­ing lot of St. James Church with a bunch of Jew­ish friends. When a group of peers left the school build­ing attached to the church we inter­rupt­ed our own game and skat­ed cir­cles around them. I nev­er met those kids before, we usu­al­ly played at Ken­neth Israel down the road. We start­ed spon­ta­neous­ly ask­ing the Catholic school boys ques­tions: what did you learn in school today? Do you think the Jews killed Jesus? Jews are stingy – don’t you think? The Catholic boys looked con­fused, but even­tu­al­ly one made the anti-Semit­ic com­ments we were look­ing for. 

Unaware of this pre-pubes­cent inci­dent, St. James Church put me on their prayer roll and held events and vig­ils for my free­dom. In soli­tary con­fine­ment, I lam­bast­ed my child­ish behav­ior, adding fuel to my ongo­ing bat­tle against a rapa­cious self-hatred. When my friend was allowed to move into my cell, we shared every­thing, and when Christ­mas came I cel­e­brat­ed for my first time in my life. 

A grad­u­ate of Berke­ley’s pro­gram in envi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ics and pol­i­cy, Joshua Fat­tal is an activist and orga­niz­er focused on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Along with co-authors Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, he has spo­ken at uni­ver­si­ties, human rights con­fer­ences, and pri­vate events to describe the expe­ri­ence of impris­on­ment in Iran. Read more about Joshua here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: Hap­py Mer­ry Christ­mas, Ma’am! On Being Jew­ish in a Strange Land by Jen­ny Feldon