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.

Dear Sarah:

It seems weird to miss you more now than I did before when you were in Syria. Either way, you’re not by my side, but now you seem so much farther than you did before. At least before if I wanted to hear your wise words and kind laugh, feel your support and love, or find out the truth—and I mean the truth—about how you were doing, we could attempt to have a brief, broken up, and scratchy conversation on Skype. Now there’s only silence.

Sarah Shourd

I try to imagine your eyes, and what they’re looking at. I pray for you and Shane and Josh…that you’re in a comfortable place together, and I send you hope, strength, and love. It took me a while to feel sad, and I kind of hoped you would come home before I had to. But now when I look at your picture, I just start crying, and I want more than anything to see you smile in person and hug you for miles and miles.

It’s hard to feel so powerless to do anything. I’m doing what I can, but it doesn’t seem like much. I imagine it’s much harder on your end in that respect. I imagine there may be many hard things on your end, and that makes me sad too.

But missing you and being sad makes me grateful that I have so much to miss. I’m so lucky to have met you, someone with a soul so similar to mine, one that understands me and that I understand, and one that I love so much that it must be destined to walk close to mine. And that gives me hope. Because I love you so much that I know you can never be truly far.

So I pray for your safe, sound, and swift return (and Josh’s and Shane’s too) and look forward to the best hug ever when you get back. I’m thinking of you, sending you lots of love.

~ Meredith.

Sarah & Emily

When I think of Sarah, I think of the smell of pine trees, outdoor showers, and a warm summer breeze. I met Sarah in 5th grade when she first came to my school, and we were immediately inseparable. For years, I spent every weekend at her house in Topanga Canyon. We usually wasted the days scrambling around in the canyons. I can’t even remember what was so amusing about it, but we were endlessly entertained by hiking. We would have stayed out on the hillsides for days if we could.

During the summer, we sometimes went to the beach just over Malibu Canyon. I remember Sarah with her legs up on the dashboard singing along to some indie rock something with the windows rolled all the way down and the summer breeze flowing through the car. We spent the nights doing who knows what?…blasting music and dancing around the house, talking, reading ghost stories to each other, playing cards….every weekend was a slumber party.

Party with Sarah, Emily & friends.

Sarah and I always shared a certain appreciation for nature, and I can only imagine that had I been with her on this trip, we would have gone hiking. And, I could have been on this trip. Although we hadn’t spoken much in recent years, we were in touch recently. My husband and I were talking about taking a trip out to Syria to visit Sarah and Shane. In the last email I received from Sarah, she was excited about her new teaching job at the American Language School in Damascus and she let me know that unfortunately, that job meant she had little vacation time. July 23rd to Aug 2nd would be a good time to go visit, she said. She didn’t know what they would be doing, “maybe rent a car and drive across Syria to Turkey? Maybe die of heat stroke riding camels to Lebanon across Wadi Rum in Jordan? Either way, you lucky bastards are invited to join us! HA!”

Sarah will always be like a sister to me. She is a beautiful person, one who has touched my life deeply, and many others, I am certain. She has inspired me to be a better person. She has been a source of strength for me in difficult times. I desperately want to know that she is safe and well. I want her home and free.

Please join me in working towards the release of Sarah and her companions by signing the petition and helping to get the word out.

———- 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.

Sarah is a great influence on all those who know her, but I feel especially lucky that we were friends in our teenage years, forming our worldviews and ourselves together. Sarah and I have always bonded over our love of nature and hiking. After graduating high school, we took a trip to Alaska aboard the Green Tortoise bus. We went off alone for a couple of days in Denali National Park, with only our backpacks, our bear canister, and a topographical map.

Tamara & Sarah

Sarah has always been as comfortable walking the city streets as she is in the wilderness. I remember being with her in Santa Monica or in Berkeley, walking all day. She has never been afraid of this world or the people in it. She walks with her head held high, with awareness, acceptance, and dignity. She opens herself out to the world.

Sarah has already lived the life of five people put together. Her desire for knowledge and experience comes from her love of life, her intellectual curiosity, and her genuine interest in other people. Her intense passion and energy are inspiring. Sarah takes life incredibly seriously, but never lets it weigh her joyful spirit down. To understand her and why she went to the Middle East, you have only to read the quotation by Helen Keller she chose to put on her web journal: “Security is mostly superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

What I respect most about Sarah is how she discovered the kind of person she wanted to be and then worked to become that person. She has purposefully shaped herself and her life towards fighting violence, oppression, and injustice. Above all, she is guided by her belief in the essential goodness and dignity of ALL people. She knows that in order to help people, we must first understand them, and we cannot understand them without listening to them, learning from them and living their reality.

Sarah does not let the rampant pessimism, low expectations, or fears of others defeat her ideals or prevent her from taking action. Many of us perhaps share these same ideals, but most are not as willing as she is to sacrifice our own material comforts and absolute safety in their pursuit. But then Sarah’s life has never been “easy”. She has worked hard and overcome many obstacles to become the person she is today. She is an incredibly strong woman and it is in her strength that I place my hope and faith.

Sarah 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.

I met Sarah through friends and we began trading massage. I am a professional massage therapist and am fairly picky about who I will trade with. Sarah’s modality is different than mine (Tui Na vs. Deep Tissue), but I feel that one can benefit from any modality when done well. I also believe that a practitioner can be good with touch intuitively or be mediocre, even with a lot of training.

Sarah is a talented bodyworker because of her ability to connect with others. She did not have much training when I first started receiving massage from her, but she always had a wonderful touch. Throughout the year that we traded, her work evolved as she furthered her training and offered more fully integrated sessions.

Like many young people in the Bay Area (and many bodyworkers), Sarah is a person of many hats. She is a teacher, a thinker and a healer. Given the opportunities, Sarah’s possibilities are boundless because she is the kind of person that turns everything that she touches into her own. And despite her light and easy presence with others, she takes the world and her position in it quite seriously.

I was taking yoga from a traditional Persian medicine woman. She encouraged me to start teaching what I was learning in order to reinforce my skills.

I approached a close friend and asked him if he would like to learn yoga and if he would be willing to let me teach a class at his house in Berkeley. Sarah was a friend of his and was in my first class. She was by far the most devoted and loyal to the class.

Even after my friend moved out of his loft and I moved out of Berkeley she continued to come over with her friend Becky for our weekly yoga class. I continued to teach until all of use scattered to the four corners of the globe all due to Sarah’s enthusiasm.

What might not have been clear to her or to any of the other students I had was that I got far more out of teaching the class than they got out of taking it and I truly appreciated Sarah’s continued encouragement and trust she placed in me.

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…