to phone home Sunday for very brief—less than five-minute—conversations with their families.
It was only the third time they had been permitted a call home in their 22 months in captivity and the first since November 27, six months ago.
The two men, both 28, revealed that they had gone on a 17-day hunger strike in February to protest the fact that they were receiving no mail from their families. Both families have made a point of sending a letter each and every day. But the men said they had received not a single letter in months before they launched their hunger strike. They did not say if they were receiving all the letters now or just some of them.
Josh Fattal spoke with his father, Jacob.
Shane Bauer spoke with his mother, Cindy Hickey, and left a message for his fianceé, Sarah Shourd, who was freed by Iran last September.
A statement issued by the two families said the men both “sounded reasonably well.”
The phone calls may have been permitted as a result of an announcement three days earlier by the families that there were starting a “rolling” hunger strike to focus more attention on the fate of the men.
“We need people to stand with us,” Hickey, 50, said. “We’re desperate.… It affects our lives in a huge way, all of us, and we need for it [the detention] to end.”
The “rolling” hunger strike means that different members of the families will undergo a hunger strike successively so that someone is always on strike.