Coming Home

by Brittney Griner

Hoping and not hoping are both ways we protect ourselves. Hope gives us something to live for. Letting go steels us for cold reality.

Correctional Colony No. 2—or IK-2—is in Mordovia, a region more than three hundred miles east of Moscow. The women’s prison was part of the sprawling network of former Soviet-era gulags.

The two dozen penal colonies there were known for horrid conditions, hard labor, and inmate torture. Winter temperatures dipped to five degrees below zero.

A row of guards met us inside the gates. They had AK-47s pointed at us, with barking Germa...

Only black and white allowed, and just two tees and underwear.

All inmates were required to wear green corduroy uniforms.

Prison is more than a place. It’s also a mindset. When I entered IK-2, I flipped a switch in my head. I’m an inmate now, I told myself. I’ll be here at least nine years. I even rehearsed my release date: October 20, 2031.

All prisoners were housed in multilevel buildings called detachments, like a quad.

For seven days I was totally off the grid. My team had been told I’d been transferred but didn’t know when or where.

hand. Prison 101: Stay away from inmates in the boss’s pocket.

There was no hot water at IK-2.

You could never get truly clean in that pigpen.

We all had different shifts depending on our jobs. Our weekday routine after wake-up: All prisoners in the Yard by 6:30 for twenty minutes of exercise in the bitter cold. We’d be out there doing arm circles, ’60s-style calisthenics, while shaking snow off our head wraps. Then it was over to breakfast by 6:55, with a timed twelve minutes for your meal, to ensure all eight hundred of us got served before work. After porridge, we raced back to our quads for roll call.

Between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m., we rushed across the grounds to the metal detectors that were at the entrance to the massive building we worked in. Guards shouted, “Get in one line!” and shoved us around with their batons. Once we made it through the detectors, we stormed toward our stations. If you didn’t complete your work, there’d be consequences.

Russian labor camps are called that for a reason. All inmates work ten-, twelve-, or fifteen-hour-or-longer days.

We earned a few rubles an hour, around 25 cents. It was basically slave labor.

I worked in sewing. We worked in a factorylike building, with row after row of Soviet-era machines. There was no ventilation and little heat. No bathroom breaks were allowed.

Each group was given a quota, around five hundred military uniforms a day. Teams ...

The labor camps were basically military uniform sweatshops.

Evenings brought dinner, TV time in the common area, and calls from each floor’s phone room.

As we walked to a remote area of the grounds, she explained that some inmates’ work was to raise rabbits, to be sold to local farmers for prison income.

“If the prison’s short on food,” she said, “they slaughter the bunnies.” The inmates running the farm were these old USSR-era types who’d grown up killing animals with their bare hands.

It was also unheard of to have a six-nine American in a Russian labor camp,

Our machine looked left over from Soviet times. It was basically an old table saw, no shield, rusted. Lose concentration and you might lose a thumb.

Our morning exercises were required even in blizzard conditions.

What was worse than being cold was being wet and cold.

And then there was my hair. My dreads had become knotted over the months. At IK-2, they froze together. My iced locs started molding beneath that damp wrap. And because I had no hair dryer, my dreads took three days to fully dry after I showered.

In a field near the kitchen, she and her team made our meals over makeshift campfires.

My locs kept freezing after I recovered. I started thinking about making it through the coming winter and possibly eight more. The damp mop on my head would make that tougher. In late November I decided to cut it off.

In prison I needed permission to chop my hair.

Since arriving at IK-2, I’d been frozen, sick, got my hair chopped off.

Fiona Hill, a former official at the U.S. National Security Council and a Russia expert, had advised us to focus on protecting the sanctity of sports and to emphasize the important role they play in positioning Russia as part of a global community.

“President Trump is thinking about getting involved in bringing Brittney home.” Pause. “How?” she asked. “He’s considering flying to Russia to get her,” he said.

every American hostage, regardless of background, deserved to be brought home.

I didn’t care what prisoner I got swapped for or who brought me back to America—Biden, Richardson, Trump, or former NBA player Dennis Rodman, who’d said he would try to cut a deal. This prisoner wasn’t picky. I’d take any path home.

“Yes, there’s a possible deal,” he said. “But in order for it to work out, your country has to do all the right things.”

in order for Russia to agree to a prisoner swap, these agents told me, I’d have to address their president directly.

One girl’s freedom was every girl’s celebration.

My final hours at IK-2 mirrored those of my first: my tattoos were photographed, my belongings were searched, I did squats in my boxers.

Every one of those photos was staged. Some were eventually released. In the propaganda pictures things look clean, orderly, even pleasant. The reality was the opposite.

I left IK-2 right around lunchtime on Friday, December 2. I wasn’t told where I’d be taken.

Just like during my arrival, I was kept in the dark about everything. I also had no translator.

I left the men’s prison after four days—and after 293 days of incarceration.

The Merchant of Death looked nothing like the menacing villain he’d appeared as during his prime. If I’d seen him on the street, I would’ve passed him thinking he was just another middle-aged man.

Air Force BG—that was what my flight home should’ve been called. From the moment I boarded the jet, the crew catered to me. A medical team tended to my cuts and bruises and took my vitals. A SEAL psychiatrist trained to work with military personnel returning from traumatic situations gently talked me through how I’d be cared for in the coming days. We’d fly to a military hospital for a full mental health assessment,

Conversing in my language felt centering, after months of feeling lost in translation. I initially struggled to recall words. I couldn’t think of the word similar, for instance. That was because I’d spent so long trying to convey things simply to non-English speakers. I’d lost some fluency. I’d lost a lot.

When Relle arrived, she was greeted by President Biden and Vice President Harris in the Oval Office. “BG is on her way to San Antonio,” he’d told her.

I awakened to the sound of the captain’s voice through the intercom. “We are now entering U.S. airspace,” he announced. I sat up with tears in my eyes. I was home.

We’d be apart for the next twenty-four hours while the team supported my reentry—a post-trauma protocol for newly freed hostages. I’d spend eight days total on base.

I nodded but flipped on the TV set as soon as they left. I’d just spent nearly three hundred days with no control. Reaching for the remote was my way of reasserting it.