Sayid Jarrah
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Sayid Jarrah is a fictional character on Lost, an ABC adventure series written and produced by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof. Played by Naveen Andrews, Sayid is a veteran of the Iraqi Republican Guard from Tikrit, Iraq where he was trained in communications technology.
Basic facts
- Played by: Naveen Andrews
- Flashback episodes: "Solitary", "The Greater Good", "Exodus: Part 3"; appears in Shannon's flashback in "Exodus: Part 1", appears in Jin's flashback in "Exodus: Part 2".
- Reason for trip: Travelling to the United States to find his childhood friend, Nadia
- Origin of Name: Sayid (Arabic) means 'master' or 'sir' (Honorific title for 'lord' or 'prince' and appropriate for a military officer Sayyid) while Jarrah (Arabic) is 'surgeon'. Sayid as pronounced in the show (Arabic) means someone who is welcome and gladly accepted.
- Profession: Communications officer, promoted to intelligence division in the Iraqi Republican Guard
Biography
His father's name is Hassan.
Sayid is haunted by memories of his time as an interrogator in which he would use extreme measures such as torture to gain information. In this capacity, he was ordered to kill Nadia, a childhood friend of his whom he was supposed to be interrogating. Instead of doing so, he shot himself in the leg so she could get away with his gun.
Sometime later, he was picked up in England by members of ASIS and the CIA who had been following his movements. He had apparently been trying to track down Nadia, whom the inteligence services said they had located. In exchange for her information, Sayid was recruited to infiltrate a terrorist cell in Sydney to uncover a stolen 300 pounds (136 kg) of C-4.
Sayid was tasked with convincing Essam, his college roommate from Cairo University, to go through with being a suicide bomber so the intelligence officers could take possession of the missing explosives. Sayid warned Essam at the last moment to give him time to escape, but Essam became distraught that his supposed friend had deceived him over a woman, and killed himself. Sayid was released with a plane ticket to Los Angeles to look for Nadia when it was revealed that she was living in Irvine, but asked for a flight for the next day, so that he might arrange a proper Muslim burial for Essam's body. It was as aresult of this that he boarded Oceanic flight 815 to Los Angeles, which crashed on a deserted island.
After the crash, he was instrumental in repairing a transceiver recovered from the cockpit and receiving the looped distress signal. He had attempted to locate the transmission origin of the signal, using triangulation, but was knocked out and his equipment smashed. John Locke revealed weeks later that he was the one who did so.
When he tortured Sawyer (and accidentally caused severe injury to him) for information on Shannon's asthma medicine, Sayid felt guilty and left the others to explore the island. Shortly afterwards, he was captured by Danielle Rousseau deep in the jungle, who revealed that she had been the one who recorded the taped transmission. While going back to camp, Sayid heard whispers.
Sayid had also grown closer to Shannon, even sharing a torch-lit dinner and night together. Though they didn't know it, during their time together, Shannon's step-brother Boone was dying. Later, Shannon asked Sayid to eliminate Locke, whom she blamed for Boone's death. Sayid refused to do so, and also stopped Shannon from using one of Jack's guns to kill Locke. This has led to an apparent cooling of their relationship.
Sayid and Shannon first met in the waiting area of the Sydney airport, when he asked her to watch his bag for a moment. She reported him to airport security as an "Arab man" who had left his bag unattended. She told Boone that she did so just to prove to him that she could do anything that she wanted to do. Sayid was forgiven later by security for the misunderstanding.
In the episode Abandoned Sayid and Shannon's relationship became physical after he presented her with a large tent shelter he constructed for her use. After a confrontation as to whether or not Shannon had seen Walt in the woods, Shannon ran off with Walt’s dog Vincent to find him. Sayid followed her until another confrontation where Sayid also saw Walt. Shortly after Shannon was apparently shot by the survivor Ana-Lucia, collapsing into Sayid's arms. In the episode "Collision," Ana-Lucia has Sayid tied to a tree, and they talk about the trauma they both went through in their lives prior to the crash. After Sayid is released, they decide not to attempt to kill each other.
Sayid was seen being arrested by the military on the tv in Kate's step-father's office, Sam Austen, in the episode "What Kate Did".
