A TIME TO BETRAY (11 page)

The September 22 attack was our Pearl Harbor. Imam Khomeini asked every male Muslim who could walk to volunteer to defend God’s government. Heeding the call were army officers, Guards, normal citizens, and—most fearsome of all—Basij, a paramilitary force with boys as young as thirteen. Two hundred thousand untrained volunteers—a far larger militia than the number of trained servicemen we had—arrived at the front within months and met the Iraqi invaders. Since the Guards and Iran’s soldiers operated separately, there was no coordination of movements among our troops. But we soon learned that Basijis—many of whom were adolescents infatuated with martyrdom—could not be defeated by mere tanks and machine guns.

A short time after the first Iraqi attack, the Foreign Ministry announced they were closing the airports and that no one could travel outside the country except foreign nationals, Iranians studying abroad, and Iranians with residential status in a foreign country who had been in Iran less than six months. Those who qualified stood in long lines to secure permission to leave. Somaya’s parents were anxious to get out of a country under attack, and I asked Kazem to call his contacts in the Foreign Ministry to facilitate their departure.

My in-laws did not want to leave their only child in Iran during a war that was intensifying every day. I could sympathize with them. I told Somaya that I would feel better if she left with
her parents, and I promised that I would visit her in England as often as I could. She refused flatly, telling me that she did not marry me to leave in times of trouble. This made me cherish her even more, despite my fears for her safety and my concerns about whether I could do what was necessary to protect her.

I did not go to work the day Somaya said her tearful farewell to her parents. I knew she needed me to be with her while she dealt with this abrupt change to her world. We were renting a small house that came with a neglected garden, and Somaya had been spending most of her days tending to it and planting flowers. When her parents left, she went there and I joined her, watching her work and thinking of how much she reminded me of my grandfather when she did this. We spent hours in the garden that afternoon. When we were done, Somaya’s face glinted with a wide smile. “It’s so beautiful, Reza. I especially love the lilies.” I was glad they had given her a measure of peace.

After dinner, Somaya sat on the bed quietly. I knew she was missing her parents. I sat next to her and took her hands. It was one of the first times in our marriage that we were alone completely. Her parents were gone, and the constant stream of family and friends visiting us was dissipating. I needed to be there for her. I needed to hold her in my arms and show her how much I loved her. I looked into her eyes, still not believing that someone as remarkable as she had chosen to marry me. I moved her hair away from her neck.

“You are so beautiful,” I said, pressing gently on her hands. She smiled at me warmly, defining the dimple on her cheek. I kissed her neck and pulled her close to me. She closed her eyes. I wrapped my arms around her waist and caressed the heat of her skin.

“I love you,” I said, kissing her again.

She started to respond when a loud whistle suddenly filled the air. Somaya jumped from the bed as if catapulted.

“Oh my God! There is an attack! Reza, get the radio!”

Startled, I ran to the kitchen to grab the radio and turn off the lights. On the radio, an announcer instructed everyone to get to a shelter, as Iraqi bomber planes were entering the sky of Tehran. I knew the Iraqi planes were going after military targets. But I also knew they wouldn’t worry too much about hitting civilians at the same time.

We had a small cellar in our house but Somaya didn’t feel safe there. She worried about being buried in rubble if the house took a
direct hit. We rushed outside and leaned against a wall. This made even less sense than going to the cellar, but for some reason Somaya felt better there.

As we stood outside, it was ominously quiet.

I held Somaya’s hand, her palm wet and cold. The heat I had felt only moments before was now gone from her body. I brought her close to me and she pressed me tight beneath the night sky, shivering. Then the shrill whistle of Iranian antiaircraft guns screamed only blocks away. That meant the Iraqi fighters were somewhere close by. Just that day, I’d promised Somaya’s parents that I would take care of her. But how could I protect her from this madness? I looked at her innocent face illuminated by explosions and antiaircraft fire. She had stayed in this conflagration to be with me. If not for me, she would be safe with her parents in England now. I felt her chest beating hard against mine.

“I am okay, Reza. I am not afraid,” she said as her voice broke. She was afraid, of course, but she was not a coward.

“I know,” I said, “but I am
not
okay. Hold me tighter!”

This got a small reaction from her. She pinched me and told me to stop joking, smiling as she said it. I prayed to God to let this attack pass without any harm coming to her.

A loud blast shook the wall against our backs. I knelt down, pulled Somaya with me, and covered her body. We huddled in that position for the longest minutes of my life, as the explosions and missile fire continued.

Finally, the green siren announced the all-clear signal.

The attack was over.

For now.

That night, neither of us could sleep. Instead, we listened to reports on the radio with growing trepidation. The next day, I pleaded with Somaya to leave for London. I told her it wasn’t too late, that Kazem would help her get out. She wouldn’t hear of it.

In the midst of this, another war continued. The Mujahedin increased their violent fervor, attacking anyone associated with the
Islamic forces, including the Revolutionary Guards, the Komiteh (the revolutionary police), and the Basij. Officials of the Islamic regime were assassinated one after the other, some at the very base where I worked. Now Kazem and I were in no less danger than Naser.

At the same time, Hezbollah (Party of God) gangs of radical Islamists, sporting uniforms of dirty long beards and buttoned-up shirts, roamed the streets on motorcycles, brandishing sticks and chains, shouting
“Allaho Akbar”
and
“Khomeini Rahbar”
(“Khomeini is our leader”), and attacking people who did not adhere strictly to Islamic rules.

These rules were extreme, and few among us agreed with all of them. They included a dress code for women that required they wear no makeup and that they appear in public with a proper Islamic
hejab
covering their hair and body. Men could not wear shorts. Only married couples could be seen together in public places. Alcohol was banned. No parties or music were allowed, even within the walls of homes. Failure to follow these rules led to arrest and lashing in public.

The radicals called people who objected to the mullahs
mohareb,
or “those waging war against God.” Khomeini issued a fatwa on the Mujahedin, calling them hypocrites and ordering their arrests. He asked people to inform authorities of anyone they suspected of belonging to that group. Neighbors began turning one another in, and I shuddered to think of where Naser’s inability to censor himself would lead him.

Mainstream Iranian society cheered for neither the Mujahedin nor the clerical government. We were caught up in three wars: Iraq against Iran, the Mujahedin against the mullahs, and Hezbollah against the people. Our youth were slaughtered on battlefields and our citizens were rounded up, whipped, beaten, and humiliated as punishment for disobeying some arbitrary rule of decorum.

Somaya was constantly worried about me and I was beside myself with worry for her. She always wore a
hejab
in public and
she adhered to the Islamic laws, but I never knew if this would be enough. It seemed that people were being arrested for no apparent reason.

The violence kept creeping closer to our home. One day, a cab dropped me off across from our house. I saw a Land Cruiser with the Komiteh logo there and this immediately made me nervous. The coming traffic kept me from crossing the street to the other side, raising my anxiety. Was Somaya in some kind of danger? As I waited, a motorcycle with two riders crept up alongside the Land Cruiser, and I saw the man on the back of the motorcycle throw a grenade through an open window of the car.

I flung myself to the ground as the car exploded thirty feet in front of me, raining debris and glass on me. I jumped to my feet as the motorcycle sped down a narrow alley. Among the dust and explosions, I ran to the Komiteh car and looked inside. There had been four men in there. Blood was splattered throughout the inside and three men were in pieces. One man, I believe it was the driver, actually managed to get out. He was severely disoriented, but through some odd effect of blast physics, his only injury was a bloody hand. In his other hand, he held a machine gun.

Somaya had heard the commotion and rushed outside along with many of our neighbors. She saw me by the destroyed car, my face covered with dust from the blast and with some drops of blood on my shirt. She rushed to me with tears.

“Reza, are you okay? What happened to you?”

I let go of the man I’d helped to the sidewalk, asking a neighbor to call for help. Then I took Somaya into our home. She was terribly frightened and I knew I needed to calm her down and let her know that we were going to be okay.

I just wasn’t sure how I was going to manage that.

ON JANUARY 20
, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, Imam Khomeini ordered the release of the American hostages. Americans celebrated this and saw it as the end of one of the most disturbing chapters in their history. Iranians of all ideologies celebrated as well. Khomeini’s followers rejoiced in this final slap in Jimmy Carter’s face, knowing that the hostage crisis had a great deal to do with his defeat, and seeing it as retribution for his support of the shah. They believed that sending the Americans home was a way to punctuate Khomeini’s triumph over the world’s biggest superpower. For other Iranians, including my family, the release of the hostages allowed us to hold out hope for better relations between the U.S. and our country. Perhaps, we thought, Khomeini was now ready to begin dealing diplomatically with the rest of the world and Iran could escape from its self-imposed isolation.

I worked every day at my office training Guards members in the use of computers. This work was challenging and it kept me busy. Although I saw Kazem at work all the time, Naser and I had not been in contact for quite a while. Marriage consumes time, love consumes attention, and war consumes both. Naser had Azadeh, who unfortunately hadn’t helped blunt his increasing political activism, I was content to nestle in with Somaya, and Naser and I just never found the opportunity to get together. The three “battlefields” in Iran left a pervasive strain among all of us, but despite this, I reveled in the time I had with my wife. She was so full of energy and so
loving that I found it possible to forget everything else when I was with her. For me, Somaya was the antidote to war.

“I want us to have three children,” she said one afternoon as we sat in her garden.

“Why three and not two or four?”

“This way I can spoil them all.”

I laughed at this. “You can only do this with three?”

“Three is the perfect number, Reza. Let me tell you how it works.” She settled back in her seat, drew her legs under her like a little kid, and put her hair back in a ponytail. “You always adore your oldest kid because it is your first one. The third one is your favorite because you know he or she will be the last. So you spoil both of these. And you spoil the middle one because you don’t want him to feel neglected.”

Her reasoning brought a huge smile to my face. “Then three it is,” I said, delighted that this would make her happy.

The phone rang and I got up to answer it. “Three spoiled kids,” I said as I rose. “I hope I’ll still get a chance to spoil my wife as well.”

I winked at her and went into the house.

My mother was on the line. Her voice was frantic, pulling me immediately away from the reverie I’d just shared with Somaya. She was so upset that I couldn’t understand her.

“Mom, what’s going on?” I said nervously. “Are you okay?”

She sobbed and then gained a modicum of control over her emotions. “Reza, you have to do something. Naser, Soheil, and Parvaneh have been arrested.”

I felt a chill to the depths of my soul. “Arrested?”

“Davood has not heard from them for a couple of months. He does not know what to do. They are in Evin Prison, and he can’t visit them.”

My knees started shaking and my entire body went numb. Fear raced through me. I had heard the stories about Evin Prison. Everyone had. If Naser and his siblings were there, they were in horrible straits.

I grabbed my jacket to go to Davood’s house. Somaya came in at that point, saw my panic, and rushed toward me.

“I’ll be back soon” was all I could say before I headed out the door.

When I got to their house, I found Davood and his wife, Mahin
khanoom,
hysterical.

“Reza
jon,
I know I should have called you earlier, but I didn’t know what to tell you until now. We just learned that they’ve put Naser, Soheil, and Parvaneh in Evin.” His shoulders shook and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to keep speaking. The next words that came from his mouth were strained and halting, as though he could hardly bear to utter them. “They pounded on our door in the middle of the night and grabbed my children from their beds.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I’ve been looking day and night to find out what happened to them.”

Mahin
khanoom
had been crying while Davood spoke. Now she wailed. “God damn these shameless animals. They took my Parvaneh and my sons.”

Everything about this seemed surreal to me. “I don’t understand why they took them,” I said, though I, of course, had an inkling of why they’d come for Naser. It made no sense to me that they would have taken the two younger ones as well, though.