Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series) (24 page)

Bahar’s baby was five months old, a beautiful boy named Ehsan. Bahar was from Rasht, a city in northern Iran and close to the Caspian shores, not too far from our cottage. She had short wavy black hair, and although I could see the dark shadow of worry in her eyes, she moved and spoke in a calm, confident way. She and her husband had both been supporters of the Fadayian. They had been arrested in their home and brought to Evin. Bahar had not been lashed or hurt during her interrogation.

That night, Ali called my name from behind the closed door. Before I left, Bahar took my hands in hers and told me she knew I’d be all right. She had the largest hands I had ever seen in a woman, and they felt warm against my cold skin.

As usual, Ali took me to another solitary cell, but he was very quiet. He sat in a corner, watching me as I took off my chador.

“Don’t judge me so harshly,” he suddenly said.

“Mina is dead, I said. An innocent girl is dead, and you’re worried about how I judge you? Of course I judge you harshly. What else can I do? You’re the one who’s in charge here.”

“I’m not in charge. I’ve tried to be, but I’m not.”

“Who’s in charge then?”

“Marina, I’m doing all I can. You have to trust me. It isn’t easy. And I want you to understand that I don’t want to talk about it.”

When I returned to my cell, it was four in the morning, it was very quiet, so I tiptoed to my spot.

“Are you okay?” Bahar’s voice filled the darkness.

“I’m fine. Sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t. I was awake. Do you want to talk?”

“About what?”

“Anything that might be on your mind. So far we’ve mostly talked about me, now it’s your turn, and don’t tell me you’re fine, because I know you’re not.”

I tried to fight my tears. She had caught me off guard. Where would I start?

“I want to tell you but I can’t.”

“Try. You don’t have to tell me all of it.”

“I’m Ali’s wife.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“How is this possible? He arrested his own wife?”

“No. I didn’t know him before I was brought here. He was one of my interrogators. When my other interrogator, Hamehd, took me for execution, Ali stopped it and then threatened me that if I didn’t marry him, he would hurt my loved ones. I had no choice.”

“This is rape!”

“Don’t tell anyone about this. My friends at 246 don’t know.”

“Are you his
sigheh
?”

“No, he wanted permanent marriage.”

“Under the circumstances, I don’t know if permanent marriage is better or worse. With
sigheh,
at least you know he’ll leave you alone after some time. But now—”

“I’m okay.”

“How can you possibly be
okay
?”

That was it. I started sobbing. The baby woke up. Bahar picked him up, rocked him, and sang him a lullaby she had made up herself. It told of the Caspian Sea, the thick forests of the north, and the children who played there without care.

I found it easy to talk to Bahar. I told her about Gita, Taraneh, and Mina and how I hated myself for not having been able to help them. She told me that she had also lost friends and blamed herself for being alive.

I asked her how things had been outside Evin before she was arrested, and she told me that nothing much had changed during the last year or so. The Islamic government had successfully tightened its grip. Uneducated and undereducated people blindly followed Khomeini because they wanted to go to heaven, and the educated crowd remained silent to avoid imprisonment, torture, and execution. There were also the ones who didn’t believe in the mullahs and their propaganda but, nevertheless, followed them in order to gain access to better jobs with higher pay.

Bahar went to 246 after spending three weeks in my cell, and I began feeling lonely. One night in mid-September, I asked Ali to let me go back to 246, and he agreed. He had brought some rice and roasted chicken, and we were having dinner.

“Tomorrow is the day of your retrial,” he said.

This made me feel neither happy nor excited. I knew that even if I was acquitted, it wouldn’t change much; I was married to Ali and I had to stay with him forever.

He told me I would be allowed to attend this trial.

“Will I have to say anything?”

“No, unless you’re asked something. I’ll be there, don’t worry.”

He had other news: Sarah was getting better and had been returned to 246. She had been sentenced to eight years.

“Eight years? You promised me that you would help her!”

“Marina, I did help her. It would have been much worse if I hadn’t interfered. She’s not going to stay here for all of it. I’ll try to put her name on the parole list.”

“I’m sorry, Ali. You’re right. I really don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“I think this is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” He laughed, and I realized he was right.

The next morning, Ali picked me up at my cell. The courtroom was in another building, a ten-minute walk away. Employees and guards were rushing from one building to another, sometimes dragging a few prisoners behind them. Almost everyone we saw greeted Ali, bowing slightly, their right hands on their hearts. Then they nodded in my direction, looking down. Muslim women were not supposed to look men straight in the eyes, except for their husbands, fathers, and brothers, and a few other close relatives, and I followed this rule gladly. Ali also bowed to friends and colleagues and greeted them with kind words. We entered the courthouse, a two-story brick building with barred windows and dark hallways. Ali knocked on a closed door, and a deep voice said, “Come in.” We stepped in. Three mullahs sat behind three desks and stood up and shook hands with Ali as soon as we entered the room. I looked down and only said
“salam aleikom”
when they greeted me. We were asked to sit down.

“In the name of God, the merciful and kind,” said the mullah sitting in the middle, “this court of Islamic justice is now officially in session. Miss Marina Moradi-Bakht was condemned to death by execution in January 1982 but received Imam’s pardon, and her sentence was reduced to life in prison. Since then, her condition has changed significantly. She has converted to Islam and has married Mr. Ali-eh Moosavi, who has always protected Islam to the best of his abilities and, on many occasions, has shown a great deal of personal sacrifice while serving the imam. In the light of all these changes, this court has reopened her case and has reduced her sentence to three years in prison, from which she has already served eight months.”

All the mullahs stood up, shook Ali’s hand again, and asked us to stay for tea. The retrial was over.

A few days later, I returned to room 6 on the first floor of 246. As soon as I entered the room, I found Sheida and Sarah standing in front of me. We embraced like long-lost sisters, and before I knew it, Sima and Bahar were holding us so tightly, we had to beg them to let go. I couldn’t believe how much Sheida’s boy, Kaveh, had grown; he was now about six months old.

“What are you doing downstairs?” I asked Sheida once we sat in a quiet corner.

“They moved me here a couple of weeks ago. Where were you?”

“The solitary cells of 209.”

“Why?”

“I was getting a lot of migraine attacks and couldn’t bear the noise here, so they moved me to 209.”

“I see.” I knew she had not believed me, but she didn’t want to ask questions. She told me her sentence had been reduced to life, but her husband was still on death row.

“I’m thinking of sending Kaveh home to my parents. I’m allowed to keep him here with me until he’s three, but I think it’s selfish of me to keep him. He’s never seen a tree, a flower, a swing, or another child,” she said. It was true: Tall walls, barbed wire, and armed guards surrounded his world. He didn’t deserve it. But every time Sheida thought of sending him to her parents, her heart nearly broke. She didn’t know if she could let him go.

Sarah and I started working in a small sewing factory that had begun operating in the prison. We made men’s shirts and liked the job, because it kept us busy all day. The guards told us we would get paid for our work when we were about to be released, but the wage was so low, it wasn’t even worth a thought. Sarah seemed to be feeling better. Still, when she had the chance, she wrote on her body and on every surface it was possible to write on, but she concentrated on the job while at work.

Meanwhile, I hoped and prayed for Ali to get tired of me, but it didn’t happen. My name was called over the loudspeaker about three nights a week, and after spending the night with him in a 209 cell, I would return to 246 in time for the morning
namaz.
Most of the girls never asked me where I went at night, but if someone did, I said I had volunteered to work at the prison hospital. Three or four other girls from 246 were also regularly called at night. Like me, they usually returned before sunrise. We avoided talking to each other. I could only guess that their situation was probably similar to mine.

Evin’s daily routines carried us through days, weeks, and months. With each passing moment, our lives before prison slipped further away, but although the hope of going home became fainter and dreamlike, we secretly held it in our hearts and refused to let it die.

“I
have good news,” Ali told me one night in February. He had a bright, boyish smile on his face. “Akram phoned me this morning. The doctor has told her she’s pregnant!”

I was very happy for her.

“She also told me about your dream and the prayer. She believes she owes her happiness to you, and she made me promise to take you to her house right away.”

I didn’t say anything. Ali looked at me, smiling.

“What else have you been doing behind my back?” he asked.

“I haven’t done anything behind your back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“It was a matter between two women.”

“You aren’t still afraid of me, are you?”

“Should I be?”

“No, never. It’s true that we think differently, but, in a way, I trust you more than I trust myself. If this baby lives, Akram will consider herself in your debt forever.”

“God answered Akram’s prayers. It had nothing to do with me.”

Akram was beside herself. I had never seen anyone so happy.

“When Ali called and said you were coming over, I told Massood to run to the bakery and get you some cream puffs. I remembered how much you liked them,” said Akram while we were preparing dinner. She took two large white boxes out of the fridge.

“My goodness, Akram, you have enough cream puffs here to feed an army!”

“Massood is so happy he would have bought the bakery if I had asked him to.”

“You told him about the prayer?” I asked, shocked that she would do so.

“I’ve told everyone!”

“He didn’t get mad at me?”

“Mad? Why?”

“Well, you know, a Christian prayer?”

“He doesn’t care! The prayer worked, didn’t it? We’re having a baby! This is all that matters. He says Mary has been mentioned as a great woman in the Koran, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for her help.”

Akram’s happiness felt like a slap on my face. But I didn’t want to feel upset because of her joy.

“What’s wrong, Marina? Is Ali mad at you? Because if he is, I’ll—”

“Ali isn’t mad.”

I began putting the cream puffs on a serving dish. They smelled fresh and sweet. Akram had no right to be so happy when young mothers like Sheida suffered in Evin. It wasn’t fair.

“But you look so sad, Marina. What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry. I’m very happy for you, but I can’t help but think about a friend of mine, Sheida. She was pregnant when she and her husband were arrested and were both condemned to death. She gave birth to her son, Kaveh, in prison. Kaveh will soon be one. He’s adorable. Sheida’s sentence has been reduced to life, but her husband still has a death sentence. Sheida wants to send Kaveh home to her parents, but she can’t part with him. He’s her life. But the poor little boy has been raised in Evin. He’s never seen the outside world.”

“This is terrible. Why is she in prison?”

“I don’t exactly know. We don’t talk about it, but I think she was a supporter of the Mojahedin.”

“The Mojahedin are terrorists, Marina. They’re evil.”

“Sheida is not evil. She’s a very sad woman, a mother. Believing someone is evil doesn’t give us the right to do whatever we want to them, to do evil things ourselves. Wrong is wrong, no matter how you look at it. I’m sure Sheida doesn’t deserve a life sentence.”

“I’ll talk to Ali. Maybe he can do something for her.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask him, but I don’t think there’s anything he can do. He isn’t her interrogator. He’s tried to help people, but he doesn’t always succeed.”

The samovar began to gurgle.

“Come, Marina, let’s go have some tea and cream puffs.”

I embraced her and told her she was very dear to me. I said that there was so much pain and sadness in Evin that I had forgotten how to be happy.

About four months later, on our wedding anniversary, Ali’s parents invited us to their house for dinner. We had visited them about once every two weeks for the last eleven months, and they had always been kind to me. Akram’s pregnancy had progressed very well. Her baby was due in about three months.

“Are you giving your wife a gift for your first anniversary?” Mr. Moosavi asked Ali after dinner that night.

Ali said he had decided to take me to the Caspian shore for a few days.

“But wouldn’t that be dangerous?” I asked.

“Only my parents know where we’re going. We’ll be staying at my uncle’s cottage in the middle of nowhere, and even he doesn’t know we’ll be there. He thinks my parents are going, and he won’t be there himself because he’s on a business trip. So, what do you say? Do you want to go?”

I nodded. He said we could leave right away; his mother had packed a suitcase for me.

We took Mr. Moosavi’s car, a white Peugeot, and were on the road before ten o’clock.

“How did you come up with the idea?” I asked Ali.

“You had mentioned once that you loved the Caspian, and I wanted to spend some special time with you. We both needed to get away from Evin. The cottage used to belong to one of the shah’s cabinet ministers before the revolution. This man left the country with his family around the same time as the shah. The Courts of Islamic Revolution confiscated his house, or I should say his palace, in Tehran and his cottage near Ramsar and put them up for sale. My uncle bought the cottage at a very good price.”

“It must be beautiful.”

“It is. You’ll see. Tell me why you like the Caspian shores so much?”

I told him I had spent many happy summers there. Everything in Tehran was dull and colorless, but at the sea everything was full of life.

The cool air brushed against my face through the open window. At the beginning of the trip, I could smell only dust and exhaust fumes, but as the car continued on the winding road that climbed the Alborz Mountains, the night filled with the fragrance of clear streams and poplar and maple trees. For me, this was the scent of a lost world, of freedom, of happiness, and of all the good things that didn’t exist anymore.

“When you were at the front and I was at 246, I found out that a friend of mine, Taraneh Behzadi, was sentenced to be executed,” I said.

“Taraneh Behzadi? Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“You weren’t her interrogator. She told me her interrogator’s name was Hossein, from the fourth division. I thought you might be able to help her. I asked Sister Maryam if I could talk to you, and she said you were at the front.”

“Marina, I can’t interfere with the affairs of other divisions. Even though I was one of your interrogators, it still wasn’t easy for me to reduce your sentence.”

“She’s dead. She was executed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry that it had to come to this. But Islam has laws, she broke them, and she was punished.”

“But were her crimes terrible enough to justify execution?”

“It’s not my place to decide this. I didn’t even know her. I don’t know what she had done.”

“God gives life, and He is the only one who can take it away.”

“Marina, you have every right to be upset. She was your friend, and you wanted to help her. But even if I was here, it probably would have been impossible for me to save her. Interrogators and even courts do make mistakes. I have managed to help people who I believed received harsh sentences, but I don’t always succeed. I tried to help Mina, didn’t I? But it didn’t work.”

“Taraneh didn’t deserve to die.”

All I could see was Taraneh’s large amber eyes and sad smile. Ali kept his eyes on the road.

“I’ve heard something terrible, and I have to ask you whether it’s true or not!” I said.

“What?”

“Do you believe that virgins go to heaven when they die?”

“Marina, I know where you’re going with this.”

“Please, answer me.”

“No, I don’t believe this. And it’s God’s decision who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, not mine. Young girls are not raped before execution. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

It was too dark, and I couldn’t see his face clearly, but his breathing had become faster.

“
You
came close to execution. Were you raped?” he asked.

“No,” I said and wanted to add, “not before it, but about six months after it, I was,” but I decided against it.

“Marina, I understand how upset you are about your friend, but I promise you she wasn’t raped.”

I did not find much comfort in his words.

We arrived at the cottage at about two o’clock in the morning. Ali stepped out, opened a large wrought-iron gate, and, under a canopy of trees, we drove along a paved driveway. The wooded property was much larger than my parents’ by the Caspian, but it was strangely similar to it. The song of crickets streamed in through the open windows. The wind swirled between leaves and branches, splashing waves of silver shadows against the windshield. It was only when we parked that I finally heard the sea; waves broke against the shore, filling the night with their familiar rhythm.

The white, two-story building was twice as big as my parents’ cottage and had a stone lion the size of a large dog sitting on either side of its entrance. Ali unlocked the front door, and we walked in. The living room was furnished with French-style chairs and glass-top coffee tables, and all the floors were covered with silk Persian rugs. A wide stairway, which reminded me of
Gone With the Wind,
led upstairs, where there were six bedrooms. Ali chose the largest, which overlooked the sea. A king-size sleigh bed stood in the middle of the room. There was a large vanity table with drawers of different sizes, an armoire, and two bedside tables. Everything was free of dust and immaculately clean, so I guessed Ali’s uncle and his family must have been there quite recently. I pushed aside the white, lacy curtains and opened one of the two windows, and the saltwater air brushed against my hair. I wondered what had happened to the original owners of the property. They must have loved it here, and wherever they were, were sure to miss it terribly.

“Your name is on the parole list,” Ali said, standing behind me.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you’ll be officially free in about three months or so.”

Officially free. What a strange term. Was I ever going to be truly free? I couldn’t understand what the word “freedom” meant to him. He had taken my freedom away from me forever. I didn’t say anything.

“Aren’t you happy to hear this?”

“I don’t know, Ali. I don’t know what to think anymore. Even if I’m officially free, I won’t be able to go anywhere.”

“Yes, you will. We’ll go home. Things are getting better. By the time you’re released, it will be safe to go home.”

He grabbed my shoulders, turned me around to face him, and touched my cheeks.

“Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know. Memories, I guess. I can’t help it.”

His eyes were usually opaque but they sometimes melted into a strange, intense longing that terrified me. I looked down. When I looked up again, he was looking out the window with his back to me.

“Marina, do you still hate me?” he asked, turning to me.

“No, not anymore. I hated you at the beginning, but not now.”

“Will you ever love me?”

“I don’t know, but I know that as long as you work at Evin and a part of your job is hurting people, I won’t be able to love you. And don’t forget that you forced me into marriage. I’m your captive.”

“I don’t want you to think of me as your captor.”

“But this is the truth.”

“No, it’s your perception of the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t you see? You were almost dead, and I brought you back. Did you really think you could just walk away? Did you think that Hamehd and the others would have settled for that? You are naïve. I wanted you, but I’m not that selfish. If there was a way, I would have let you go, and then I would have probably killed myself with a clean shot in the head. In a way, we’re both captives.” He put his arms around me. “Before the revolution, I was a political prisoner for three years. I know what it means to want to go home. But let me tell you something: Your ‘home’ isn’t the same as you left it, or even if it is, you are not the same. Your family will never understand you; you’ll be lonely for the rest of your life. I’m probably wasting my time telling you all this, because you’re still too young and too good. There’s nowhere for you to go. The only place left for you in this world is with me, and the only place for me is with you.”

We went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, watching the moonlight cross the floor. Ali slept with his back to me. His left shoulder rose and fell with each breath. I had told Taraneh that I had not been raped before they took me for execution, and this was the truth. But Hamehd and the guards knew I was a Christian, and in their opinion, virgin or not, I would have gone to hell anyway. And Taraneh knew this, but she had asked me this question, because although she had accepted her death sentence, she was desperate for even the tiniest bit of reassurance that she would die with dignity. Ali had told me that young girls were not raped before standing in front of firing squads. But he didn’t believe he had raped me. From his perspective, he had forced me into marriage for my own good. Maybe he had raped girls under the name of
sigheh
without a second thought. I wanted to believe that he had never done anything like this, that I was the only one whom he had ever forced into any kind of marriage, but there was no way for me to know the truth.