Then They Came For Me (34 page)

Rosewater was getting impatient. “Have you told her that you’ve made mistakes?” he wrote on another slip of paper.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Mazi,” Paola reassured me. “I know that the call is monitored, but no one thinks you’ve done anything wrong and everybody’s supporting you. Everybody!”

Hearing this news, I felt the weight lift from my chest, and for the first time in weeks, I could breathe normally again. A prisoner’s worst nightmare is thinking that he’s been forgotten, and Paola’s words reassured me that this idea—which had plagued me for weeks—was false.

“Please find out if it’s a boy or a girl,” I said to Paola as Rosewater reached toward the phone to end the call.

I tried to say “I love you” one more time, but the line had already gone dead.

“I love you!” he mocked as he handed me back to the prison guards.

But his words didn’t touch me the way they had over the last several weeks. That night, as I rolled one blanket into a pillow and lay down in the darkness and silence, I envisioned the day when I would finally get to see Paola again. I had so often entertained this thought while alone in my cell, or during interrogations, but doing so had always been painful. The experience had been very much like the weeks and months after Maryam died, when I would fall asleep praying for it all to be different—for the chance just to see her again.

But that night, as I pictured holding Paola’s hand, and kissing her pregnant belly, the thoughts felt different: they no longer felt like a hopeless fantasy.

“I’ll get home to you,” I whispered into the darkness. “I
will.” I wrapped the second blanket tightly around my body, and for the first time in weeks, I slept through the night.

·   ·   ·

Ramadan ended on September 19, and the weather in Tehran turned cooler. Rosewater no longer had to fast, and he wasn’t suffering from the sweltering summer heat. He started to leave the window of the interrogation room open to let the breeze in, and I often tried to bring my chair as close as I could to the window, where I could breathe in the cool mountain air. Rosewater would sometimes join me near the window, where he’d stop asking questions and begin to sing—always religious songs in praise of the family of the Prophet Mohammad. That always put him in a better mood.

Over the next few weeks, my father and Maryam stayed with me during the interrogations, and gave me the confidence to push aside my fears and try to steer our discussions away from me. Instead of talking about my alleged spying, we talked about aspects of life in the West that I knew Rosewater wanted to explore—sex, of course, but also the welfare system, mortgages, and even the price of a secondhand car. With each day, I felt him becoming more and more relaxed with me, which meant far less frequent beatings.

I began to think that he was willing to allow me to direct the discussions because he simply had no other questions left to ask me. By now, I was sure, he knew that I was not guilty of the crimes he’d so badly wanted to believe I’d committed when I’d first arrived at Evin. I hoped the reason his questions about my alleged illegal activities had subsided was that I was closer to being released. Now, it seemed, his time spent with me was a bit of a reprieve for him—he was even beginning to enjoy my company, and taking a break from beating and insulting other prisoners.

“Mazi, what would you write about me if you had the chance?” he asked one morning.

“I would love to do an interview with you, if that’s possible,” I answered. I really meant it.

“You’re so diplomatic, but this isn’t an interrogation,” he said. “I want to know what questions you would ask me.”

I, of course, couldn’t tell him the truth: What makes a man choose a job that includes beating other men, making threats to end their lives, and playing mind games with them? Especially a man whose father endured all of this. “I think it’s important for young people to know your opinion about different issues so they don’t end up like me, being interrogated by you.”

“Who do you think this interview will help?” Rosewater asked. “It can only help the enemy, the Americans and Zionists, to know our secrets.”

“Well, it may help the enemy, but it can also help people to gain a better understanding of what the government thinks.” I hesitated, then continued: “I had all the necessary accreditations and took all the recommended precautions, but you still arrested me and put me through interrogations. I don’t want that to happen to other people.”

“Mazi, don’t think that just because I’m not asking you about the crimes you’ve committed means we’re ready to let you off the hook,” he said unconvincingly. “We have our think tanks, and they are conducting research about you.”

He then walked away from me and remained silent for a few minutes, deeply inhaling the fresh morning air. There was a light breeze that reminded me of London.

“Look at this,” Rosewater said. I had been sitting facing the wall, without my blindfold, and I turned toward him. He suddenly, and perhaps out of habit, slapped me hard across one cheek. “Don’t turn your face, I said.”

“But you said, ‘Look at this.’ ”

“Haven’t you learned that you shouldn’t turn your head even if I make a mistake?” he demanded, before calming down. “I’m just saying, look at these people who come to work at this
time. It’s eight-twenty and they’re supposed to be here by seven-thirty. I can’t understand how some people can be so unprincipled. No one has forced them to take this job. They’ve chosen it.”

My face was stinging with pain. Rosewater seemed to be genuinely upset about other torturers slacking off at work. “We have a tough job, Mazi. We have to work long hours, as you know. We have to travel around the country, and sometimes we sleep in the office for only a couple of hours before going back to work. So many wives of my colleagues have asked for a divorce because they couldn’t take it anymore.”

Rosewater pulled up a chair and sat behind me. I could sense a trace of regret in his tone. He told me that his wife was different from the wives of other interrogators; that she understood that he had dedicated himself to Islam and the return of Imam Mahdi and therefore she didn’t object to his long working hours, which kept him away from home.

“I kiss her hands and her feet because she’s so good to me,” Rosewater told me. “From the moment we went to her house and she served me and my family tea and sweets, I knew that she was right for me.” In arranged marriages in Iran, it is customary that after the family of the boy asks the family of the girl for her hand, they go to her house to discuss the arrangements with her parents. The girl shows her face only once, when she serves tea and sweets to the guests. “The moment I took the tea from the tray and our eyes met, I knew that she would be a faithful wife,” Rosewater whispered.

He took a Kleenex and blew his nose quietly. “I have a surprise for you,” he told me. “I’m going to let you talk to your wife one more time.”

He didn’t say anything as he held my arm and led me to the phone, but I could hear him inhale heavily as he repeated the words “
La elaha ella Allah”:
There’s no God but Allah.

I managed to get through to Paola at once, but the international
calling card Rosewater was using had credit for only two minutes of conversation. I quickly asked Paola if she had found out the sex of the baby.

“Yes!” she giggled. “What do you think?”

“Darling, we only have two minutes—a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a girl. I wish you could see the pictures from the scan. It’s a beautiful healthy girl.”

“Marianna Maryam Bahari,” I told Paola. “I can’t wait to be with you and Marianna.” I couldn’t control my emotions when I mentioned Marianna’s name.

“You’ll be home soon, Mazi,” Paola said, trying to calm me down. “I’m sure you’ll be home soon.”

On the morning of October 6, I was lying on my back in my cell and cycling with my legs in the air. I was pretending to ride my bike. I had taken a detour through Hampstead Heath and Highgate, and was just coming down through Belsize Park toward Primrose Hill. I was full of energy.

I hadn’t seen Rosewater for a few days. Typically, a few days without human contact had left me feeling anxious and desperate, but this day, remembering the sound of Paola’s voice, and the work I now knew she was doing on my behalf, I practiced feeling better. The day before, for the first time since my arrest, I had been allowed a newspaper. Reading something besides my interrogation notes had given me energy, even though it was
Kayhan
(“The Universe”), the hard-liners’ mouthpiece. I devoured every single word in the paper. But most importantly, after months of designing my own crossword puzzles, I finally had access to a professional one. I studied it for hours, trying to learn from it. That morning, as I cycled toward Primrose Hill, thinking of the post-ride coffee that awaited me and designing a new crossword puzzle in my head, there was a commotion in the hallway. I stood up to listen, and heard prison guards telling some of the prisoners to pack up and clean their rooms. Blue-Eyed Seyyed opened my door and gave me a blindfold.

“Ostad Bahari”
—Maestro Bahari—“we’re gonna miss you,” he said.

“What do you mean? Are they going to release me?”

“
Na baba, hol nasho
. You wish. You’re going to the communal cell.”

I had heard that when they transferred someone to a communal cell, it typically meant that his case had moved from one stage to another. I was still under investigation, and, as far as I knew, there’d been no change in my status. Blue-Eyed Seyyed led me through Evin’s labyrinthine complex, to a small alleyway with a building at the end of it. I had my blindfold on, but by then I’d learned how to raise my head and look through the gap beneath it without being caught. The guard opened a large blue gate and closed the door behind me.

“Can I take my blindfold off?” I asked.

“Of course you can,” said a man standing in front of me. I removed it and saw that it was Mohammad Atrianfar, the former deputy minister of interior who had praised Khamenei’s greatness in the press conference after the show trial. The fifty-six-year-old Atrianfar had been a revolutionary since his student days in the early 1970s. After the revolution, he became part of the Islamic government’s security and military apparatus. I had interviewed Atrianfar several times and had always enjoyed his stories about traveling to Libya and Syria to buy contraband arms during the Iran-Iraq War, when Iran was embargoed by most of the world. He kissed me on both cheeks. “Welcome, Maziar. Isn’t this great? Coming here has got to be a good omen. I think we’ll be freed soon.” He stroked his thick gray beard. “You have to make sure that you feed the rat,” he told me.

I assumed “feeding the rat” meant something like bribing the guards or being nice to them. “Feed the rat?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said with a big smile. “We have a big rat that comes to the courtyard, and we take turns feeding it.”

I looked around my new environment. The cell was surrounded by high walls and had two large windows and a glass door—all of which were covered by metal grates. It also had its own small courtyard, kitchen, bathroom, and shower—even a television set. This shared cell was definitely an improvement over solitary confinement, but it was also obvious that we’d be more scrutinized here: two security cameras, mounted in the courtyard, pointed at the cell, and I noticed several microphones placed throughout the room as well.

There were five individual beds in the cell, with proper mattresses, clean sheets, and blankets. For the first time in more than three months, I even had a real pillow. The walls were made of three-inch bricks, and the courtyard was covered with polished gray cement. I later learned that the cell was part of the block that belonged to the internal affairs unit of the Revolutionary Guards. It was here that they kept high-ranking commanders who had been arrested on various charges.

Atrianfar told me that he had been moved to the communal cell two days earlier, and in the meantime, he had transformed it into a cozy studio apartment, anticipating the arrival of his new cellmates. He had tea and sweets waiting; he had prepared them himself. We could give the guards a shopping list for fruits and vegetables twice a week, he explained; the money was then deducted from the cash they’d taken away from us on the day of our arrest.

I later learned that since a couple of days before Ramadan, I’d been considered one of twelve VIP prisoners. Not long after I arrived in the new cell, Saeed Shariati, the spokesman for the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the main reformist party, which had supported Mousavi during the presidential election, walked in. I’d met him on several previous occasions, and it was nice to see another friendly face. But after hugging Shariati hello, I noticed how broken and distressed he looked. During
his imprisonment, he had apologized publicly to Khamenei and had stated that the reformists had pursued the wrong policies prior to the election. I could see the apologetic, dejected expression in his eyes, and wondered if others detected the same look in my own.

The next prisoner to join us that day was another reformist politician, Feizollah Arabsorkhi, a handsome man with a kind face and big eyes. Arabsorkhi was a leader of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization (MIRO), a semiclandestine reformist party whose heads had been among the founding members of the Revolutionary Guards. As some of the most extremist and radical activists at the beginning of the revolution, the founders of the MIRO were close to Khomeini.

That evening, my cellmates and I sat on the floor of our new home, sharing tea. As we talked, I detected regret in the eyes of both Arabsorkhi and Atrianfar. Both of them were now sorry for the part they’d played in creating a regime that was a far cry from their youthful ideals. They had believed that anyone and anything could be sacrificed on the path to establishing an Islamic state, but with time, they had become witnesses to the transformation of that state into a corrupt, tyrannical regime. They were victims of their own making.

Unlike Atrianfar, Shariati, and me, Arabsorkhi had refused to apologize and appear on television. He said that because of this, his interrogators had practically abandoned him, and had left him in limbo for weeks. He wasn’t sure what charges were going to be brought against him. But though he was the only one of us who had refused to work with his captors, he still believed that the Islamic regime could be reformed. Atrianfar and Shariati, on the other hand, had each pledged their allegiance to the regime in their televised confessions, seeming to know that the system was rotten to the core and that it wasn’t worth their lives to try to reform it. They were no longer risking their lives for their ideals—they just wanted to get out of prison.
We were all caught in that uncomfortable zone between trying to save our lives and betraying ourselves.