Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series)

by Nemat, Marina

  Every morning, our principal Khanoom Mahmoodi, and our vice principal, Khanoom Kheirkhah, stood at the school entrance with a bucket of water and a washcloth and inspected every student entering the school. If they saw one of the girls wearing makeup, they scrubbed her face until it hurt. One morning, during her inspection, Khanoom Mahmoodi pulled aside a good friend of mine, Nasim, and claimed that her eyebrows were too perfect—she must have trimmed them. Nasim cried and said she had never done anything to them, and the principal called her a whore. Nasim was naturally beautiful, and many of us defended her and testified that her eyebrows had always been like that. She never received an apology.

  Day by day, anger and frustration built up within me. I suffered during most of my classes, especially during calculus. The new calculus teacher was a young woman from the revolutionary guards who wasn’t qualified to teach the subject. She spent most of the class time spreading the Islamic government’s propaganda, talking about Islam and the perfect Islamic society that resisted the influence of the West and moral corruption. One day as she was going on and on about the great things Khomeini had done for the country, I raised my hand.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, miss, but can we please get back to our main subject?”

  She raised an eyebrow and said in a challenging tone, “If you don’t like what I’m teaching, you can leave the classroom.”

  Everyone was looking at me. I collected my books and left the room. As I walked down the hallway, I heard the sound of many footsteps coming from behind me. Turning around, I saw that most of my classmates had followed me out. There were about thirty of us standing in the hallway.

  By lunch recess, the school was in chaos. Everyone was saying that I had started a strike. Most afternoon classes were canceled because about 90 percent of the students were in the yard, refusing to go back to class. Khanoom Mahmoodi came outside with a loudspeaker and told us to go back, but no one listened. She said she would call our parents, but no one moved. Then she threatened to have us all expelled, but we said she could go right ahead and do that. Finally, the students chose me and two others as representatives to speak to the principal. We informed her that we were only going back to class if our teachers promised to stick to their subjects and put politics aside.

  That day when I got home, my mother called my name. This was unusual. She hardly ever talked to me before dinnertime. She was in the kitchen, chopping parsley.

  I stood in the doorway. “Yes, Maman?”

  “Your principal called.” She didn’t look at me but kept her eyes on the cutting board. Her knife moved smoothly and precisely. Diced parsley covered her hands, making them green.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, throwing me a quick glance as sharp as her knife.

  I told her what had happened.

  “You’d better fix this problem,” she said. “I don’t want her to call me again. Just get along with them. This government isn’t going to last long. Now go do your homework.”

  I went to my room and closed the door behind me, surprised to have escaped her anger so easily. Probably my mother disliked the new government as much as I did, and this was why her reaction had not been as severe as I had anticipated.

  The strike continued for two days. We still went to school, but not to class. We passed the hours by walking around the yard or sitting in small groups, talking. Our conversations were mostly about all we had witnessed during the recent months. It was hard for us to believe that life had changed so dramatically. Just a year earlier, we would never have believed that our clothes would put our lives in danger, or that we would go on strike in order to learn calculus. On the third day of the strike, Khanoom Mahmoodi called the student representatives to her office.

  Her face red with anger, she said she was giving us a final warning. She told us if we didn’t go back to class, she’d have no other choice but to ask the revolutionary guards to come to our school and take the matter into their hands. She said she had no doubt we knew that the guards wouldn’t be very patient with us, that this was a serious matter and people could get hurt. She warned us that we were acting against the Islamic government and that the penalty for this could be death. We had an hour to go back to class.

  She had made her point. The revolutionary guards had a bad reputation. During the previous months they had arrested hundreds of people, many of whom were never heard from again. Their crime had been being anti-revolution, anti-Islam, or anti-Khomeini.

  The strike ended.

  The guards were not the only ones to worry about; there was also the Hezbollah, groups of fanatical civilians armed with knives and clubs, who attacked any kind of public protest. They were everywhere and could become organized in a matter of minutes. They were especially violent toward women who didn’t wear the hejab properly. Many women had been attacked and beaten for wearing lipstick or because a few strands of their hair had been showing from under their scarves.

  It was about a month or two after the strike that my chemistry teacher, Khanoom Bahman, asked me to stay behind after class and told me about the list of names she had spotted on Khanoom Mahmoodi’s desk. Khanoom Bahman was one of only a few teachers who had been teaching at our school since before the revolution, and she knew me very well. As she spoke her eyes remained on the door to make sure no one walked in on us. Her voice was almost a whisper, and I had to bend down to hear her properly.

  Somehow, I expected something like this could happen. I knew I would be in trouble after all I had said and done. The fact that I didn’t like the new Islamic rules was not a secret, and during these times one couldn’t exactly speak freely without repercussions. But even though I knew all this, the dangers I could face seemed vague and distant. Somehow, I thought bad things only happened to other people.

  I thanked Khanoom Bahman for telling me about the list. She told me I had to leave the country. She asked me if I had any relatives abroad, and I explained to her that my family was not rich and could not afford to send me anywhere. She interrupted me, raising her voice.

  “Marina, I don’t think you understand. This is a matter of life and death. If I were your mother, I’d get you out of here, even if I had to go hungry,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  I liked her, and I didn’t want to upset her, so I told her I would talk to my parents, but I had no intention of doing so. What would I tell them? That I was going to be arrested soon?

  My brother and his wife had left the country shortly after the revolution and had migrated to Canada. They had realized that there was no future for them in the Islamic Republic. Not too long after their departure, the government of Iran denied Iranians the right to migrate to other countries. I liked the name “Canada”; it sounded far away and very cold but peaceful. My brother and his wife were lucky to be there. They could live a normal life and worry about normal things. My parents had thought of sending me to stay with my brother, but it couldn’t be worked out. I had to stay and take my chances.

  At home that afternoon, I watched the street from my balcony. The new regime had brought nothing but destruction and violence. School, which used to be the best part of my life, had turned into a kind of hell, and I had heard that the government was planning to close down all universities for restructuring, calling it the Islamic Cultural Revolution. And Arash was dead. There was nothing left.

  Most of the summer of 1980 was quiet, and I was relieved to be out of school and to be going to our cottage. In July, Aram and his parents spent about two weeks at his aunt’s cottage. I had been very lonely and had looked forward to their arrival, but when they came, I found myself thinking of Arash and missing him even more. Aram and I spent most of our time inside, playing cards or his favorite game, Mastermind. We sometimes went for walks on the beach but couldn’t go swimming together because now women were not allowed to wear bathing suits in public. Most of our friends, including Neda, whose families had owned cottages in the area had left the country. W
e met a few old friends, but all of us were afraid of the revolutionary guards and the members of Islamic committees, who were everywhere and disliked it when boys and girls were seen together; according to the new laws governing the country, this was immoral.

  The Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980. I was back in the city. I had gone to a friend’s house, and we were sitting in her kitchen, having tea and rice cookies. She was showing me her new pair of Puma running shoes, which were white with red stripes on either side. Suddenly two deep booms interrupted our talk. They sounded like explosions. We were home alone.

  More booms.

  We looked out the window but saw nothing. My friend lived on the fifth floor of a five-story apartment building close to Jaleh Square. We decided to run up to the roof. In the hallway, we bumped into a few neighbors who were also on their way up. Once on the roof, we had a good view of the city. It was a cloudless, sunny day, and Tehran was wrapped in a thin haze. We heard planes.

  “Over there!” someone yelled.

  A few miles to the south, two fighter jets zoomed eastward. On the western horizon, columns of smoke rose into the sky. One of the neighbors had brought a radio with him and turned it on. Soon, an excited reporter announced that Iraqi MIGs had bombed Tehran’s airport. Different divisions of Iraq’s army had crossed the border and entered Iran. We were at war.

  I had read about the First and Second World Wars and the American Civil War. I had read about bombs that demolished cities and left nothing but rubble and dead bodies. But those wars were in books. Even if the stories were true, they had all happened years earlier. The world was now a different place. No one would be allowed to destroy cities and kill thousands of people.

  “We’ll show them!” the man with the radio waved his fist in the air. “We’ll conquer Baghdad and stone Saddam! Those bastards!”

  Everyone nodded.

  Once I got home, I found my mother taping large Xs on windows with masking tape to prevent glass from shattering in case of bombings. She explained to me that the radio was urging people to take precautions while promising that this war was not going to last more than a few days or weeks at the most and that our army was going to defeat the Iraqis in no time. My mother had also bought pieces of black cardboard to cover the windows at night so the MIGs wouldn’t spot our lights and use them to target us. I wasn’t too worried. It couldn’t be that bad.

  Days went by. Air raid sirens screamed a couple of times a day, but we rarely heard explosions. Radio and television channels played military marches all day and announced that the air force had attacked Baghdad and other Iraqi cities and that we had pushed back the Iraqis. All men, young and old and even teenagers, were encouraged to join the army and to become martyrs; after all, the government announced, becoming a martyr was the fast, guaranteed way to go to heaven. This was the war of good against evil. The city of Khorramshahr, which was close to Iran’s border with Iraq, had been almost entirely destroyed and then invaded.

  All borders were soon closed, and no one was allowed to leave the country without a special permit. However, every day, people who had paid great sums of money to human smugglers left Iran to avoid military service or to escape arrest by the revolutionary guards. They risked their lives to cross into Pakistan or Turkey.

  Sometime in late fall, I heard from friends at school about a protest rally and decided to go. Although I knew it was dangerous, it seemed the right thing to do. The rally was to start at four o’clock at Ferdosi Square, a ten-minute walk from school.

  On the day of the rally, after the final bell rang, Gita, Sarah, and I stepped outside and saw hundreds of people, mostly young men and women, filling the street. We joined the throng walking toward Ferdosi Square. Everyone was alert, looking around, knowing that eventually the revolutionary guards or the Hezbollah or both were going to attack us. My heart began to race. The street was a seething, breathing river. I noticed shopkeepers closing down their stores and leaving. At Ferdosi Square, holding a loudspeaker in front of her mouth, a young woman told the crowd about the violent attacks of the Hezbollah on women: “How long are we going to allow criminals and murderers hiding behind the name of God to attack our mothers, sisters, and friends and get away with it?” she asked. An old woman stood next to us, holding a sheet of white bristol board in front of her. She had tied her white chador around her waist, exposing her thinning gray hair to the sun. In the middle of the bristol board, there was a picture of a young girl with a big smile on her face and under the picture it said: “Executed in Evin.”

  Suddenly, the street was filled with loud, thunderlike roars. People began to run.

  “On rooftops!” someone yelled.

  I looked up and saw revolutionary guards everywhere. A young man standing close to us fell to the ground and moaned. He pressed his hands to his stomach. A narrow red line emerged from between his fingers, moved down his hand, and dripped onto the pavement. I stared at him and couldn’t move. People screamed and ran in different directions. There was smoke in the air, and my eyes were burning. I looked around; I had been separated from my friends. I couldn’t leave the injured man like that. Kneeling beside him, I looked into his eyes and saw the stillness of death. Arash had died like him—as a stranger. Somewhere, someone loved this man and was waiting for him to come home.

  “Marina!” a familiar voice called.

  Gita grabbed my hand and pulled me along. The air was thick with tear gas. Bearded men wearing civilian clothing swung wooden clubs in the air, attacking the fleeing crowd. People screamed. We ran through the madness surrounding us.

  When I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom. I wished I had been shot to death. I didn’t want to live. What was the point of so much suffering? I went to my parents’ bedroom and opened my mother’s medicine drawer. It was overflowing with jars and boxes of different shapes and sizes: cold syrups, antacids, aspirin, and different kinds of painkillers. I rummaged through them, found an almost-full bottle of sleeping pills, and rushed back to the bathroom. Death in a jar. All I needed to do was to remove the lid and swallow the little pills. The angel would come for me, and I would tell him that I had watched enough people die. I filled a cup with water and opened the lid of the container. But deep inside me, I knew that swallowing those pills was wrong. What if everyone who believed in goodness decided to commit suicide because there was too much suffering in the world? I closed my eyes and saw the eyes of the angel. I wanted my grandma, Arash, and Irena to be proud of me; I wanted to do something with my life, something good and worthwhile. I had watched a young man’s life pour into a swollen circle of blood on the pavement. I couldn’t hide; death was not a hiding place. Closing the lid of the container, I returned it to my mother’s medicine drawer. Maybe there was something I could do. I ran to the store, bought a white sheet of bristol board, and wrote about the attack of the revolutionary guards on the peaceful rally.

  The next day, I went to school earlier than usual. The hallways were empty. I taped the bristol board to a wall in one of the hallways and stood in front of it, pretending to read it. In about half an hour, students gathered, and soon, a big crowd was trying to read the story. It didn’t take Khanoom Mahmoodi long to show up. She stormed down the hallway with quick, angry steps, her face red with rage.

  “Move aside!” she yelled.

  We stepped aside. She read a few lines and demanded to know who had written it. When no one answered, she ripped the board from the wall, shouting, “These are lies!”

  “They are not!” I protested. “I was there!”

  “So, you wrote it.”

  I told her the revolutionary guards had opened fire on innocent people.

  “What innocent people? Only antirevolutionaries and the enemies of God and Islam attend rallies like that. You are in big trouble!” she said, pointing her finger at me. Then, she turned and left. I was enraged. How dare she call me a liar!

  A few days later, my friends and I started a small school newspaper. Every week, we wrote a f
ew short articles about daily political issues that had affected us, copied them by hand, and circulated them in the school.

  The government had shut down a few independent newspapers, accusing their staff of being enemies of the Islamic revolution. I felt as if the country were slowly being submerged in water: breathing became a little more difficult every day. But we remained optimistic, believing they couldn’t possibly drown everyone.

  Since the war with Iraq had started, the Islamic regime had blamed everything on it. Prices had soared. Meat, dairy products, baby formula, and cooking oil were rationed. My mother usually went to the store at five in the morning to line up for our share and returned around noon. It was possible to find almost everything on the black market, but it was so expensive that low-income and middle-class families couldn’t afford it, and the rations were very small.

  In Tehran, the war felt distant; now, the sirens hardly ever sounded, and even if they did, nothing happened. However, cities that were close to the Iran-Iraq border paid dearly. Casualties were mounting. Every day, newspapers displayed dozens of pictures of young men killed at the front. And the government did its best to take advantage of people’s emotions to coerce them to seek revenge. At mosques, through loudspeakers, mullahs yelled and screamed that the war was not only about protecting Iran but it was about Islam; Saddam was not a true Muslim but he was a follower of the devil.

  Slowly, almost everything I loved became illegal. Western novels, my escape and solace, were declared “satanic” and became difficult to find. Then, in early spring of 1981, Khanoom Mahmoodi told me I needed to earn religion marks. Religious minorities had always been exempt from attending Islamic or Zoroastrian religion classes. Now, I either had to attend the Islamic religion class or provide my school with religion marks from my church. Although I had voluntarily attended Islamic religion classes in school before, I resisted doing it again. I had received enough Islamic education. Getting religion marks from church sounded like a practical and fair idea, but not in my case. Tehran’s Russian Orthodox church hadn’t had a priest for a long time. My mother called a friend who attended church regularly, and she directed me to a Roman Catholic church. Although this church was only a couple of blocks away from our place, I had not noticed it before, because without colorful stained-glass windows facing the street, it looked as gray and dull as the government offices and foreign embassies around it. The priests offered to assist me with my studies and to mark my efforts.