Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series)

by Nemat, Marina

  “My name is Marina,” I said, kneeling in front of her. “I’m a prisoner. You’re in a cell. I’ll help you off the chair. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

  I pulled her up, and she fell into my arms. I helped her sit on the floor. Ali took the wheelchair and stepped out of the cell.

  “Layla is dead,” Mina whispered.

  “What?”

  “Layla is dead.”

  “Who’s Layla?”

  “Layla is dead.”

  While spreading a blanket on the floor so she could lie down, I saw her feet and gasped. They were even more swollen than mine had been.

  “I’m going to take your slippers off. I’ll do it very gently.”

  The skin on her feet felt and looked like an overblown balloon, but the slippers came off easily.

  I poured some water into a plastic cup and put it to her dry, chapped lips. She took a few sips.

  “Have more.”

  She shook her head, and I helped her lie down and took off her chador and scarf. She was shivering, so I spread a couple of blankets over her, and she soon fell asleep. I sat next to her. She was tall and thin. Her curly brown hair was dirty and stuck together from constantly being under a scarf since her arrest. I thought about her swollen feet, and my own feet began to throb. The pain I remembered from my first days in Evin was more than a memory. It lived inside me.

  About four hours later, Mina began to moan. I grabbed a cup of water and helped her sit up.

  “Listen to me. I know how you feel. I know everything hurts, but I also know it will get better if you drink this. Don’t give up.”

  She had a few sips, and her eyes focused on me.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m a prisoner. My name is Marina.”

  “I thought I was dead and you were an angel or something.”

  I laughed. “I promise you I’m not an angel—and you’re very much alive. I have some bread and dates. You need to eat. Your body needs strength to recover.”

  She ate a few dates and a little bit of bread. There was a knock on the door of the cell as soon as she lay down again.

  “Marina, put on your chador and step out,” Ali’s voice said from behind the door. He took me to another cell. We had some bread and cheese he had brought with him. He didn’t ask me about Mina.

  “Don’t you want to know if I’ve talked to Mina?” I asked him.

  “Frankly, I don’t want to know anything right now. I need to switch off my brain. I just want to go to sleep.”

  When I returned to my cell at about four in the morning, Mina was still asleep. She woke when the sun came up.

  “Who’s Layla?” I asked her.

  She wanted to know how I knew about Layla. I told her what she had said when she had come in.

  “Layla is my sister.”

  “How did she die?”

  “A protest rally. She was shot.”

  She said that a friend of Layla’s, named Darya, had been attacked by the Hezbollah one day because her hair had been showing from underneath her scarf. Mina’s mother had been on her way to the store and had witnessed the beating. Then the Hezbollah men had thrown Darya into a car and had driven away. Darya’s parents had looked for her everywhere, every hospital and every Islamic committee, but she had disappeared. A couple of months after this, Layla heard of a protest rally and decided she had to go. She encouraged Mina to go with her. Mina tried to talk her out of it, but Layla said she would go whether Mina went with her or not. She asked Mina what if what had happened to Darya had happened to her. Mina finally gave in and decided to go with her. Layla made Mina promise not to tell their parents about the rally.

  “So we went together,” said Mina. “There were so many people. The revolutionary guards attacked and opened fire. Everyone began to run. I grabbed Layla’s hand and tried to get us to safety, but she fell. I turned around, and she was dead.”

  I told Mina about the protest rally at Ferdosi Square, about the young man who was shot, and about my decision to commit suicide when I got home after the rally. And I told her that instead of taking my mother’s sleeping pills, I decided to do something about what I had witnessed; I had decided to do the right thing.

  “What did you do?” Mina asked.

  “I wrote about the rally on a bristol board and put it on a wall in my school. Then, I started a school newspaper.” “I went out really late two or three nights a week and wrote about what had happened to Layla with spray paint on walls. I also wrote slogans against Khomeini and the government. They are all murderers.”

  “Mina, I came very close to execution. They will execute you if you keep saying things against Khomeini and the government. I’ve lost friends and I know how you feel. But your death won’t solve anything.”

  “So, you cooperated and lived,” she narrowed her eyes.

  “It wasn’t exactly like that. They threatened to hurt my family and loved ones. I could never put them in danger.”

  “I see. But my family is destroyed anyway. My father has diabetes and heart problems and has been in the hospital for a while. My mother hasn’t talked to anyone since Layla’s death. Lately, we’ve been staying at my grandma’s house, and my grandma has looked after my mother. The guards can threaten me as much as they want. It can’t get much worse. And some of it is my fault. I should have stopped Layla from going to that rally. Then she would have been fine. All of us would have been fine.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “Would Layla want you to be executed?”

  “She would want me to do the right thing.”

  “Is committing suicide the right thing?”

  “I’m not committing suicide!”

  “If you argue with guards and interrogators, they’ll kill you. So, don’t argue. A little bit of cooperation can save your life.”

  “I will not cooperate with the people who killed my sister.”

  “They’ll kill you, too. And what will that accomplish?”

  “I cannot live with a guilty conscience.”

  “Don’t throw your life away.”

  “You can’t change my mind. Do you really think this life is worth living?”

  “You never know what tomorrow might bring, what will happen in two, five, or ten months. You should give yourself a chance. God has given you life; live it.”

  “I don’t believe in God. Even if there’s a God, He’s cruel.”

  “Well, I believe in God and I don’t think He’s cruel; we are sometimes cruel. Whether you existed or not, Layla would have lived and died the way she did. But God gave you the gift of being her sister, of knowing and loving her, of the good memories you shared. And now, you can remember her. You can live and do good things in her memory.”

  “I don’t believe in God.” She looked away from me.

  Mina slept the rest of the day. I could understand her bitterness. Her anger had turned into hatred, consuming her. My faith in God had given me hope. It had helped me believe in goodness despite all the evil that surrounded me.

  In the evening, Ali came to the door of the cell and called my name. Mina didn’t move or open her eyes. Again, Ali took me to another cell. I tried to talk to him about Mina, but he didn’t want to talk.

  It was before the morning namaz and still dark when he returned me to my cell. After the door closed behind me, it became pitch-black. I couldn’t see a thing. I sat on the floor right away so I wouldn’t step on Mina. There wasn’t a sound. I crawled ahead, feeling my way with my hands. Mina wasn’t there.

  “Mina?” I called.

  The lights came on as the sound of the moazzen filled the air: “Allaho akbar…”

  “Mina!”

  “Allaho akbar…”

  Mina was gone. Ali was with me in the other cell all night. Dear God. Hamehd has taken her, and Ali doesn’t know. I tried to think. Maybe she was still alive. What could I do? I was sure Ali was on his way to the interrogation bu
ilding. I could knock on the door of my cell and ask a guard to get him for me. On the other hand, this would only keep Ali away from the interrogation building. I had to wait.

  I marched up and down my cell; it took only five or six steps to walk its length, and its width wasn’t much more than three steps. Images from the night I had been taken for execution flashed in my head. I had witnessed the last moments of the lives of two young men and two young women. I didn’t even know their names. Had their families been told that their loved ones had been executed? Where were they buried? The same thing could happen to Mina. I knocked on the door of my cell with my fists as hard as I could.

  “Something wrong?” asked a man’s voice.

  “Can you please find Brother Ali and tell him I need to talk to him right away?”

  He agreed.

  I paced some more, my heart pounding. I didn’t have a watch and couldn’t tell how long I had waited. The moazzen had not announced the midday namaz, so it wasn’t noon yet. I became dizzy and wobbled from side to side, hitting the walls. There had to be something more I could do. I began asking all the saints I knew for help. Saint Paul, help Mina. Saint Mark, help Mina. Saint Matthew, help Mina. Saint Luke, help Mina. Saint Bernadette, help Mina. Saint Joan of Arc, help Mina. When I couldn’t remember any more saints, I knocked on the door again.

  “I told him,” said the same voice.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d come as soon as possible.”

  I sat in a corner and sobbed.

  “Allaho akbar…” the moazzen announced the time for the midday prayer. “Allaho akbar…”

  The door of my cell opened. Ali came in and closed the door behind him. He stood there, staring at me for a few seconds.

  “I was too late,” he finally said. “She died last night during interrogation.”

  “How?”

  “Hamehd said she was talking back, he slapped her, and she fell and hit her head somewhere.”

  “My God! Do you believe him?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

  I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t. I wanted to scream, and I couldn’t. I wanted to stop terrible things from happening, and I couldn’t.

  Ali sat next to me.

  “I tried,” he said.

  “Not hard enough,” I cried.

  He left.

  Ali didn’t come to see me for five or six days after this, and I spent most of my time sleeping, overwhelmed by Mina’s death. Finally one morning, he brought a young woman named Bahar, who was holding a baby in her arms, to my cell. He still didn’t say a word, but our eyes met, and I had a feeling that he wanted to talk to me, but he left right away.

  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 everyo
ne 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.”