Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series)

by Nemat, Marina

  “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.

  Seventeen

  “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 continu
ed 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.

  I slipped out of bed and walked to the sea. Small waves whispered against the rocky shore, and stars floated in between silver-gray clouds, their pearly lights reflecting off t
he water’s surface. The Caspian was calling me like an old friend. I thought that I was ready, that I could bear the weight of loss bearing down on me. But nothing felt right. Now, the sea was calling, and I wished to go. This dreadful need, this fierce desire to vanish. I stepped into the waves. They were as warm as I remembered them. Here, I could become a memory, but then all that I held in my heart would be lost.

  “Life is precious, don’t let go, live again.” The voice of the angel.

  “I needed you. I called you. You didn’t come. And now you tell me not to let go? Not to let go of what?”

  “Life is precious, don’t let go, live again.”

  “What will you do if I go under and breathe water instead of air? Will you let me die this time and blame me for giving in to despair and grief? Or will you smile and make me feel guilty about all that I have or haven’t done, sending me back to this torment?”

  The wind brushed past me and flowed into the woods and into the valley of White River. Then it silently drifted through the stillness of the desert to find its way to the ocean.

  I walked back toward the cottage, dripping. Ali was standing at the gate that opened to the beach. He was crying. Why couldn’t I just love him and let go of the past? I had to surrender to the rhythm of existence, like a child discovering how to float in water for the very first time.

  “I woke, and you weren’t there,” he said, lifting me off the wet sand and carrying me inside like a child.

  We returned to Evin after five days at the cottage. Nothing had changed. Four weeks went by, and then, in late August, I started to feel terribly sick. After I had vomited for a few days, Ali decided to take me to see his mother’s physician. She ordered a few tests and later told me that I was eight weeks pregnant. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be expecting. When I agreed to marry Ali, I only considered the effects of my decision on my own life, my parents’ lives, and on Andre. I had never thought about children. Now, there was another life that was affected: an innocent child. A child was going to need me, rely on me, and whether I liked it or not, was going to need its father.