Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series)

by Nemat, Marina

  I told my parents about my decision to marry Andre, and they thought I had lost my mind. Even most of the priests believed we should not marry, but we set our wedding date for July 18, 1985, about sixteen months after my release from Evin. Friends and family repeatedly tried to change our minds. As a final attempt, my parents asked Hooshang Khan to speak to me. He was a kind, wise man and they knew I had great respect for him. When he knocked on my bedroom door one evening, I was sitting on my sofa bed, reading. He came in, closed the door behind him, and sat on a chair. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and looked straight at me.

  “Don’t do this.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t marry Andre. I know you love each other, but these are difficult times. You could die for this. Give it time. Things could change. It’s not worth losing your life.”

  His words unleashed the anger I had suppressed inside me.

  “You have no right to tell me whom I can or cannot marry! Not you, nor my parents, and definitely not the government! I’ll do what I want to do! I’ll do what’s right to do! Enough compromises!”

  I had never raised my voice like that in my life. I had never been so rude to someone so much older. I knew I had behaved badly. Color left Hooshang Khan’s face, and he walked out the door as I burst into tears. I was not going to let the government run my life. They had imprisoned me and tortured me emotionally and physically. I had been forced to convert to Islam and marry a man I didn’t know. I had watched my friends suffer and die. What mattered now was doing the right thing, showing them that although I had been forced to convert, I would marry the man I loved, even if doing so would send me back to prison and put me in serious danger. This time, I was not going to compromise. They had not destroyed me, and they would never succeed in doing so.

  The day Andre and I went shopping for wedding bands, I tried to tell him about Ali. I knew he would understand. We walked around the jewelry store, looking at the display windows. He deserved to know, and I wanted to tell him. A gold wedding band that looked like two rings welded together caught my eye, and I asked to see it. We both loved it. When we went back to the car, there was a parking ticket on the windshield. Andre told me that it was his very first ticket, and we laughed about it.

  As we drove back home, I thought about where to begin. I had to start at the beginning, the very first moment I stepped in Evin. Then, I had to tell about every second, every single thing that had happened. No, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t travel all the way back and live it again.

  That summer, my parents went to the cottage for a few days, and Andre and I accompanied them. The cottage was as beautiful and peaceful as I remembered, but the joy that being there had always given me had become nothing more than a memory. Early the first morning, when everyone was still asleep, I ran to the Prayer Rock. Everything seemed the same. Ancient trees brushed the sky, and the rays of the rising sun saturated their leaves. My shoes and pants were wet from the dew. I lay on the rock and felt its rough, moist surface against my skin and thought of the day Arash and I had prayed here. So much had changed since then. I took my first wedding ring out of my pocket, knelt by the rock, and tried to pry out one of its stones, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried and tried, but the stones were all cemented in. My fingers hurt. I ran back to the house. There wasn’t a sound except for my father’s snoring. I tiptoed into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and rushed back to the rock. This time, I managed to take out three stones, put the ring inside the dark cavity, and put the stones back. I imagined the ring surrounded by thousands of prayers.

  When we returned to Tehran, my mother told me that when I became a Muslim, my father had said that I wasn’t his daughter anymore. She was washing the dishes and didn’t even look at me as she spoke. I wasn’t surprised, but I was hurt. I had expected to find shelter at home, but the doors were closed on me. The distance between us seemed to expand. She dried her hands and walked out of the kitchen. Even if I had told her my secrets, she wouldn’t have been able to give me what I needed from her; I needed her understanding. She was the way she was. Her view of the world and what truly mattered was completely different from mine, and I didn’t dare say that I was right and she was wrong. We were different, and I had to stop expecting her to think like me. I had to accept her the way she was, because that was what I wanted her to do for me. I couldn’t understand why she had told me about my father’s harsh reaction to my conversion. My father had not said a word about it to me, but I guessed she had decided I needed to know his true feelings on this matter.

  My mother helped me with my makeup on the day of my wedding to Andre. One of my aunts had made my dress. I couldn’t stop my tears as I took it from the closet. It was hard to believe that I had lived to see this day. I looked out the window of my bedroom and at the pink roses in the backyard, offering a prayer for each of the friends I had loved and lost. I missed them all.

  Draping my dress over a chair next to the window, I thought of Ali and our wedding day, about how terrified I had been. Today was different; today was mine.

  I wondered if Andre and I would ever have children. I was terrified of getting pregnant again. I often thought of the moments I had spent with my baby in my dream. His smiling eyes, his giggles, his little hand grabbing my hair, and his little mouth drinking hungrily from me.

  Andre had gone out early in the morning to buy fresh fruit and soft drinks to take to the church. We had invited our guests to stay after the wedding ceremony and the mass to have some cake and refreshments at the church hall. In order not to attract too much attention, we had decided that I should go to the church early and change into my wedding dress there.

  As the wedding march played, my father walked me down the aisle inside the full church, and I felt happier than I had ever felt in my life. Large flower baskets overflowing with white gladiolas sat on the altar, and smiling faces surrounded us.

  We took pictures inside the church and in the church’s backyard. We had cake and chatted with guests, and it was soon time to go home to the small condo Andre had rented after his father passed away and his aunt who had raised him left for Hungary. With a view of the Alborz Mountains, the condo was north of Tehran in a high-rise building on the Jordan Hills, facing the Jordan Highway. Just before stepping out of the church, I put on my scarf and Islamic manteau on top of my wedding dress, and then the two of us walked to Andre’s navy blue Fiat. We were both happy and scared, and we hoped for the best, because we had to; we had decided to live our lives.

  Almost right after our wedding, Andre found a job at Tehran’s electric facility, and a couple of months later, we rented an apartment with my parents to share expenses. The Iran-Iraq war, now in its fifth year, had begun to escalate. Since the beginning of hostilities in September 1980, the war had mostly skipped Tehran; the distance separating the city from Iraq had protected us. The names of streets in residential neighborhoods changed to the names of the young men killed at the front. Before my time in Evin, this name-change process had been slow and not very noticeable. But after my release, I could see that many street names served as a remembrance to the lives lost in the war.

  Not too long before Andre and I got married, air attacks began to hit Tehran and a few other large cities. Without any warning, the first explosion came very early one morning; a missile blasted a residential neighborhood less than two miles from Zenia’s house. It shook us with a big boom and woke me. Although at that moment I didn’t know what the cause of the sound had been, I knew something terrible had happened. From then on, air-raid sirens screamed a few times a day and in the middle of the night, and although no one had a real bomb shelter and the government had never bothered to build any, people tried to take cover in safe spots, which were supposed to be far from windows. With each missile strike, broken glass killed and injured many.

  Death had become part of daily life. The ones who could leave the city and go to small towns and villages did so, but most had nowhere to go. But like a river, w
hich always finds its way to lower ground even if it has to dig through canyons, life managed to find the shortest route to “normalcy,” stubbornly struggling against fear. Parents went to work and sent their children to school, but they embraced them a little while longer and said a more patient good-bye. A few schools had been demolished during the air attacks and hundreds of children had been killed as they sat behind their desks or played in their schoolyard. At the war front, Saddam Hussein had begun using chemical weapons such as sarin and mustard gas, killing thousands.

  As Andre and I drove through the city to go to church or to a friend’s house, we would see a large, lonely gap where a house had stood the day before. Sometimes, a stairway had refused to collapse in the ruins of a family’s life, leading eerily to the emptiness behind it, or a wall covered with floral wallpaper cast its shadow over the dust of lost lives.

  On a Wednesday morning about two years after I had been released from Evin, the phone rang. I was about to leave for the grocery store and had my purse in my hand.

  “Can I speak to Marina?” said an unfamiliar voice.

  “Speaking.”

  “Marina, I’m calling from Evin.”

  The world stopped. I put my purse on the floor and rested my weight against the wall.

  “We want you to come to Evin on Saturday to answer a few questions. Be at the main front gate at nine in the morning, and don’t be late.”

  “What questions?”

  “You’ll see. Remember, nine in the morning on Saturday.”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even put the receiver down. My life after Evin was only a dream. It was time to wake from the dream and go back to reality. At least they hadn’t asked for Andre. I finally hung up and went to our bedroom. No one was home, and I had time to pull myself together. I tried to think of what could happen. I tried to tell myself that it was okay and that they were just checking on me. But I couldn’t. Feeling exhausted, I lay down on the bed and fell asleep. I woke with my mother calling my name and touching my shoulder.

  “Why are you sleeping with your scarf and manteau on?” she asked.

  For a second, I couldn’t remember. Then I told her.

  “What?” she looked as if she truly had not understood what I had just said.

  I repeated myself, and her face turned white.

  All I could do was sleep. I couldn’t think about Evin. Thinking was not going to help. Sometimes, when I woke to go to the bathroom or to have a drink of water, I found Andre sitting next to me, his eyes staring into empty space, his face white and pale, and his body terribly still. He knew there was nothing he could do, that he had to let me go. There wasn’t a sound in the house. Silence had swallowed us like a whale.

  On Saturday morning, I said a brief good-bye to Andre without looking into his eyes. I didn’t want to hold him, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to let go. We had made a choice and had to stand by it. After all, I had known that it could come to this. My father drove me to the main gate of Evin; I had decided it was too dangerous for Andre to take me. My father was very quiet. I told him to leave right away and watched his car disappear around the corner. I wondered if they would torture me. But why would they? To them, I was a Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity and had married a Christian man, so I deserved to die. They didn’t want to extract information from me; this was about capital punishment. “I will die with dignity,” I thought, and only when this thought crossed my mind did I realize this was true as long as I did the right thing, as long as I followed my beliefs. And I had no doubt that no matter what was done to Taraneh, she had died with dignity, too.

  Adjusting my chador, I went up to one of the guards standing in front of the gate and told him about the phone call. He asked my name and went inside. After a few minutes, he returned and told me to follow him. The heavy metal door closed behind me. We had entered a small room. He picked up a phone and dialed a number.

  “She’s here,” was all he said.

  This could be the last day of my life. Probably Hamehd was on his way to greet me. I promised myself to keep my head up. The door opened and Mohammad stepped in. I sighed with relief.

  “Marina, it’s good to see you again. How have you been?” he said.

  “Very well, thank you, and you?”

  “Thanks to God, I’ve been fine. Follow me.”

  I followed him. He didn’t tell me to put on a blindfold. There were flowers planted everywhere, which seemed completely out of place in Evin. He led me into a building and into a room that was furnished with a desk and five or six chairs. A picture of Khomeini decorated the wall.

  “Please, sit down,” he said. “Tell me, what have you been doing since you got out of here?”

  “Nothing much. I was studying most of the time and got my high school diploma.”

  “That’s very good. Anything else?”

  “Not really.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You’re in a lot of trouble again, and I think you know what I’m talking about, but you’re very lucky to have a few friends around here. Hamehd had plans for you, but we’ve been able to stop him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He found out about your second marriage and tried to have the Courts of Islamic Revolution condemn you to death. But you knew this could happen, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “And you still did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you call this bravery or stupidity?”

  “Neither. I just did what I believed was right.”

  “Well, this time, luck was on your side. Hard-liners like Hamehd have been losing support in Evin. I think Ali’s assassination made people realize that hard-liners had gone too far. Ali had asked me to watch your back if anything happened to him, and although I’m against what you’ve done, I honored his wish. But I will not do this again. I asked you here to warn you to think a little before you act next time.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “The Moosavis have been asking about you. I told them you’d be here today. They’re here to see you.”

  The door opened, and they all walked in. I was glad to see them. Little Ali had grown; he was an adorable little toddler and stared at me suspiciously. Akram embraced me. We all sat down.

  “I’m happy to see you well, Marina. Is everything okay with you?” asked Mr. Moosavi.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “So, you have married again. Are you happy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re very stubborn. You could’ve been in a lot of trouble if we weren’t watching out for you.”

  “I know, sir, and I thank you for it.”

  “I haven’t touched your money, and if you want it, it’s yours.”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “This is your Aunt Marina, Ali. Go and give her a kiss,” Akram said to her little boy. He slowly walked toward me.

  “Come here, Ali,” I said. “You’re a big boy now!”

  He came closer, kissed my cheek, and ran back to his mother.

  Mrs. Moosavi was crying, and I embraced her. My life would have been very different if Ali hadn’t died. Then they would have remained my family, the way they had been for fifteen months. I never wanted Ali to be harmed in any way. I felt guilty for not loving him and for not hating him, but it was over, and there was nothing I could do. My feelings toward him had always been and would remain a combination of anger, frustration, fear, and uncertainty.

  From Evin, I walked to the highway and waved down a cab. I had lived. It was as if death were trying to push me away, to protect me, and I couldn’t understand the reason why. The world moved and shimmered in front of my eyes. Why had I survived when so many had not? Sarah had not been released, and I should have asked Mr. Moosavi about her, but I had not been able to think straight. I wondered if he had been able to do anything for her.

  At home, when I opened the door to the yard, I found myself in Andre’s arms. He squeezed me tigh
t, trembling.

  “Thank God, thank God! Are you okay? I can’t believe they let you go! What happened?”

  I told him they were doing a routine check, the same way they did on everyone who had been in Evin.

  “Did they ask if you had married?”

  “No,” I lied. “They either don’t know, or they know and don’t really care.”

  “Does this mean that they won’t bother us again?”

  “I don’t know, but we should be okay at least for a little while. But don’t forget that they’re very unpredictable. It’s hard to say what they’ll do tomorrow.”

  I knew that if hard-liners like Hamehd gained more power and support in Evin, my situation would change dramatically.

  I was terrified of the war, not only because of the missile attacks but because, in a few months, Andre had to leave for his mandatory military service. Then we heard of a special government program that allowed those with a master’s degree to teach in universities in remote cities for three years instead of fulfilling their military duty. This was our only hope to keep Andre from the front; he had just received his master’s degree. He applied to the program and was accepted.

  We had to move to Zahedan, a city located in southeastern Iran close to the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Andre was to become a lecturer at the University of Sistan and Baluchestan. He had to make a trip to Zahedan about a month before his starting date to attend to the paperwork and make the necessary arrangements. We went together, because I had never been to that part of the country, and I was curious to see my future home.

  The flight from Tehran to Zahedan took about an hour and a half. As the plane began its descent, I looked out of my little window. It looked as if the earth had been laid to rest, covered with a shroud of sand. I noticed a small, mildly green dot in the distance and watched it grow amid the serenity of the endless desert. Clay and brick buildings had sprouted out of the sand, reaching toward the precious shade of scarce trees.