Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival

by Maziar Bahari

  Later that night, I wrote an article for the Newsweek website expressing my fears and hopes for the future. “Mousavi’s supporters are planning to stage another peaceful protest tomorrow,” I wrote. “Tonight, it is difficult to predict what that will bring, or what the end result of the cycle of demonstrations will be.”

  · · ·

  Amir was released the next day and called me soon after. When I went to see him, he told me that he’d been among a group of pro-Mousavi politicians who had been rounded up and taken to Evin Prison for two days. “We were warned that if we don’t calm the situation, we will be responsible for whatever might happen to us,” said Amir. According to him, Mousavi was quite upset about the attack but he was not going to let the terrorists hijack the green movement—which was how the support for Mousavi was becoming known. Mousavi had decided to tell his supporters to take to the streets one more time and avoid any confrontation with the police and the Guards that could provoke further violence.

  When I told Amir what I had witnessed the day before, he made a confession that surprised me.

  “Maziar jaan,” he said with melancholy in his voice, “I never told you this, but I always had my doubts about Mousavi’s abilities as a leader. But today … he is a changed man. I was with him an hour ago, and I could see that he has finally realized what an important role he can play in the history of this country. He has finally become what people wanted him to be: a strong leader with a clear vision about what he wants to achieve.”

  After the demonstrations had begun, Amir said, Khamenei’s secretary, Vahid, had contacted Mousavi to organize a meeting between the two men.

  “Let’s re-count the votes; then we’ll talk,” Mousavi had responded. He’d told Vahid to tell his master not to call him again, unless he had something new to say.

  · · ·

  The peaceful demonstrations continued for three days without further intervention by terrorist groups. During those days I was very proud of my people. Iranians were going to achieve something rare in a Muslim country. Hitherto, mass movements in Muslim countries had been either in support of fundamentalist groups or in favor of Western models of democracy. But the people of Iran were choosing a third way. The goal of the green movement was to establish an indigenous Iranian democracy, one that at its helm could have religious men, such as Mousavi, but would still respect human rights, freedom of expression, and women’s rights.

  Millions of people took to the streets over those three days. As the crowds grew in confidence and size, the regime became more and more paranoid. When I tried to call a friend four days after the election to find out more about Mousavi’s plans, cell phone and Internet communications had been cut. The government had shut down wireless communications between two and nine P.M., from an hour before until an hour after the demonstrations, to stop people from telling one another where the protests would be or any news about them. By doing so, the government was disrupting its own activities as well and was losing millions of dollars every hour. But it was a price Khamenei was willing to pay to cut down the size of the demonstrations.

  On the morning of Tuesday, June 16, I received a fax from Ershad, the Ministry of Culture; it had been sent to all Iranian and foreign reporters. Ershad asked all of us to stop reporting on the demonstrations and warned that continuing to do so would result in punishment. The fax didn’t specify the kind of punishment, but we all guessed that it could be annulment of our press cards or temporary detention. I immediately went to a friend’s office to make backups of my tapes.

  A few minutes after I started to digitize the tapes, an Ershad official I was friendly with called and asked me to visit him. At our meeting, he told me that I should be careful about what I was reporting. Apparently, the day after the election, the Revolutionary Guards had summoned Ershad officials and told them “to put a leash on foreign media” or they would be fired from their jobs and arrested. Knowing that I was the one who’d filmed it, the Ershad official told me that the Guards had complained about the footage of the attack against the Basij base. A chill went down my spine. As my friend spoke, he paced restlessly around his office. I’d never seen him so worried.

  In order to calm him, I read him a few passages from my latest Newsweek article, “Who’s Behind Tehran’s Violence?,” which had been posted on the magazine’s website the night before. In the article I blamed terrorist groups for using people’s peaceful demonstrations to incite violence. I’d quoted one of the demonstrators as saying, “I think some small terrorist groups and criminal gangs are taking advantage of the situation. Thirty years after the revolution and twenty years after the war, the majority of Iranians despise violence and terror. My worry is that if the government doesn’t allow reforms to take place, we will fall into a terrorism abyss like the years after the revolution.”

  My friend played with his green worry beads as I translated the article for him. I told him that I had nothing to hide and that I had even mentioned that I’d filmed the attack in the article. I assured him that by this time in my career, I’d grown accustomed to criticism from all sides. Usually, the Islamic government and different opposition groups criticized my films and articles for remaining neutral; they would prefer that I take sides.

  My friend stared at a heap of foreign magazines and newspapers. “Maziar jaan, we all know that you are fair in your reporting,” he told me. “That is why the extremists don’t like you.”

  · · ·

  Listen!

  The shadows are stepping by …

  We must flee.

  These lines from the poem “The Wind Will Carry Us,” by the modern Persian poet Forough Farrokhzad, ran through my mind again and again as I lay in bed that night. Since my father’s death, I had been using his study as my bedroom, and I could hear his voice each time I entered his room. I was surrounded by my father’s books and his souvenirs from countries around the world. But that night it wasn’t my father’s voice I was hearing. It was my sister’s, Maryam’s.

  Don’t you see?

  Our roof is shaking in fear of collapse,

  and over this roof, an immense dark cloud,

  like a dull, grieving crowd,

  is expecting the moment of cry.

  On Thursday, I woke at four A.M. and decided to go back to the mountains, to clear my head. Before I left, I sent an email to Maryam’s son, Khaled, who had been living in Australia since 2008, to tell him about the news I had received from Ershad and the Revolutionary Guards’ displeasure with the footage I had shot. A few years ago, I had given Khaled a list of friends to contact in case anything happened to me, thinking it best to take some precautions, and I wanted to update it.

  When I arrived at the base of the mountain, I called Paola in London. She was surprised by my poetic mood when I recited the original Persian and then the English translation of the rest of Forough’s lines to her.

  Listen!

  The shadows are stepping by …

  We must flee.

  Paola knew the poem because we had watched an Iranian film inspired by Forough’s words. “This is beautiful, Mazi, but …” She paused. “It’s ominous. Have you booked your ticket to London?”

  “Not yet. I’ll do it when we hang up.” But on some level, I knew I had to stay on and bear witness to history.

  You,

  O green like the soul of the leaves,

  Leave your lips to the stroke of mine,

  And savor them like swell flavor of an old wine.

  If we forget

  The wind will take us away,

  The wind will take us away.

  · · ·

  Later, alone in the mountains, I found my thoughts turning again to Maryam. As I began the slow ascent, I remembered the last time we had hiked this path.

  In 2007, not long after our brother, Babak, died, I’d taken Maryam to these mountains. She was not athletic and had had a hard time keeping up.

  “I’m running out of breath, Mazi joon. I can’t do this anymore,”
she’d said after just half an hour climbing the steep hills.

  “Come on,” I’d replied. “Just a few more minutes. Otherwise, you’re not going to burn any fat.” Now I regretted having said this.

  I couldn’t shake the idea that she was beside me. I was sixteen when Maryam was arrested, and for so many nights afterward, I’d lain alone in my room, cursing the people who had taken my sister away.

  During the six years of her imprisonment, my parents worried every day about what might happen to her. Many of my father’s prison buddies’ children were also in the Islamic government’s jails, and I often overheard the conversation among these old men, and their futile attempts to understand the vicious circle of history.

  Maryam’s husband, Mohammad, was released in 1988, and Maryam a year later. Both had suffered months of solitary confinement and endured many sessions of torture. Even though they did not support the regime, they remained patriotic and were committed to helping their country in any way they could. They even named their daughter Iran, a name modern parents rarely choose.

  These thoughts of Maryam stayed with me, and it was only after I had taken the cable car down the mountain that I once again felt a part of what was happening in Tehran that day. I pulled out my phone, and saw that I had five missed calls from Mohammad.

  “Khaled told me about what happened in Ershad yesterday,” he said. “Can you get a ticket to leave for London tonight? It’s not safe for you here.”

  I went home as quickly as I could, spurred on by the anxiousness in his voice. He knew far too well what the Iranian government was capable of. Mohammad had been like a brother to me since he and Maryam had married; in many ways, he was closer to me than my own brother, who had spent most of his adult life in the United States. Mohammad was just as worried about me as Maryam would have been.

  Yet as much as I wanted to be back in London with Paola, as Mohammad had urged, I felt I couldn’t leave. The biggest question had yet to be answered: What was Khamenei going to do? It had been announced that the supreme leader was going to lead the public prayers at Tehran University on Friday. Typically, Friday prayers are led by a rotating roster of imams from throughout Iran, chosen by the supreme leader. Their job is mostly to relay his message every week, and, except for a very few of them, they act as the leader’s propaganda agents: speaking about the domestic and international issues of the day and advising people of the importance of following Khamenei’s guidance. When Khamenei delivers the sermons himself, making a rare public appearance, it means there is something very important at stake.

  Even though Khamenei had supported Ahmadinejad’s reelection and had asked other candidates to refrain from opposing him, that didn’t stop many people, myself included, from dreaming that Khamenei would find the courage to call for a recount.

  I knew that Mohammad had a point, and that it was time for me to take the threats seriously. At the same time, I felt I could put these events in the proper context. I felt I had a responsibility to stay.

  “Fine,” Mohammad had said. “But don’t sleep where they can find you.”

  That night I stayed at a friend’s house.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, Friday, June 19, turned out to be one of the most important days in Iran’s modern history. I arrived at the Tehran University campus at ten-thirty A.M. for Friday prayers. The ceremony was scheduled to begin at one, but when I walked up to the campus gates, they were already closed. Officials from Beite Rahbari, the Leader’s Office, as Khamenei’s institution is called, were prohibiting reporters from entering. I was directed to a security office on the campus, where we would be allowed to view a televised version of the speech.

  Khamenei’s speech that day was the most important of his reign and would determine the path Iran was going to take: toward militarization and a more closed authoritarian state or toward a quasi-Islamic democracy. The fact that one man’s words could determine the results of an election meant that Iran had already significantly moved toward a more totalitarian state. But that day, as I sat with a group of journalists, including my Newsweek colleague Babak Dehghanpisheh and Marie Colvin, from the Sunday Times of London, I knew we were all quietly hoping that Khamenei would make a wise decision—and the right one for the country.

  How quickly we were proved wrong. Khamenei began his speech by blaming the Western media for instigating the unrest in Iran after the elections. He warned Mousavi and his supporters that if they continued their demonstrations, they would be responsible for the consequences of their actions. “If the political elite ignore the law, or cut off their noses to spite the face, whether they want or not, they will be responsible for the bloodshed, violence, and chaos that will follow,” Khamenei said.

  The room was utterly silent as we tried to absorb Khamenei’s words. His threat that those who demonstrated would pay for their actions in essence granted the Guards great freedom to use violence. It felt as if a dark cloud had descended on the room. I was crestfallen, knowing that the result would not be overturned. I wanted to blame someone. But who? Khamenei? Or the people who called him their master?

  I knew then that it was time to listen to the fears I’d been doing my best to ignore and make plans to leave Iran as soon as possible.

  · · ·

  The next day, life in Tehran seemed to be returning to normal. Cell phones were working again, people were going about their daily lives, stores were open, and the markets were busy. But as I strolled the city streets, preparing myself to return to London, I could sense an undercurrent of tension. It seemed as if people could speak to one another about nothing other than the election and, especially, about Khamenei’s Friday sermon and what that meant for the demonstration planned for today. The fact that the demonstration was going to occur, despite Khamenei’s warnings, made us feel as if the supreme leader had lost his legitimacy. He was just another tyrant, and at least some thirteen million Iranians, those who had voted for Mousavi, had said no to tyranny. I knew that later that day, I would witness many tragic scenes.

  As I exited the house that morning, a local graphic designer I knew ran up to me and asked me to help him fill out his Canadian immigration form. Like many middle-class Iranians since the revolution, he had decided to leave the country. The insecurity of life in Iran was too much for him to bear. “This is not a place to live anymore,” he said. “I’ve decided to sell my business and go to Canada.” When I asked him what he was planning to do in Canada, he didn’t have an answer. “I don’t care about myself anymore. I’ll go and clean the floors there. All I care about now is the future of my children.”

  As we talked on the sidewalk, I noticed that convoys of armored riot-control trucks with water cannons and crowd-control barriers were moving toward us, headed for the intersection of Revolution and Freedom Avenues, where the day’s demonstration was scheduled to take place. The convoy of vehicles was followed by thousands of guardsmen and anti-riot police wearing black helmets and riding black motorcycles. Everyone on the sidewalks stopped and stared at this menacing scene.

  “I hope they suffocate in those helmets,” my friend said.

  After lunch with my mother, I prepared to leave for the demonstration. I could see the worry in my mother’s eyes, and knew that she didn’t want me to go out. But we both understood that nothing could stop me from witnessing and reporting the events that could determine the future of the country. A few minutes before I left, Davood called me.

  “I imagine you’ll be going to the demonstration. Do you want a ride?”

  I hadn’t heard from Davood since reprimanding him a few days earlier. I asked him if he was sober, and he said that ever since I had gotten angry with him, he’d been channeling his anger at Ahmadinejad’s reelection into playing soccer. “I’ll bring my ball with me so you know that I’m not lying!” he said.

  When I went out to meet Davood, he had, in fact, brought his soccer ball. “See, I’m an athlete. Not a drunk anymore,” he announced proudly before hugging me. �
�I told myself hell’s going to break loose today and I want to be with Mr. Maziar before he gets arrested.”

  “Well, thanks for your kindness,” I said. “Now stop horsing around with that ball and get your ass on the motorcycle.”

  Davood gave me an army salute. “At your service, sir!”

  Along Freedom and Revolution Avenues, we saw Basij members posted on every street corner. Many of them were government employees who didn’t look that enthusiastic about their current posts. Most Basijis are essentially reservists; not much is asked of them, and they enjoy little perks for being in the force, such as extra rations for essential goods. The Basij members of every government office were told by the commander of the Basij that they had to guard a designated corner or they would be fired from their jobs. Revolution Square, the supposed center of the protest, was saturated with guardsmen and their water cannons. Still, their show of force was not keeping people away. Unlike on the previous days, demonstrators didn’t assemble in the main streets; rather, they gathered in the side streets off Revolution and Freedom Avenues. The side streets became so full that people gradually started to walk around Revolution Square. As the crowd around the square grew from dozens to hundreds, the presence of so many citizens seemed to surprise the military forces. They had underestimated people’s resolve to fight for their rights.

  Even though the demonstrators were just walking around without chanting or carrying signs, the guardsmen looked intimidated and soon started to beat and arrest whoever had a green scarf or wristband. Soon after, the police started to fire tear-gas canisters into the crowds in the side streets, and motorcycle convoys of guardsmen dressed fully in black barged into the crowds, wielding black electric batons. People knew that if they stayed together in large groups, the guardsmen would not be able to arrest all of them. The guardsmen also stayed together, attacking and retreating as quickly as they could in order not to get overwhelmed by the crowd. I saw a boy caught on his own by guardsmen. They immediately ganged up on him, cuffed him, and took him away. There were hundreds of black prison trucks along the main roads.